THE BALLADS.
But another affluent to the growing sentiment, besides Burns, was the ballad-poetry rediscovered, we may say, towards the end of last century. The most decisive mark of this change in literary taste was the collection by Bishop Percy of the “Reliques of Ancient Poetry” in 1765; and this production did much to deepen and expand the taste out of which itself arose. The impulse which began with Bishop Percy may be said to have culminated when Scott gave to the world his “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” in the opening years of the present century.
The ballads of course are mainly engaged with human incidents, heroic and legendary. Yet they contain many side-glances at Nature, as it interwove itself with the actions or the sufferings of men, which are very affecting. This is the way that the sight of Ettrick Forest struck the king and his men as they marched against the outlaw who “won” there—
“The king was cuming thro’ Caddon Ford,
And full five thousand men was he;
They saw the derke Foreste them before,
They thought it awsome for to see.”
Or take again the impression made on the traveling knight as he comes on Clyde in full flood:—
“As he gaed owre yon high high hill
And doun yon dowie den,
There was a roar in Clyde water,
Had fear’d a hundred men.”
Or that other gentler pathetic touch, where the maiden says—
“Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu’ dream
I fear there will be sorrow,
I dreamed I pu’d the heather green
Wi’ my true love, on Yarrow.
“O gentle wind, that bloweth south,
From where my love repaireth,
Convey a kiss from his dear mouth,
And tell me how he fareth!”
In verses such as these, which abound throughout the popular ballads and songs, we see the outer world, not as it appeared to the highly educated poet, seeking to express it in artistic phrase, but as it showed itself to the eyes and hearts of country-people, living quite familiarly among its sights and sounds. Much more might be said of the natural imagery of the ballads, and of the feeling toward the outer world indicated by it. Suffice it to note that the simplicity and pathos, both of sentiment and of expression, which the ballads contained, entering, with other influences, into the minds of the young generation which first welcomed them, called up another view of Nature than that which the literary poets had expressed, and affected most deeply both the feeling and the form of the new poetry of Nature which this century brought in.