MAKING A COLLECTION FOR CHILDREN
As was natural in those coarse old times, much that was unsuitable for children was woven into the ballads; which to-day makes it a difficult task to compile a representative juvenile collection. For, as Spenser so aptly put it when writing of Irish bards, they “seldom use to choose unto themselves the doings of good men for the arguments of their poems, but whomsoever they find to be ... most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhymes, him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow.”
But Spenser’s criticism of the Irish bards is far too violent a stricture on all Scottish and English ballad literature. For there are Scottish and English ones, clean, merry, and nobly heroic; fine and wholesome reading for our boys and girls.
For Sir Walter Scott’s romantic tastes and his interest in Highland and Border life were awakened and fired, when he was a boy, by reading ballads. And Sir Philip Sydney wrote in his Defence of Poetry, “Certainly, I must confess mine own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style ... In Hungary I have seen it the manner at all feasts, and all other such-like meetings, to have songs of their ancestors’ valour, which that right soldier-like nation think one of the chiefest kindlers of brave courage.”
But in making a collection of ballads for modern boys and girls, it is not enough to choose those that will arouse only the higher emotions. The interests of young people have to be consulted; while nothing in extremely difficult Scottish dialect may be included, nor in very old English.
Then there are many versions of individual ballads to choose from. Of “Hynd Horn” there are eight or more; of “Young Beichan and Susie Pye,” fourteen or more; and of other ballads many versions. Next, authoritative texts must be found, for some transcribers have made mistakes or have altered the originals. So it may be seen what a painstaking task it is to compile a collection of ballads for educational purposes as well as for the boys’ and girls’ own reading.
As for this volume, it covers so wide a range of fascinating subjects that it will surely entrance any lad or lass who, opening its pages for pleasure-reading, steps with Valentine and Ursine, Robin Hood and Clorinda, and the brave outlaw Murray, into
The gude green-wood amang the lily flower.