The Robin Hood ballads, or songs about Robin Hood, are mentioned by Piers Plowman as popular among the peasants at the end of the fourteenth century. They would be sung in connexion with the very ancient festivities of May Day, held in England and Scotland, when money was collected, rather roughly, from spectators and passers-by. Now Wynkyn de Worde, the successor of Caxton as a printer, published a "Lytil Geste" of Robin Hood (about 1490). But we are not obliged to suppose that the songs known to Piers Plowman were borrowed from the "long Geste" of Robin Hood; more probably the "Geste" was derived from the popular traditions and rhymes of the May Day show of Robin Hood. How far these ballads as they now exist have been organized and improved upon by a professional minstrel it is hard to say. In any case the older ballads are worthy of merry England.
The ballads of King Arthur are manifestly popularized and reduced to the simple ballad form from the long literary romances, and are probably the work of lowly professional minstrels.
The long ballad of "Flodden Field" is the work of a partisan of the Stanley family, it is far too long (over 500 lines), and too full of historical detail, for a ballad made by the Borderers themselves. "Scottish Field" (Flodden) is another piece of the same sort, in alliterative measure.
The class of ballad which was made as a narrative of current events, or a satire on contemporaries (of such ballad-satires Henry VIII complained to James V) was usually, in England, the work of a versifying journalist of the humblest sort, and was printed. John Knox tells us that ballads were made on Queen Mary's Four Maries (Mary Livingstone, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton), and these, it is plain, were satirical. But the only survivor of these ballads, "Mary Hamilton," is romantic, and in all its many various forms transfers, to a non-existent Mary, the misfortunes of a French waiting-maid of the Queen, who, with her lover, an apothecary, was hanged for the murder of their child. In only one text is the lover an apothecary: the lady is sometimes not an apocryphal Hamilton, but a Campbell, daughter of the Duke of Argyll; or a daughter of the Duke of York, or even "Mary Mild" (or Mile) which is the name of our Lady in old carols. For the lover, the poet chooses Henry Darnley, husband of Queen Mary, or that old offender, "Sweet Willie," or any one; and this is a good example of the changes which popular ballads underwent in recitation. As they stand, the multitude has collaborated in them, reciters have altered the original in many ways.
Such ballads differ much from "Lady Bessy," with its 1080 lines, probably written by Humphrey Brereton in honour of the House of Stanley and of Lady Bessie's revenge on Richard III. Some verses are as spirited as those of "Kinmont Willie," a Border ballad to which Scott lent the vigour of the last and greatest of the Border makers, for probably the finest verses in the song are by Sir Walter himself: at all events he improved what old verses he found.
At Bosworth Field, when all is lost, Sir William Harrington says to Richard III:—
"There may no man their strokes abide,
The Stanleys' dints they be so strong,
Ye may come in another time;
Therefore methink ye tarry too long."
As lion-hearted as his namesake Richard I, Richard III replies:—
"Give me my battle-axe in my hand,
And set my crown on my head so high,
For by Him that made both sea and land,
King of England will I this day die.
"One foot of ground I will not flee
While the strength abides my breast within,"
As he said so did it be,
If he lost his life he died a king.
The early history of our purely romantic ballads, such as "Clerk Sanders," "The Douglas Tragedy," "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow," "Young Beichan," "The Wife of Usher's Well," "Fair Annie," "Tamlane," and many more, is obscure. They have analogues in all European countries, from Greece to Scandinavia, and in popular tales, the oldest things in literature. Their extraordinary charm, their touch of supernatural terror, their simplicity, their recurring formulæ of words, their brevity and pathos, make them things apart. The heart of humanity is their maker, though in each country where they exist local allusions and local colour have been given to them by the singers. When such ballads have been worked over by some hack of the early Press they are often worthless; the best have been collected from oral recitation, or old written copies.