—Quand tu étais petit?
—Avant que je fusse au monde, avant qu’y fût mon père, et le père de mon père, et le père du père de mon père. Cela a toujours été. —Rolland, L’Aube.
[ CONTENTS]
| PAGE | |
| Preface | [vii] |
| Introduction to the Robin Hood Ballads | [xi] |
| A GEST OF ROBYN HODE | [1] |
| The First Fytte | [5] |
| The Second Fytte | [20] |
| The Third Fytte | [32] |
| The Fourth Fytte | [43] |
| The Fifth Fytte | [57] |
| The Sixth Fytte | [64] |
| The Seventh Fytte | [72] |
| The Eighth Fytte | [84] |
| ROBIN AND GANDELEYN | [92] |
| ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK | [96] |
| ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER | [113] |
| ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE | [128] |
| ROBIN HOOD’S DEATH | [140] |
| ADAM BELL, CLYM OF THE CLOUGH AND WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLY | [147] |
| JOHNNY O’ COCKLEY’S WELL | [177] |
| THE OUTLAW MURRAY | [183] |
| SIR ANDREW BARTON | [196] |
| HENRY MARTYN | [213] |
| JOHN DORY | [216] |
| CAPTAIN WARD AND THE RAINBOW | [219] |
| THE SWEET TRINITY | [224] |
[ PREFACE]
This volume concludes the series, begun in 1903, which was intended to comprise all the best traditional ballads of England and Scotland. The scheme of classification by subject-matter, arbitrary and haphazard as it may seem to be at one point or another, has, I think, proved more satisfactory than could have been anticipated; and in the end I have omitted no ballad without due justification.
In the fourteen years which have elapsed since the completion of Professor Child’s collection, there has been discovered, so far as I know, only one ballad that can claim the right to be added to his roll of 305 ‘English and Scottish Popular Ballads.’ That one is the carol of The Bitter Withy, which I was fortunate enough to recover in 1905, which my friend Professor Gerould of Princeton University has annotated with an erudition worthy of Child, and the genuineness of which has been sponsored by Professor Gummere.[1] I should perhaps have included this in its place in my Second Series, had I known of it in time, but I still hope to treat the traditional English Carols separately. I ought to admit here that the confidence with which I claimed, in my Third Series, a place on the roll for The Jolly Juggler, has abated, and I now consider it to be no more than a narrative lyric without any definitely ‘popular’ characteristics.
These four volumes contain in all 143 ballads, four of which are not to be found in Child’s collection.[2] Thus, out of his 305, I have omitted more than half; but it must be remembered that his work was a collection, and mine—si parva licet componere magnis—has been selection. The omitted ballads are either:—