The earliest sense of the word ‘ballad,’ or rather of its French and Provençal predecessors, balada, balade (derived from the late Latin ballare, to dance), was ‘a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance,’ a sense long obsolete.[1] Next came the meaning, a simple song of sentiment or romance, of two verses or more, each of which is sung to the same air, the accompaniment being subordinate to the melody. This sense we still use in our ‘ballad-concerts.’ Another meaning was that of simply a popular song or ditty of the day, lyrical or narrative, of the kind often printed as a broadsheet. Lyrical or narrative, because the Elizabethans appear not to distinguish the two. Read, for instance, the well-known scene in The Winter’s Tale (Act IV. Sc. 4); here we have both the lyrical ballad, as sung by Dorcas and Mopsa, in which Autolycus bears his part ‘because it is his occupation’; and also the ‘ballad in print,’ which Mopsa says she loves—‘for then we are sure it is true.’ Immediately after, however, we discover that the ‘ballad in print’ is the broadside, the narrative ballad, sung of a usurer’s wife brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, or of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April: in short, as Martin Mar-sixtus says (1592), ‘scarce a cat can look out of a gutter but out starts a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited.’ Chief amongst these ‘halfpenny chroniclers’ were William Elderton, of whom Camden records that he ‘did arm himself with ale (as old father Ennius did with wine) when he ballated,’ and thereby obtained a red nose almost as celebrated as his verses; Thomas Deloney, ‘the ballating silkweaver of Norwich’; and Richard Johnson, maker of Garlands. Thus to Milton, to Addison, and even to Johnson, ‘ballad’ essentially implies singing; but from about the middle of the eighteenth century the modern interpretation of the word began to come into general use.
In 1783, in one of his letters, the poet Cowper says: ‘The ballad is a species of poetry, I believe, peculiar to this country.... Simplicity and ease are its proper characteristics.’ Here we have one of the earliest attempts to define the modern meaning of a ‘ballad.’ Centuries of use and misuse of the word have left us no unequivocal name for the ballad, and we are forced to qualify it with epithets. ‘Traditional’ might be deemed sufficient; but ‘popular’ or ‘communal’ is more definite. Here we adopt the word used by Professor Child—‘popular.’
What, then, do we intend to signify by the expression ‘popular ballads’? Far the most important point is to maintain an antithesis between the poetry of the people and the consciously artistic poetry of the schools. Wilhelm Grimm, the less didactic of the two famous brothers, said that the ballad says nothing unnecessary or unreal, and despises external adornment. Ferdinand Wolf, the great critic of the Homeric question, said the ballad must be naïve, objective, not sentimental, lively and erratic in its narrative, without ornamentation, yet with much picturesque vigour.
It is even more necessary to define sharply the line between poetry of the people and poetry for the people.[2] The latter may still be written; the making of the former is a lost art. Poetry of the people is either lyric or narrative. This difference is roughly that between song and ballad. ‘With us,’ says Ritson, ‘songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly termed songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions which we now denominate Ballads.’ This definition, of course, is essentially modern; we must still insist on the fact that genuine ballads were sung: ‘I sing Musgrove,’[3] says Sir Thwack in Davenant’s The Wits, ‘and for the Chevy Chase no lark comes near me.’ Lastly, we must emphasise that the accompaniment is predominated by the air to which the words are sung. I have heard the modern comic song described as ‘the kind in which you hear the words,’ thus differentiating it from the drawing-room song, in which the words are (happily) as a rule less audible than the melody. In the ballad, as sung, the words are most important; but it is of vital importance to remember that the ballads were chanted.
II. Poetry of the People.
Now what is this ‘poetry of the people’? One theory is as follows. Every nation or people in the natural course of its development reaches a stage at which it consists of a homogeneous, compact community, with its sentiments undivided by class-distinctions, so that the whole active body forms what is practically an individual. Begging the question, that poetry can be produced by such a body, this poetry is naturally of a concrete and narrative character, and is previous to the poetry of art. ‘Therefore,’ says Professor Child, ‘while each ballad will be idiosyncratic, it will not be an expression of the personality of individuals, but of a collective sympathy; and the fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of subjectivity and self-consciousness. Though they do not “write themselves,” as Wilhelm Grimm has said—though a man and not a people has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous.’
By stating this, the dictum of one of the latest and most erudite of ballad-scholars, so early in our argument, we anticipate a century or more of criticism and counter-criticism, during which the giants of literature ranged themselves in two parties, and instituted a battle-royal which even now is not quite finished. It will be most convenient if we denominate the one party as that which holds to the communal or ‘nebular’ theory of authorship, and the other as the anti-communal or ‘artistic’ theory. The tenet of the former party has already been set forth, namely, that the poetry of the people is a natural and spontaneous production of a community at that stage of its existence when it is for all practical purposes an individual. The theory of the ‘artistic’ school is that the ballads and folk-songs are the productions of skalds, minstrels, bards, troubadours, or other vagrant professional singers and reciters of various periods; it is allowed, however, that, being subject entirely to oral transmission, these ballads and songs are open to endless variation.
On the Continent, Herder was pioneer, both of the claims of popular poetry and of the nebular theory of authorship. Traditions of chivalry, he says, became poetry in the mouths of the people; but his definition of popular poetry has rather extended bounds. Herder’s enthusiasm fired Goethe (who, however, did not wholly accede to the ‘nebular’ theory) to study the subject, and the effect was soon noticeable in his own poetry. Next came the two great brothers, whose names are ever to be held in honour wherever folklore is studied or folktales read, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Jacob, the more ardent and polemical, insisted on the communal authorship of the poetry of the people; ballad or song ‘sings itself.’
Both the Grimms, and especially Jacob, were severely handled by the critic Schlegel, who insisted on the artist. To Schlegel we owe the famous image in which popular poetry is a tower, and the poet an architect. Hundreds may fetch and carry, but all are useless without the direction of the architect. This is specious argument; but we might reply to Schlegel that an architect is only wanted when the result is required to be an artistic whole. The tower of Babel was built by hundreds of men under no superintendence. Schlegel’s intention, however, is no less clear than that of Jacob Grimm, and the two are diametrically opposed.
In England, literary prejudice against the unpolished barbarities and uncouthnesses of the ballad was at no time so pronounced as it was on the Continent, and especially in Germany, during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, at intervals, the most learned and fantastic critics in England would call attention to the poetry of the people. Sir Philip Sidney’s apologetic words are well known:— ‘Certainly I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of Percy and Duglas, that I found not my heart mooved more then with a Trumpet.’ Addison was bolder. ‘It is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a Multitude, tho’ they are only the Rabble of a Nation, which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the Mind of Man.’ With these and other encouragements the popular poetry of England was not lost to sight; and in 1765 the work of the good Bishop of Dromore gave the ballads a place in literature.