[3] Cf. The Tannhäuser legend and the Venusberg.
[4] "The Wife of Usher's Well."
[5] It should never be forgotten that the ballad (derived from ballare—to dance) was originally not a written poem, but a song and dance. Many of the old tunes are preserved. A number are given in Chappell's "Popular Music of the Olden Time," and in the appendix to Motherwell's "Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern" (1827).
[6] "A Ballad." One theory explains these meaningless refrains as remembered fragments of older ballads.
[7] Reproduced by Rossetti and other moderns. See them parodied in Robert Buchanan's "Fleshly School of Poets":
"When seas do roar and skies do pour,
Hard is the lot of the sailór
Who scarcely, as he reels, can tell
The sidelights from the binnacle."
[8] "I never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crouder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar!"
[9] Empty: "Bonnie George Campbell."
[10] "Lord Randall."
[11] Turf: "The Twa Corbies."