A historical ballad will commonly be narrative in its form, but not necessarily so. A hymn of exultation—a call to a council, an army, or a people—a prophecy—a lament—or a dramatic scene (as in Lochiel), may give as much of event, costume, character, and even scenery as a mere narration. The varieties of form are infinite, and it argues lack of force in a writer to keep always to mere narration, though when exact events are to be told that may be the best mode.
One of the essential qualities of a good historical ballad is truth. To pervert history—to violate nature, in order to make a fine clatter, has been the aim in too many of the ballads sent us. He who goes to write a historical ballad should master the main facts of the time, and state them truly. It may be well for those perhaps either not to study or to half-forget minute circumstances until after his ballad is drafted out, lest he write a chronicle, not a ballad; but he will do well, ere he suffers it to leave his study, to reconsider the facts of the time or man, or act of which he writes, and see if he cannot add force to his statements, an antique grace to his phrases, and colour to his language.
Truth and appropriateness in ballads require great knowledge and taste.
To write an Irish historical ballad, one should know the events which he would describe, and know them not merely from an isolated study of his subject, but from old familiarity, which shall have associated them with his tastes and passions, and connected them with other parts of history. How miserable a thing is to put forward a piece of vehement declamation and vague description, which might be uttered of any event, or by the man of any time, as a historical ballad. We have had battle ballads sent us that would be as characteristic of Marathon or Waterloo as of Clontarf—laments that might have been uttered by a German or a Hindu—and romances equally true to love all the world over.
Such historical study extends not merely to the events. A ballad writer should try to find the voice, colour, stature, passions, and peculiar faculties of his hero—the arms, furniture, and dress of the congress, or the champions, or the troops he tells of—the rites wherewith the youth were married—the dead interred, and God worshipped; and the architecture—previous history and pursuits (and, therefore, probable ideas and phrases) of the men he describes.
Many of these things he will get in books. He should shun compilations, and take up original journals, letters, state papers, statutes, and cotemporary fictions and narratives as much as possible. Let him not much mind Leland or Curry (after he has run over them), but work like fury at the Archæological Society's books—at Harris's Hibernica, at Lodge's Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, at Strafford's Pacata, Spencer's View, Giraldus's Narrative, Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, the Ormond Papers, the State Papers of Henry the Eighth, Stafford's and Cromwell's and Rinuccini's Letters, and the correspondence and journals, from Donald O'Neill's letter to the Pope down to Wolfe Tone's glorious memoirs.
In the songs, and even their names, many a fine hint can be got; and he is not likely to be a perfect Balladist of Ireland who has not felt to tears and laughter the deathless passions of Irish music.
We have condemned compilations; but the ballad student may well labour at Ware's Antiquities. He will find in the History of British Costume, published by the Useful Knowledge Society, and in the illustrated work now in progress called Old England, but beyond all other books, in the historical works of Thierry, most valuable materials. Nothing, not even the Border Minstrelsy, Percy's Relics, the Jacobite Ballads, or the Archæological Tracts, can be of such service as a repeated study of the Norman Conquest, the Ten Years' Study, and the Merovingian Times of Augustine Thierry.
We know he has rashly stated some events on insufficient authority, and drawn conclusions beyond the warrant of his promises; but there is more deep dramatic skill, more picturesque and coloured scenery, more distinct and characteristic grouping, and more lively faith to the look and spirit of the men and times and feelings of which he writes, in Thierry, than in any other historian that ever lived. He has almost an intuition in favour of liberty, and his vindication of the "men of '98" out of the slanderous pages of Musgrave is a miracle of historical skill and depth of judgment.
In the Irish Academy in Dublin there is a collection (now arranged and rapidly increasing) of ancient arms and utensils. Private collections exist in many provincial towns, especially in Ulster. Indeed, we know an Orange painter in a northern village who has a finer collection of Irish antiquities than all of the Munster cities put together. Accurate observation of, and discussion on, such collections will be of vast service to a writer of historical Ballads.