"Thespis, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart,"[22]
had long ago departed. There are but few instances of true poets writing for the streets in later times, but we have one in Oliver Goldsmith. In his early life in Dublin, when he often felt the want of a meal, he wrote ballads, which found a ready customer at five shillings each at a little bookseller's shop in a by-street of the city. We are informed that he was as sensitive as to the reception of these children of his muse as in after years he was of his more ambitious efforts; and he used to stroll into the street to hear his ballads sung, and to mark the degrees of applause with which they were received. Most of the modern ballad-writers have been local in their fame, as Thomas Hoggart, the uncle of Hogarth the painter, whose satiric lash made him a power in his native district of Cumberland, dreaded alike by fools and knaves.
The chief heroes of the older ballads were King Arthur and his knights, Robin Hood, and Guy of Warwick. The ballads relating to the first of these appear to have been chiefly chipped off from the great cycle of Arthurian romances. The popularity of Robin Hood was at one time so great that Drayton prophesied in his Polyolbion:—
"In this our spacious isle I think there is not one
But he hath heard some talk of him, and little John,
And to the end of time the tales shall ne'er be done
Of Scarlock, George a Green, and Much the Miller's son.
Of Tuck the merry Friar, which many a sermon made
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade."
From a local hero he grew into national fame, and superseded Arthur in popular regard. He then sunk into a mere highwayman, to be again raised into fame by literary men, Ritson being the chief of these. Wakefield is still proud of its Pinder, who was one of Robin Hood's company—
"In Wakefield there lives a jolly Pinder;
In Wakefield all on a green,"
and one of the thoroughfares of that place is now called Pinder Field Road. Robin Hood was a purely English hero, but Guy of Warwick was almost as popular in foreign countries as in his own land. The earliest of English political ballads was an outcome of the Barons' wars in the reign of Henry III.,[23] and each period of political excitement since then has been represented in ballads. The controversies between Protestant and Papist were carried on in verse, and Laud and his clergy were attacked by the ballad-writers of the Puritan party.
Imitators and Forgers.
No attempt was made to produce false antique ballads until the true antiques had again risen in public esteem, and one of the first to deceive the connoisseurs was Lady Wardlaw, who was highly successful in her object when she gave Hardyknute to the world (see vol. ii. p. 105). She seems to have been quite contented with the success which attended the mystification, and does not appear to have taken any particular pains to keep her secret close. Suspicions were rife long before the publication of the Reliques, but when they appeared the whole truth came out. With regard to the other ballads, to which she had added verses, there does not appear to have been any attempt at concealment. The recent endeavour to attribute a large number of the romantic ballads of Scotland to her pen will be considered further on.
A large number of poets have imitated the old ballad, but very few have been successful in the attempt to give their efforts the genuine ring of the original. Tickell and Goldsmith entered into the spirit of their models, but Scott succeeded best in old Elspeth's fragment of a chant (the Battle of Harlaw) in the Antiquary. W. J. Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, contributed several imitations to Evans's Collection of Old Ballads, but although these are beautiful poems in themselves, their claim to antiquity was made to rest chiefly upon a distorted spelling. One of the most remarkably successful imitations of modern times is the ballad of Trelawny, which the late Rev. R. S. Hawker, of Morwenstow, wrote to suit the old burden of "And shall Trelawny die." This spirited ballad deceived Scott, Macaulay, and Dickens, who all believed it to be genuine, and quoted it as such. In 1846 it was actually printed by J. H. Dixon in his "Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, taken down from oral tradition, and transcribed from private manuscripts, rare broadsides, and scarce publications," published by the Percy Society. Mr. Dixon was probably deceived by Davies Gilbert, who sent the ballad to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1827, and said that it formerly "resounded in every house, in every highway, and in every street." In 1832 Hawker had, however, himself acknowledged the authorship. He wrote in his Records of the Western Shore (p. 56), "With the exception of the chorus contained in the last two lines, this song was written by me in the year 1825. It was soon after inserted in a Plymouth paper. It happened to fall into the hands of Davies Gilbert, Esq., who did me the honour to reprint it at his private press at East Bourne, under the impression, I believe, that it is an early composition of my own. The two lines above-mentioned formed, I believe, the burthen of the old song, and are all that I can recover."[24] Hawker was fond of these mystifications, and although he did not care to lose the credit of his productions, he was amused to see another of his ballads, Sir Beville, find its way into a collection of old ballads.