From what has been said it is clear that, as a rule, the ballad is at its best, is most typically ballad, when its subject-matter is of purely popular origin. The Gest and the earliest Robin Hood ballads “are among the best of all ballads,” and Robin Hood “is absolutely a creation of the popular muse. The earliest mention we have of him is as the subject of ballads.”[218] “Absolutely a creation of the popular muse” would seem to imply that the ballad is not,—or that these ballads at least are not,—based either upon a formless popular tradition or upon definite prose tales. Local traditions follow the ballad, as attempts to explain it; they do not supply the story. “In places where a ballad has once been known, the story will often be remembered after the verses have been wholly or partly forgotten, and the ballad will be resolved into a prose tale, retaining, perhaps, some scraps of verse, and not infrequently taking up new matter, or blending with other traditions. Naturally enough, a ballad and an equivalent tale sometimes exist side by side.”[219]
The existence of foreign traditional parallels is one evidence of popular origin. The Bent Sae Brown (71) has close resemblances with Norse ballads; “but the very homeliness of the Scottish ballad precludes any suspicion beyond tampering with tradition. The silliness and fulsome vulgarity of Buchan’s versions often enough make one wince or sicken.... But such correspondences with foreign ballads as we witness in the present case are evidence of a genuine traditional foundation.”[220] Less complete, yet even more striking, are the foreign versions of the theme of Tam Lin (39).
“This fine ballad stands by itself, and is not, as might have been expected, found in possession of any people but the Scottish. Yet it has connections, through the principal feature in the story, the retransformation of Tam Lin, with Greek popular tradition older than Homer.”[221] “We come ... surprisingly near to the principal event of the Scottish ballad in a Cretan fairy-tale ... [1820-1830].” And this “Cretan tale does not differ from the one repeated by Apollodorus from earlier writers a couple of thousand years ago more than two versions of a story gathered from oral tradition in these days are apt to do. Whether it has come down to our time from mouth to mouth through twenty-five centuries or more, or whether, having died out of the popular memory, it was reintroduced through literature, is a question that cannot be decided with certainty; but there will be nothing unlikely in the former supposition to those who bear in mind the tenacity of tradition among people who have never known books.”[222] The Suffolk Miracle (272) has “impressive and beautiful”[223] European parallels, and therefore finds a place in Professor Child’s collection. Other debased or counterfeit or spurious ballads are present for the same reason, or because, like Tam Lin, they contain some purely popular or traditional feature. Certain features are expressly declared to be popular or to be common in ballads; among these are the quibbling oaths and the unbosoming oneself to an oven or stove, in The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward (271);[224] the miraculous harvest in The Carnal and the Crane (55);[225] the childbirth in the wood in Leesome Brand (15) and in Rose the Red and White Lily (103);[226] the presence of three ladies, “that the youngest may be preferred to the others;” the unpardonable “offence given by not asking a brother’s assent to his sister’s marriage” in The Cruel Brother (11);[227] the testament in The Cruel Brother, Lord Randal, Edward, etc.;[228] the riddles in Riddles Wisely Expounded (1), etc.;[229] and certain stanzas in Crow and Pie (111).[230] “Heroic sentiment” is a characteristic of the earlier Robin Hood ballads; in the later it is gone.[231] It may be that in his appreciation of certain other features Professor Child is thinking not merely of their excellence but of their peculiarly popular quality as well. Thus he speaks of “the fine trait of the ringing of the bells without men’s hands, and the reading of the books without man’s tongue,”[232] in Sir Hugh (155); and thinks that “perhaps the original conception [of The Twa Sisters (10)] was the simple and beautiful one which we find in English B and both the Icelandic ballads, that the king’s harper, or the girl’s lover, takes three locks of her yellow hair to string his harp with.”[233]
The ballad does not always go to ancient tradition, or draw upon the stock of popular themes and motives; occasionally, in more modern times, it tells the story of some actual occurrence; it is based on fact. But the balladist feels himself under no obligation of loyalty to the fact. “A strict accordance with history should not be expected, and indeed would be almost a ground of suspicion [“or a pure@ accident”]. Ballad singers and their hearers would be as@ indifferent to the facts as the readers of ballads are now; it is only editors who feel bound to look closely into such matters.”[234] In Johnie Armstrong (169) “the ballads treat facts with the customary freedom and improve upon them greatly.”[235] Bonny John Seton (198) “is accurate as to the date, not commonly a good sign for such things.”[236] “A ballad taken down some four hundred years after the event will be apt to retain very little of sober history.”[237] Yet, in the case of The Hunting of the Cheviot (162), at least, “the ballad can scarcely be a deliberate fiction. The singer is not a critical historian, but he supposes himself to be dealing with facts; he may be partial to his countrymen, but he has no doubt that he is treating of a real event.”[238] Part of The Earl of Westmoreland (177) “has an historical substratum, though details are incorrect.”[239] In Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas (176) “the ballad-minstrel acquaints us with circumstances concerning the surrender of Northumberland which are not known to any of the historians.”[240] Local tradition would seem to be even less authentic than the ballad; “in such cases” as The Coble o Cargill (242) it “seldom means more than a theory which people have formed to explain a preëxisting ballad.”[241]
We have already seen how a ballad derived from print tends to revert to the popular form; the same tendency is evident in the ballad derived from a romance. Of Gude Wallace (157) “Blind Harry’s Wallace ... is clearly the source.” “But the portions of Blind Harry’s poem out of which these ballads were made were perhaps themselves composed from older ballads, and the restitution of the lyrical form may have given us something not altogether unlike what was sung in the fifteenth, or even the fourteenth, century.”[242] Thomas Rymer (37) is derived from the romance, yet it is “an entirely popular ballad as to style.”[243] These are the only cases where Professor Child admits without question the derivation of a ballad from a romance; in other cases, where ballad and romance tell the same story, he insists that the possibility of the priority of the ballad must be considered. Thus the ballad of Hind Horn (17) has close affinity with the later English romance, but no filiation. “And were filiation to be accepted, there would remain the question of priority. It is often assumed, without a misgiving, that oral tradition must needs be younger than anything that was committed to writing some centuries ago; but this requires in each case to be made out; there is certainly no antecedent probability of that kind.”[244] Fair Annie (62) is not derived from the lay; they “have a common source, which lies further back, and too far for us to find.”[245] In Gil Brenton (5) “the artifice of substituting waiting-woman for bride has been thought to be derived from the romance of Tristan.... Grundtvig truly remarks that a borrowing by the romance from the popular ballad is as probable a supposition as the converse.”[246] The ballad does sometimes go to the romance for details. Thus, in The Earl of Westmoreland (177) “what follows [stanza 15] is pure fancy work, or rather an imitation of stale old romance.”[247] The Kitchie-Boy (252) is a modern adaptation of King Horn, but, “in the particular of the hero’s having his choice of two women, it is more like the gest of ‘King Horn,’ or ‘Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild;’ but an independent invention of the Spanish lady is not beyond the humble ability of the composer of ‘The Kitchie-Boy.’”[248] In the “worthless and manifestly—at least in part—spurious ballad” of Young Ronald (304), “the nicking with nay and the giant are borrowed from romances.”[249] Though the Gest, finally, “as to all important considerations, is eminently original, absolutely so as to the conception of Robin Hood, some traits and incidents, as might be expected, are taken from what we may call the general stock of mediæval fiction.”[250] Thus “Robin Hood will not dine until he has some guest that can pay handsomely for his entertainment.... This habit of Robin’s seems to be a humorous imitation of King Arthur, who in numerous romances will not dine till some adventure presents itself.”[251]
Not only from ancient tradition, from fact, from romance or the sources of romance may the ballad derive its subject-matter; it may also turn back upon itself, and as late ballads counterfeit or imitate the style of earlier ones, so late ballads go to earlier ones for their subject-matter as well. Thus The Battle of Otterburn (161) “is likely to have been modernized from ... a predecessor.”[252] Part of The King’s Disguise, and Friendship with Robin Hood (151) “is a loose paraphrase, with omissions, of the seventh and eighth fits of the Gest.”[253] The Brown Girl (295) “recalls ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,’ ‘Sweet William’s Ghost,’ ‘Clerk Saunders,’ ‘The Unquiet Grave,’ ‘Bonny Barbara Allen,’ and has something of all of them.... Still it is not deliberately and mechanically patched together (as are some pieces in Part VIII), and in the point of the proud and unrelenting character of the Brown Girl it is original.”[254] “Deliberately and mechanically put together” were the pieces of Part VIII which follow. Auld Matrons (249) “was made by someone who had acquaintance with the first fit of ‘Adam Bell.’ The anonymous ‘old wife’ becomes ‘auld Matrons;’ Inglewood, Ringlewood. The conclusion is in imitation of the rescues in Robin Hood ballads.”[255] Henry Martyn (250) “must have sprung from the ashes of ‘Andrew Barton,’ of which name Henry Martyn would be no extraordinary corruption.”[256] The Kitchie-Boy (252) is “a modern ‘adaptation’ of ‘King Horn’ ... from which A 33, 34, B 47, D 7, 8, are taken outright.”[257] The first half of Willie’s Fatal Visit (255) “is a medley of ‘Sweet William’s Ghost,’ ‘Clerk Saunders,’ and ‘The Grey Cock,’”[258] Of Broughty Wa’s (258), “Stanza 9, as it runs in b, is a reminiscence of ‘Bonny Baby Livingston,’ and 13 recalls ‘Child Waters,’ or ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter.’”[259] A large part of The New-Slain Knight (263) “is imitated or taken outright from very well known ballads.”[260] Like some of these later ballads the Gest of Robyn Hode goes back to earlier ballads for its subject-matter. “The Gest is a popular epic, composed from several ballads by a poet of a thoroughly congenial spirit. No one of the ballads from which it was made up is extant in a separate shape, and some portions of the story may have been of the compiler’s own invention. The decoying of the sheriff into the wood, stanzas 181-204, is of the same derivation as the last part of Robin Hood and the Potter, No 121, Little John and Robin Hood exchanging parts; the conclusion, 451-56, is of the same source as Robin Hood’s Death, No 120.”[261] Some of the Middle-English forms “may be relics of the ballads from which this little epic was made up; or the whole poem may have been put together as early as 1400, or before.”[262] It is noteworthy that the Gest was composed from, not of, several ballads; it was not made up of unchanged ballads, “deliberately and mechanically put together.”
The motives or features characteristic of subject-matter derived from pure popular tradition have already been noted; we may now note those traits which Professor Child declares or implies to be not characteristic of such subject-matter. Extravagance would seem to be one of these: the extravagance of Hughie Grame (191, A, 16) “it is to be hoped is a corruption.”[263] In Mary Hamilton (173) “there are not a few spurious passages. Among these are the extravagance of the queen’s bursting in the door, F 8; the platitude,[264] of menial stamp, that the child, if saved, might have been an honor to the mother, D 10, L 3, O 4.”[265] Exaggeration is another non-traditional trait: “It is but the natural course of exaggeration that the shepherd, having beaten Robin Hood, should beat Little John. This is descending low enough, but we do not see the bottom of this kind of balladry here”[266] [Robin Hood and the Shepherd (165)]. Robin Hood and Queen Katherine (145) is “a very pleasant ballad, with all the exaggeration.”[267] The true ballad is not prosaic: in Fause Foodrage (89) “the ... king kills his successful rival on his wedding-day. According to the prosaic, not at all ballad-like, and evidently corrupted account in A, there is a rebellion of nobles four months after the marriage, and a certain False Foodrage takes it upon himself to kill the king.”[268] The true ballad is not over-refined: in The Braes of Yarrow (214, C, 2) “the brothers have taken offence because their sister was not regarded as his equal by her husband, which is perhaps too much of a refinement for ballads, and may be a perversion.”[269] The true ballad is not cynical: The Twa Corbies sounds “something like a cynical variation of the tender little English ballad,”[270] and it is not printed as a ballad in Professor Child’s collection. The true ballad is not sophisticated: it was the influence of the play, Home’s Douglas, that gave vogue to the ballad, Child Maurice (83), and “the sophisticated copy passed into recitation.”[271] The true ballad is not sentimental: in Mary Hamilton (173), “there are not a few spurious passages,” among them, “the sentimentality of H 3, 16.”[272] Jamieson published Child Waters (63, B a) with “the addition of three sentimental stanzas to make Burd Ellen die just as her enduring all things is to be rewarded.”[273] The true ballad does not append a moral: a German version of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight (4) “smacks decidedly of the bänkelsänger, and has an appropriate moral at the tail.”[274] A certain degree of probability or naturalness is to be expected of the true ballad story: in Jellon Grame (90), “one day, when the boy asks why his mother does not take him home, Jellon Grame (very unnaturally) answers, I slew her, and there she lies: upon which the boy sends an arrow through him.”[275] Finally, the plot of the true ballad is not trite. In Child Owlet (291) “the chain of gold in the first stanza and the penknife below the bed in the fourth have a false ring, and the story is of the tritest. The ballad seems at best to be a late one, and is perhaps mere imitation.”[276]
III.
It is clear that to Professor Child’s mind it was necessary that the ballad should tell a story. “The word ballad in English signifies a narrative song, a short tale in lyric verse.”[277] Thus the English versions of Geordie (209) are said to be mere ‘goodnights,’ whereas “the Scottish ballads have a proper story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and (save one late copy), a good end, and they are most certainly ... independent of the English.”[278] Dugall Quin (294) is a “little ballad, which has barely story enough to be so called.”[279] To the “English ‘ditty’ (not a traditional ballad) ... there is very little story.”[280]
Necessary as the story is, however, it is seldom completely told in the ballad; something is left to the hearers’ imagination. Sometimes the close of the story is omitted: “it is not said (except in the spurious portions of E) that the lady was carried back by her husband, but this may perhaps be inferred from his hanging the gypsies. In D and K we are left uncertain as to her disposition.”[281] Transitions are usually abrupt,—“abrupt even for a ballad” in Willie’s Lady (6) from stanza 33 to stanza 34.[282] Jamieson, in printing The Bonny Birdy (82), introduced several stanzas ‘to fill up chasms.’ “But the chasms, such as they are, are easily leapt by the imagination, and Jamieson’s interpolations are mere bridges of carpenter’s work.”[283] Of Sir Patrick Spens (58), “Percy’s version [A] remains, poetically, the best. It may be a fragment, but the imagination easily supplies all that may be wanting; and if more of the story, or the whole, be told in H, the half is better[284] than the whole.”[285] These abrupt transitions do not, then, result in incoherence, which accompanies corruption and is a sign of degeneracy. Thus The Carnal and the Crane (55) “had obviously been transmitted from mouth to mouth before it was fixed in its present incoherent and corrupted form by print.”[286] Young Bearwell (302) is “one of not a few flimsy and unjointed ballads found in Buchan’s volumes, the like of which is hardly to be found elsewhere.”[287] After an attempt to make the story of The White Fisher (264) hang together, Professor Child concludes: “But we need not trouble ourselves much to make these counterfeits reasonable. Those who utter them rely confidently upon our taking folly and jargon as the marks of genuineness.”[288] Coherence, on the contrary, is a characteristic of the true ballad, an important phase of ballad excellence. “I am persuaded that there was an older and better copy of this ballad [Bewick and Graham (211)] than those which are extant. The story is so well composed, proportion is so well kept, on the whole, that it is reasonable to suppose that certain passages (as stanzas 3, 4, 50) may have suffered some injury.”[289] Introductions, not closely connected with the ballad story, are not characteristic. “The narrator in the Ever Green poem reports at second hand: as he is walking, he meets a man who, upon request, tells him the beginning and the end. Both pieces have nearly the same first line. The borrowing was more probably on the part of the ballad, for a popular ballad would be likely to tell its tale without preliminaries.”[290]