And a’ men bound to bed;
or,
O whan he came to broken briggs
He bent his bow and swam,
An whan he came to the green grass growin
He slackd his shoone and ran.[317]
Another convention is the complete repetition of the message by the messenger. Thus in Fair Mary of Wallington (91, A) “the stanza which should convey ... part of the message is wanting, but may be confidently supplied from the errand-boy’s repetition.”[318] Another form of repetition occurs in the narration of similar incidents by different ballads. “There is a general resemblance between the rescue of Robin Hood in stanzas 61-81 and that of William of Cloudesly in Adam Bell, 56-94, and the precaution suggested by Much in the eighth stanza corresponds to the warning given by Adam in the eighth stanza of the other ballad. There is a verbal agreement in stanzas 71 of the first and 66 of the second. Such agreements or repetitions are numerous in the Robin Hood ballads, and in other traditional ballads, where similar situations occur.”[319]
In the course of degeneration, ballads retain, but distort, the commonplace. Thus in Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret (261) “B 143, 4 is a commonplace, which, in inferior traditional ballads, is often, as here, an out-of-place. B 15, 16 is another commonplace, of the silly sort.”[320] “Hacknied commonplaces” occur in Auld Matrons (249), stanzas 2-5;[321] “frippery commonplaces,” in The White Fisher (264), stanzas 2, 7, 8, 12.[322]
Turning now to the emotional qualities of ballad style, we find that the ghost ballad, in spite (or perhaps because) of the absence of special treatment noted above, is, at its best, “impressive.” The scene at the grave in Sweet William’s Ghost (77 C 11-13) “may be judged grotesque, but is not trivial or unimpressive. These verses may be supposed not to have belonged to the earliest form of the ballad, and one does not miss them from A, but they cannot be an accretion of modern date.”[323] In The Wife of Usher’s Well (79) “there is no indication that the sons come back to forbid obstinate grief, as the dead often do. But supplying a motive would add nothing to the impressiveness of these verses. Nothing that we have is more profoundly affecting.”[324] The Suffolk Miracle (272) is to be contrasted with the continental versions, “one of the most remarkable tales and one of the most impressive and beautiful ballads of the European continent.”[325] Bewick and Graham (211), in spite of certain defects, “is a fine-spirited ballad as it stands, and very infectious.”[326] Walter Lesly (296) is “a late, but life-like and spirited ballad.”[327] The Wee Wee Man (38) is an “extremely airy and sparkling little ballad.”[328] Andrew Lammie (233) “is a homely ditty, but the gentleness and fidelity of Annie under the brutal behavior of her family are genuinely pathetic, and justify the remarkable popularity which the ballad has enjoyed in the north of Scotland.”[329] Contrasted with the cynical Twa Corbies of Scott’s Minstrelsy is The Three Ravens (26), a “tender little English ballad.”[330] In the Gest: “Nothing was ever more felicitously told, even in the best dit or fabliau, than the ‘process’ of Our Lady’s repaying the money which had been lent on her security. Robin’s slyly significant welcome to the monk upon learning that he is of Saint Mary Abbey, his professed anxiety that Our Lady is wroth with him because she has not sent him his pay, John’s comfortable suggestion that perhaps the monk has brought it, Robin’s incidental explanation of the little business in which the Virgin was a party, and request to see the silver in case the monk has come upon her affair, are beautiful touches of humor, and so delicate that it is all but brutal to point them out.”[331] The tales which are cited as parallels to Queen Eleanor’s Confession (156) all “have the cynical Oriental character, and, to a healthy taste, are far surpassed by the innocuous humor of the English ballad.”[332] While we need not question the substantial genuineness of Fause Foodrage (89), “we must admit that the form in which we have received it is an enfeebled one, without much flavor or color.”[333] The Suffolk Miracle (272) preserves the story only in a “blurred, enfeebled, and disfigured shape.”[334] Version B of the Cheviot (162) is “very seriously enfeebled.”[335]
The lyrical quality,—the fact that the ballad was made to be sung,—must not be lost sight of. “Fair Annie’s fortunes have not only been charmingly sung, as here [in the ballad of Fair Annie (62)]; they have also been exquisitely told in a favorite lay of Marie de France.”[336] The superior lyrical quality of The Bonny Birdy (82) “makes up for its inferiority [to Little Musgrave (81)] as a story, so that on the whole it cannot be prized much lower than the noble English ballad.”[337] Thus lyrical quality is to be regarded as no less significant than plot as a trait of the true ballad. The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice (40), “after the nature of the best popular ballad, forces you to chant and will not be read.”[338] Even The Jolly Pindar of Wakefield, (124) “is thoroughly lyrical, ... and was pretty well sung to pieces before it ever was printed.”[339] “It is not ... always easy to say whether an isolated stanza belonged to a ballad or a song;”[340] and Professor Child speaks even of the whole of Bessy Bell and Mary Gray (201) as “this little ballad, or song.”[341] Of Lord Lovel (75) he says: “It can scarcely be too often repeated that such ballads as this were meant only to be sung, not at all to be recited.... ‘Lord Lovel’ is especially one of those which, for their due effect, require the support of a melody, and almost equally the comment of a burden. No burden is preserved in the case of ‘Lord Lovel,’ but we are not to infer that there never was one. The burden, which is at least as important as the instrumental accompaniment of modern songs, sometimes, in these little tragedies, foreshadows calamity from the outset, sometimes ... is a cheerful-sounding formula, which in the upshot enhances by contrast the gloom of the conclusion. ‘A simple but life-like story, supported by the burden and the air, these are the means by which such old romances seek to produce an impression.’”[342] The Elfin Knight (2 A) “is the only example, so far as I remember, which our ballads afford of a burden of this kind, one that is of greater extent than the stanza with which it was sung, though this kind of burden seems to have been common enough with old songs and carols.”[343]