IV.
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of 1882-1898 has naturally superseded the English and Scottish Ballads of 1857-1859, and Professor Child himself shared the general tendency to underestimate the real value of the earlier collection. It was of course made on a different plan; its limits were not so clearly defined, and it did not attempt to give every version of every known ballad. Many of the sources, moreover, were not yet open. One is, then, surprised to find that, of the three hundred and five ballads printed in the later collection, only ninety are new; and these are, for the most part, unimportant additions to the body of ballad literature. They are distributed as follows: 15 in volume I, 16 in II, 11 in III, 25 in IV, 23 in V. Thus 59 of the 90 occur in the last three volumes; of these there is not one of first importance. Of the remaining 31 not more than 10 can be regarded as really valuable additions, though such an estimate must of necessity be based more or less upon personal impression. Some of these were already accessible, in Buchan’s versions, or elsewhere: Willie’s Lyke-Wake (25), Lizie Wan (51), The King’s Dochter Lady Jean (52), Brown Robyn’s Confession (57), Fair Mary of Wallington(91). These, doubtless, were omitted because of the nature of their subject-matter; it was only in the later collection that Professor Child “had no discretion.”[344] Other important ballads were not yet accessible, or not yet discovered: St. Stephen and Herod (22), The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea (36), The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice (40), The Unquiet Grave (78), The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (113). Of the ten, only four are included in Professor Gummere’s collection. The main addition of the later collection is thus rather in the way of new versions of important ballads, or of more authentic versions based directly upon the manuscripts; in the citation of a larger number of foreign parallels; and, generally, in the matter contained in the introductions.
The Ballads contained 115 pieces which do not appear in the later collection. The nature of such material, since it is excluded from the “complete” English and Scottish Popular Ballads, is significant as throwing some additional light upon Professor Child’s conception. In many cases the reason for exclusion is made clear by Professor Child himself, in comments in the earlier or in the later collection. Of the whole group of lays and romances contained in Book I of the Ballads, he says: “Some of the longer pieces in this book are not of the nature of ballads, and require an apology. They were admitted before the limits of the work had been determined with exactness.”[345] If such pieces as these do not fulfil the lyrical requirement of the true ballad, others cannot fulfil the requirement of plot, and the songs, of the Ballads, like A Lyke Wake Dirge, Fair Helen of Kirconnel, or The Lowlands of Holland[346] find no place in the later collection. The Ballads contains also translations from the Danish, and the original and translation of a modern Greek parallel of the Lenore story; these are naturally not included in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
The later collection is much more chary of the admission of broadsides or sheet-ballads: in many cases they are relegated to introductions or appendices; in many more, omitted. William Guiseman is cited merely, under Brown Robin’s Confession (57), as “a copy, improved by tradition, of the ‘lament’ in ‘William Grismond’s Downfal,’ a broadside of 1650.”[347] The Lament of the Border Widow, which occurs in Book VI of the Ballads, “shows broader traces of the sheet-ballad,” and is quoted in the introduction to No 106 for “those who are interested in such random inventions (as, under pardon, they must be called).”[348] Of The Lady Isabella’s Tragedy Professor Child says in the later collection: “Though perhaps absolutely the silliest ballad that ever was made, and very far from silly sooth, the broadside was traditionally propagated in Scotland without so much change as is usual in such cases.”[349] Even in the Ballads one finds this comment: “The three following pieces [The Spanish Virgin, Lady Isabella’s Tragedy, The Cruel Black] are here inserted merely as specimens of a class of tales, horrible in their incidents but feeble in their execution, of which whole dreary volumes were printed and read about two centuries ago. They were all of them, probably, founded on Italian novels.”[350] Although the Ballads includes Macpherson’s Rant, it is declared “worthy of a hangman’s pen.”[351] A number of tales which employ a highly artificial stanza, such as The Fray of Suport, The Raid of the Reidswire, or The Flemish Insurrection, do not find their way into the later collection.
Traces of the modern editor or author become less common in the later collection. Versions “modernized and completed by Percy” (Book I, Nos. 1 b and 5 b) are excluded. The cynical Twa Corbies appears only in the introduction to The Three Ravens; and Motherwell’s edition, declared already in the Ballads to be a “modernized version,”[352] does not appear at all. Motherwell’s Bonnie George Campbell suffers a like fate, and this, we infer, because “Motherwell made up his ‘Bonnie George Campbell’ from B, C, D.”[353] As, no doubt, not merely modernized but modern, Sir Roland is excluded. “This fragment, Motherwell tells us, was communicated to him by an ingenious friend, who remembered having heard it sung in his youth. He does not vouch for its antiquity, and we have little or no hesitation in pronouncing it a modern composition.”[354] Similarly, Lady Anne “is on the face of it a modern composition, with extensive variations, on the theme of the popular ballad.”[355] It is printed in the appendix to No 20. Earl Richard is “an entirely modern composition, excepting only the twenty lines of Herd’s fragment.”[356] Of Auld Maitland Professor Child says: “Notwithstanding the authority of Scott and Leyden, I am inclined to agree with Mr Aytoun, that this ballad is a modern imitation, or if not that, a comparatively recent composition. It is with reluctance that I make for it the room it requires.”[357] The essential anonymity of the ballad, in Professor Child’s final conception, naturally excludes pieces like Henryson’s Robene and Makyne and The Bludy Serk, which had found their way into the Ballads.[358]
There are but few instances of definite praise, as ballads, of pieces included in the earlier collection and excluded from the later. The Children in the Wood is said to be “perhaps the most popular of all English ballads. Its merit is attested by the favor it has enjoyed with so many generations, and was vindicated to a cold and artificial age by the kindly pen of Addison.”[359] We must not forget, however, that Professor Child was fifty years nearer the kindly pen of Addison. The cold and artificial age, moreover, was also sentimental and moral; and why, with it, this ballad was so popular, a single stanza will show:
You that executors be made,
And overseers eke
Of children that be fatherless,
And infants mild and meek;