Take you example by this thing,
And yield to each his right,
Lest God with such like miserye
Your wicked minds requite (vv. 153 ff.).
The Blind Beggar’s Daughter of Bednall’s Green is said to be printed from a modern broadside, yet it is characterized as “this favorite popular ballad.”[360] The Nutbrowne Maid is “this matchless poem,” “this beautiful old ballad.”[361] Yet, clearly, it is not a popular ballad at all.
On the whole, it is not difficult to see why the 115 ballads are excluded from the later collection; and one gets the impression that, had Professor Child chosen to enforce the conception of the ballad which he already had in mind, most of them would have been excluded from the earlier collection as well. This impression is deepened by an examination of the comments scattered through the Ballads.
He already regarded the ballad as inimitable:[362] “The exclusion of the ‘Imitations’ ... may possibly excite the regret of a few.... Whatever may be the merit of the productions in question, they are never less likely to obtain credit for it, than when they are brought into comparison with their professed models.”[363] Again, Sir Patrick Spence, “if not ancient, has been always accepted as such by the most skilful judges, and is a solitary instance of a successful imitation, in manner and spirit, of the best specimens of authentic minstrelsy.”[364]
Professor Child had already fallen foul of the editors, and their alterations and interpolations.[365] It is interesting to see how, in many cases, he anticipated the corrections and comments made possible, for the later collection, by access to the manuscripts. Of The Child of Elle he says: “So extensive are Percy’s alterations and additions, that the reader will have no slight difficulty in detecting the few traces that are left of the genuine composition.”[366] Compare: “So much of Percy’s ‘Child of Elle’ as was genuine, which, upon the printing of his manuscript, turned out to be one fifth.”[367] Again, Percy acknowledges interpolations, which “might with some confidence be pointed out. Among them are certainly most, if not all, of the last twelve stanzas of the Second Part, which include the catastrophe to the story.”[368] In Percy, he says in the later collection, Sir Cawline “is extended to nearly twice the amount of what is found in the manuscript, and a tragical turn is forced upon the story.”[369] Again: “We have given Gil Morrice as it stands in the Reliques (iii. 132,) degrading to the margin those stanzas which are undoubtedly spurious.”[370] The stanzas thus degraded turned out to be actually spurious.[371] Condemnation of Buchan is scattered throughout the Ballads. Thus: “Some resolution has been exercised, and much disgust suppressed, in retaining certain pieces from Buchan’s collections, so strong is the suspicion that, after having been procured from very inferior sources, they were tampered with by the editor.”[372] Again: “One uncommonly tasteless stanza [41, A, 53], the interpolation of some nursery-maid,[373] is here omitted. Too many of Buchan’s ballads have suffered in this way, and have become both prolix and vulgar.”[374] Even in the Ballads Professor Child placed “no confidence in any of Allan Cunningham’s souvenirs of Scottish song,”[375] and his early suspicions[376] of the character of Cunningham’s version of Gil Brenton are confirmed in the later collection.[377] King Henry, printed in the earlier collection “without the editor’s [Jamieson’s] interpolations,”[378] appears in the same form in the later, except that stanza 14 is printed in small type, as not being in the Jamieson-Brown MS. Again, in The Bonny Birdy, “the lines supplied by Jamieson have been omitted.”[379] There is an interesting comment on these lines in the later collection.[380]
Professor Child was already aware that change of nationality was accompanied by change of the scene of action.[381] He quoted Scott’s account of the locality of The Douglas Tragedy [==Earl Brand (7, B)], and added: “After so circumstantial a description of the scene, ... the reader may be amused to see the same story told in various Scandinavian ballads, with a no less plausible resemblance to actual history. This, as has already been pointed out under Guy of Warwick and Kempion,[382] is an ordinary occurrence in the transmission of legends.”[383]
He noted, too, the tendency of ballads to combine: “The natural desire of men to hear more of characters in whom they have become strongly interested, has frequently stimulated the attempt to continue successful fictions.”[384] Sweet William’s Ghost is often made the sequel to other ballads.[385]