A Bundle of Ballads | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1891 George Routledge & Sons
edition by Les Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.
A BUNDLE OF BALLADS - EDITED BY HENRY MORLEY.
by Henry Morley
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CHEVY CHASE
CHEVY CHASE (the later
version)
THE NUT-BROWN MAID
ADAM BELL, CLYM OF
THE CLOUGH, AND WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLIE

BINNORIE
KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID

TAKE THY OLD CLOAK ABOUT THEE
WILLOW,
WILLOW, WILLOW
THE LITTLE WEE MAN
THE
SPANISH LADY'S LOVE
EDWARD, EDWARD
ROBIN
HOOD
KING EDWARD IV. AND THE TANNER OF
TAMWORTH
SIR PATRICK SPENS
EDOM O' GORDON

THE CHILDREN IN THE WOOD
THE BEGGAR'S
DAUGHTER OF BETHNAL GREEN
THE BAILIFF'S
DAUGHTER OF ISLINGTON
BARBARA ALLEN'S
CRUELTY
SWEET WILLIAM'S GHOST
THE BRAES O'
YARROW
KEMP OWYNE
O'ER THE WATER TO
CHARLIE
ADMIRAL HOSIER'S GHOST
JEMMY
DAWSON
WILLIAM AND MARGARET
ELFINLAND
WOOD
CASABIANCA
AULD ROBIN GRAY
GLOSSARY
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR.
Recitation with dramatic energy by men whose business it was to travel
from one great house to another and delight the people by the way, was
usual among us from the first. The scop invented and the glee-man
recited heroic legends and other tales to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers.
These were followed by the minstrels and other tellers of tales written
for the people. They frequented fairs and merrymakings, spreading the
knowledge not only of tales in prose or ballad form, but of appeals also

to public sympathy from social reformers.
As late as the year 1822, Allan Cunningham, in publishing a collection
of "Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry," spoke
from his own recollection of itinerant story-tellers who were welcomed
in the houses of the peasantry and earned a living by their craft.
The earliest story-telling was in recitative. When the old alliteration
passed on into rhyme, and the crowd or rustic fiddle took the place of
the old "gleebeam" for accentuation of the measure and the meaning of
the song, we come to the ballad-singer as Philip Sidney knew him.
Sidney said, in his "Defence of Poesy," that he never heard the old song
of Percy and Douglas, that he found not his heart moved more than
with a trumpet; and yet, he said, "it is sung but by some blind crowder,
with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in
the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in
the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" Many an old ballad, instinct with
natural feeling, has been more or less corrupted, by bad ear or memory,
among the people upon whose lips it has lived. It is to be considered,
however, that the old broader pronunciation of some letters developed
some syllables and the swiftness of speech slurred over others, which
will account for many an apparent halt in the music of what was
actually, on the lips of the ballad-singer, a good metrical line.
"Chevy Chase" is, most likely, a corruption of the French word
chevauchee, which meant a dash over the border for destruction and
plunder within the English pale. Chevauchee was the French equivalent
to the Scottish border raid. Close relations between France and
Scotland arose out of their common interest in checking movements