A Collection of Ballads | Page 2

The poorer, less
regular brethren of the art, harped and played conjuring tricks, in farm
and grange, or at street corners. The foreign newer metres took the
place of the old alliterative English verse. But unprofessional men and
women did not cease to make and sing.
Some writers have decided, among them Mr. Courthope, that our
traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary poetry.
The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the same as those
of some literary mediaeval romances. But these plots and situations, in
Epic and Romance, are themselves the final literary form of marchen,
myths and inventions originally POPULAR, and still, in certain cases,
extant in popular form among races which have not yet evolved, or
borrowed, the ampler and more polished and complex genres of
literature. Thus, when a literary romance and a ballad have the same
theme, the ballad may be a popular degradation of the romance; or, it
may be the original popular shape of it, still surviving in tradition. A
well-known case in prose, is that of the French fairy tales.
Perrault, in 1697, borrowed these from tradition and gave them literary
and courtly shape. But Cendrillon or Chaperon Rouge in the mouth of a
French peasant, is apt to be the old traditional version, uncontaminated
by the refinements of Perrault, despite Perrault's immense success and
circulation. Thus tradition preserves pre-literary forms, even though, on
occasion, it may borrow from literature. Peasant poets have been
authors of ballads, without being, for all that, professional minstrels.
Many such poems survive in our ballad literature.
The material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical. The
former class is based on one of the primeval invented
situations, one
of the elements of the Marchen in prose. Such tales or myths occur in
the stories of savages, in the legends of peasants, are interwoven later
with the plot in Epic or Romance, and may also inspire ballads. Popular
superstitions, the witch, metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy,
all of them
survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part.
The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding fact,
murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived from popular

rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted, sometimes out of all
knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on Darnley's murder and the
youth of James VI.
In the romantic class, we may take Tamlane. Here the idea of fairies
stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal young men as
lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by clinging to them
through all transformations. A classical example is the seizure of Thetis
by Peleus, and Child quotes a modern Cretan example. The dipping in
milk and water, I may add, has precedent in ancient Egypt (in The Two
Brothers), and in modern Senegambia. The fairy tax, tithe, or teind,
paid to Hell, is illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. {1}
Now, in literary forms and romance, as in Ogier le Danois, persons are
carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the literary romance
borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need to borrow a
familiar fact from literary romance. On the whole subject the curious
may consult "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies,"
by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, himself, according to
tradition, a victim of the fairies.
Thus, in Tamlane, the whole donnee is popular. But the current version,
that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by
incongruous
modernisms. Burns's version, from tradition, already localizes the
events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow. But Burns's
version does not make the Earl of Murray father of the hero, nor the
Earl of March father of the heroine. Roxburgh is the hero's father in
Burns's variant, which is more plausible, and the modern verses do not
occur. This ballad apparently owes nothing to literary romance.
In Mary Hamilton we have a notable instance of the Historical Ballad.
No Marie of Mary Stuart's suffered death for child murder.
She had no Marie Hamilton, no Marie Carmichael among her four
Maries, though a lady of the latter name was at her court. But early in
the reign a Frenchwoman of the queen's was hanged, with her paramour,
an apothecary, for slaying her infant. Knox mentions the fact, which is
also recorded in letters from the English ambassador, uncited by Mr.

Child. Knox adds that there were ballads against the Maries. Now, in
March 1719, a Mary Hamilton, of Scots descent, a maid of honour of
Catherine of Russia, was hanged for child murder (Child, vi. 383). It
has therefore been supposed, first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long
ago, later by Professor Child, and then by Mr. Courthope, that our
ballad is of 1719, or