Ballad Book | Page 5

at Shiffnal in Shropshire," had the glorious good luck to hit upon an old folio manuscript of ballads and romances. "I saw it," writes Percy, "lying dirty on the floor under a Bureau in ye Parlour; being used by the Maids to light the fire."
"A scrubby, shabby paper book" it may have been, with some leaves torn half away and others lacking altogether, but it was a genuine ballad manuscript, in handwriting of about the year 1650, and Percy, realizing that the worthy Mr. Pitt was feeding his parlor fire with very precious fuel, begged the tattered volume of his host and bore it proudly home, where with presumptuous pen he revised and embellished and otherwise, all innocently, maltreated the noble old ballads until he deemed, although with grave misgivings, that they would not too violently shock the polite taste of the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century, wearied to death of its own politeness, worn out by the heartless elegance of Pope and the insipid sentimentality of Prior, gave these fresh, simple melodies an unexpected welcome, even in the face of the reigning king of letters, Dr. Johnson, who forbade them to come to court. But good poems are not slain by bad critics, and the old ballads, despite the burly doctor's displeasure, took henceforth a recognized place in English literature. Herd's delightful collection of Scottish songs and ballads, wherein are gathered so many of those magical refrains, the rough ore of Burns' fine gold,--"Green grow the rashes O," "Should auld acquaintance be forgot," "For the sake o' somebody,"--soon followed, and Ritson, while ever slashing away at poor Percy, often for his minstrel theories, more often for his ballad emendations, and most often for his holding back the original folio manuscript from publication, appeared himself as a collector and antiquarian of admirable quality. Meanwhile Walter Scott, still in his schoolboy days, had chanced upon a copy of the Reliques, and had fallen in love with ballads at first sight. All the morning long he lay reading the book beneath a huge platanus-tree in his aunt's garden. "The summer day sped onward so fast," he says, "that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was found still entranced in my intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my school-fellows and all who would hearken to me, with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shillings together, which were not common occurrences with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes, nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm."
The later fruits of that schoolboy passion were garnered in Scott's original ballads, metrical romances, and no less romantic novels, all so picturesque with feudal lights and shadows, so pure with chivalric sentiment; but an earlier result was _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,_ a collection of folk-songs gleaned in vacation excursions from pipers and shepherds and old peasant women of the border districts, and containing, with other ballads, full forty-three previously unknown to print, among them some of our very best. Other poet collectors--Motherwell and Aytoun--followed where Scott had led, Scott having been himself preceded by Allan Ramsay, who so early as 1724 had included several old ballads, freely retouched, in his Evergreen and Tea-Table Miscellany. Nor were there lacking others, poets in ear and heart if not in pen, who went up and down the country-side, seeking to gather into books the old heroic lays that were already on the point of perishing from the memories of the people. Meanwhile Ritson's shrill cry for the publication of the original Percy manuscript was taken up in varying keys again and again, until in our own generation the echoes on our own side of the water grew so persistent that with no small difficulty the?much-desired end was actually attained. The owners of the folio having been brought to yield their slow consent, our richest treasure of Old English song, for so perilously long a period exposed to all the hazards that beset a single manuscript, is safe in print at last and open to the inspection of us all. The late Professor Child of Harvard, our first American authority on ballad-lore, and Dr. Furnivall of London, would each yield the other the honor of this achievement for which no ballad-lover can speak too many thanks.
A list of our principal ballad collections may be found of practical convenience, as well as of literary interest. Passing by the Miscellanies, Percy, as becomes one of the gallant lineage to which he set up a somewhat doubtful claim, leads the van.
Percy's Reliques of Ancient