Ballad Book | Page 2

of arts had its origin, as far back as the days of savagery, in
the ideal element of life rather than the utilitarian. There came a time,
undoubtedly, when the mnemonic value of verse was recognized in the
transmission of laws and records and the hard-won wealth of
experience. Our own Anglo-Saxon ancestors, whose rhyme, it will be
remembered, was initial rhyme, or alliteration, have bequeathed to our
modern speech many such devices for "the knitting up of the memory,"
largely legal or popular phrases, as bed and board, to have and to hold_,
_to give and to grant_, _time and tide_, wind and wave_, gold and
gear_; or proverbs, as, for example: When bale is highest, boon is
nighest_, better known to the present age under the still alliterative
form: The darkest hour's before the dawn. But if we may trust the signs

of poetic evolution in barbarous tribes to-day, if we may draw
inferences from the sacred character attached to the Muses in the myths
of all races, with the old Norsemen, for instance, Sagâ being the
daughter of Odin, we may rest a reasonable confidence upon the theory
that poetry, the world over, finds its first utterance at the bidding of the
religious instinct and in connection with religious rites.
Yet the wild-eyed warriors, keeping time by a rude triumphal chant to
the dance about the watch-fire, were mentally as children, with keen
senses and eager imagination, but feeble reason, with fresh and
vigorous emotions, but without elaborate language for these emotions.
Swaying and shouting in rhythmic consent, they came slowly to the use
of ordered words and, even then, could but have repeated the same
phrases over and over. The burden--sometimes senseless to our modern
understanding--to be found in the present form of many of our ballads
may be the survival of a survival from those primitive iterations. The
"Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw" of The Elfin Knight is not, in this
instance, inappropriate to the theme, yet we can almost hear shrilling
through it a far cry from days when men called directly upon the
powers of nature. Such refrains as "Binnorie, O Binnorie," "Jennifer
gentle an' rosemaree," "Down, a down, a down, a down," have ancient
secrets in them, had we ears to hear.
One of the vexed questions of criticism regarding these refrains is
whether they were rendered in alternation with the narrative verses or
as a continuous under-song. Early observers of Indian dances have
noted that, while one leaping savage after another improvised a simple
strain or two, the whole dancing company kept up a guttural cadence of
"Heh, heh, heh!" or "Aw, aw, aw!" which served the office of musical
accompaniment. This choral iteration of rhythmic syllables, still hinted
in the refrain, but only hinted, is believed to be the original element of
poetry.
In course of time, however, was evolved the individual singer. In the
earlier stages of society, song was undoubtedly a common gift, and
every normal member of the community bore his part in the recital of
the heroic deeds that ordinarily formed the subject of these primeval

lays. Were it the praise of a god, of a feasting champion, or of a slain
comrade, the natural utterance was narrative. Later on, the more fluent
and inventive improvisers came to the front, and finally the
professional bard appeared. Somewhere in the process, too, the burden
may have shifted its part from under-song to alternating chorus, thus
allowing the soloist opportunity for rest and recollection.
English ballads, as we have them in print to-day, took form in a far
later and more sophisticated period than those just suggested; yet even
thus our ballads stand nearest of anything in our literature to the
primitive poetry that was born out of the social life of the community
rather than made by the solitary thought of the artist. Even so
comparatively small a group as that comprehended within this volume
shows how truly the ballad is the parent stock of all other poetic
varieties. In the ballad of plain narrative, as _The Hunting of the
Cheviot,_ the epic is hinted. We go a step further in _A Lytell Geste of
Robyn Hode,_--too long for insertion in this collection, but peculiarly
interesting from the antiquarian point of view, having been printed, in
part, as early as 1489,--and find at least a rough foundation for a
genuine hero-lay, the Lytell Geste being made up of a number of
ballads rudely woven into one. A poem like this, though hardly "an epic
in miniature,"--a phrase which has been proposed as the definition of a
ballad,--is truly an epic in germ, lacking the finish of a miniature, but
holding the promise of a seed. Where the narrative is highly colored by
emotion, as in Helen of Kirconnell or