Ballad Book | Page 5

latter half of that century, however, occurred the great event in
the history of our ballad literature. A country clergyman of a literary
turn of mind, resident in the north of England, being on a visit to his
"worthy friend, Humphrey Pitt, Esq., then living 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.