Ballads of Romance and Chivalry | Page 6

'halfpenny chroniclers' were William Elderton, of whom Camden records that he 'did arm himself with ale (as old father Ennius did with wine) when he ballated,' and thereby obtained a red nose almost as celebrated as his verses; Thomas Deloney, 'the ballating silkweaver of Norwich'; and Richard Johnson, maker of Garlands. Thus to Milton, to Addison, and even to Johnson, 'ballad' essentially implies singing; but from about the middle of the eighteenth century the modern interpretation of the word began to come into general use.
[Footnote 1: For the subject of the origin of the ballad and its refrain in the _ballatio_ of the dancing-ring, see _The Beginnings of Poetry_, by Professor Francis B. Gummere, especially chap. v. The beginning of the whole subject is to be found in the universal and innate practices of accompanying manual or bodily labour by a rhythmic chant or song, and of festal song and dance.]
In 1783, in one of his letters, the poet Cowper says: 'The ballad is a species of poetry, I believe, peculiar to this country.... Simplicity and ease are its proper characteristics.' Here we have one of the earliest attempts to define the modern meaning of a 'ballad.' Centuries of use and misuse of the word have left us no unequivocal name for the ballad, and we are forced to qualify it with epithets. 'Traditional' might be deemed sufficient; but 'popular' or 'communal' is more definite. Here we adopt the word used by Professor Child--'popular.'
What, then, do we intend to signify by the expression 'popular ballads'? Far the most important point is to maintain an antithesis between the poetry of the people and the consciously artistic poetry of the schools. Wilhelm Grimm, the less didactic of the two famous brothers, said that the ballad says nothing unnecessary or unreal, and despises external adornment. Ferdinand Wolf, the great critic of the Homeric question, said the ballad must be na?ve, objective, not sentimental, lively and erratic in its narrative, without ornamentation, yet with much picturesque vigour.
It is even more necessary to define sharply the line between poetry _of_ the people and poetry _for_ the people.[2] The latter may still be written; the making of the former is a lost art. Poetry of the people is either lyric or narrative. This difference is roughly that between song and ballad. 'With us,' says Ritson, 'songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly termed songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions which we now denominate Ballads.' This definition, of course, is essentially modern; we must still insist on the fact that genuine ballads were sung: 'I sing Musgrove,'[3] says Sir Thwack in Davenant's _The Wits_, 'and for the Chevy Chase no lark comes near me.' Lastly, we must emphasise that the accompaniment is predominated by the air to which the words are sung. I have heard the modern comic song described as 'the kind in which you hear the words,' thus differentiating it from the drawing-room song, in which the words are (happily) as a rule less audible than the melody. In the ballad, as sung, the words are most important; but it is of vital importance to remember that the ballads were chanted.
[Footnote 2: See the first essay, 'What is "Popular Poetry"?' in _Ideas of Good and Evil_, by W. B. Yeats (1903), where this distinction is not recognised.]
[Footnote 3: _Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard_ (see p. 19, etc.).]
+II. Poetry of the People.+
Now what is this 'poetry of the people'? One theory is as follows. Every nation or people in the natural course of its development reaches a stage at which it consists of a homogeneous, compact community, with its sentiments undivided by class-distinctions, so that the whole active body forms what is practically an individual. Begging the question, that poetry can be produced by such a body, this poetry is naturally of a concrete and narrative character, and is previous to the poetry of art. 'Therefore,' says Professor Child, 'while each ballad will be idiosyncratic, it will not be an expression of the personality of individuals, but of a collective sympathy; and the fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of subjectivity and self-consciousness. Though they do not "write themselves," as Wilhelm Grimm has said--though a man and not a people has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous.'
By stating this, the dictum of one of the latest and most erudite of ballad-scholars, so early in our argument, we anticipate a century or more of criticism and counter-criticism, during which the giants of literature ranged themselves in two parties, and instituted a battle-royal which even now is not quite finished. It will be most convenient if we denominate the one