Book of Old English Ballads | Page 4

its prejudices, its passions, its aspirations, and its soul." In
these words, at once comprehensive and vague, after the manner of
Herder, we find ourselves face to face with that conception not only of
popular song in all its forms, but with literature as a whole, which has
revolutionized literary study in this century, and revitalized it as well.

For Herder was a man of prophetic instinct; he sometimes felt more
clearly than he saw; he divined where he could not reach results by
analysis. He was often vague, fragmentary, and inconclusive, like all
men of his type; but he had a genius for getting at the heart of things.
His statements often need qualification, but he is almost always on the
tight track. When he says that the great traditions, in which both the
memory and the imagination of a race were engaged, and which were
still living in the mouths of the people, "of themselves took on poetic
form," he is using language which is too general to convey a definite
impression of method, but he is probably suggesting the deepest truth
with regard to these popular stories. They actually were of community
origin; they actually were common property; they were given a great
variety of forms by a great number of persons; the forms which have
come down to us are very likely the survivors of a kind of in formal
competition, which went on for years at the fireside and at the festivals
of a whole country side.
Barger, whose "Lenore" is one of the most widely known of modern
ballads, held the same view of the origin of popular song, and was even
more definite in his confession of faith than Herder. He declared in the
most uncompromising terms that all real poetry must have a popular
origin; "can be and must be of the people, for that is the seal of its
perfection." And he comments on the delight with which he has
listened, in village street and home, to unwritten songs; the poetry
which finds its way in quiet rivulets to the remotest peasant home. In
like manner, Helene Vacaresco overheard the songs of the Roumanian
people; hiding in the maize to catch the reaping songs; listening at
spinning parties, at festivals, at deathbeds, at taverns; taking the songs
down from the lips of peasant
women, fortune-tellers, gypsies, and all
manner of humble folk who were the custodians of this vagrant
community verse. We have passed so entirely out of the song-making
period, and literature has become to us so exclusively the work of a
professional class, that we find it difficult to imagine the intellectual
and social conditions which fostered improvisation on a great scale,
and trained the ear of great populations to the music of spoken poetry.
It is almost impossible for us to disassociate literature from writing.
There is still, however, a considerable volume of unwritten literature in

the world in the form of stories, songs, proverbs, and pithy phrases; a
literature handed down in large part from earlier times, but still
receiving additions from contemporary men and women.
This unwritten literature is to be found, it is hardly necessary to say,
almost exclusively among country people remote from towns, and
whose mental attitude and community feeling reproduce, in a way, the
conditions under which the English and Scotch ballads were originally
composed. The Roumanian peasants sing their songs upon every
occasion of domestic or local interest; and sowing and harvesting, birth,
christening, marriage, the burial, these notable events in the life of the
country side are all celebrated by unknown poets; or, rather, by
improvisers who give definite form to sentiments, phrases, and words
which are on many lips. The Russian peasant tells his stories as they
were told to him; those heroic epics whose life is believed, in some
cases, to date back at least a thousand years. These great popular stories
form a kind of sacred
inheritance bequeathed by one generation to
another as a possession of the memory, and are almost entirely
unrelated to the written literature of the country. Miss Hapgood tells a
very interesting story of a government official, stationed on the western
shore of Lake Onega, who became so absorbed in the search for this

literature of the people that he followed singers and reciters from place
to place, eager to learn from their lips the most widely known of these
folk tales. On such an expedition of discovery he found himself, one
stormy night, on an island in the lake. The hut of refuge was already
full of stormbound peasants when he entered. Having made himself
some tea, and spread his blanket in a vacant place, he fell asleep. He
was presently awakened by a murmur of recurring sounds. Sitting up,
he found the group of peasants