The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
duce even to-day a modern equivalent of a ballad
"
popular poetry
" or, at the worst, popular
verse. For traditional poetry (albeit individual
in origin) is no less current among men to-day
than are nursery rhymes amongst babes. Topical
parodies are quoted on the Stock Exchange.
University common-rooms circulate the rhymed
epigram of the day before "
yesterday. Limericks
" of a witty nature are repeated, with
variations, in drawing-rooms ; others, of another
nature, in smoking-rooms. Any observant person,
moving in any of the above circles, must
have known occasions when somebody has told
him with open laughter or behind the hand
a verse which he has previously heard in a
different
form.
We may go so far as to drag in a literary origin
to prove the point. Why are certain misquotations
so universal
Why does nearly everyone
except those whom nearly everyone else calls
pedants and " purists say To-morrow to fresh
fields and pastures new " The scientific investigator
will at once suspect in the popular
taste a natural tendency towards alliteration and
a natural disregard for redundancy. Professor
Gummere x has brought to light an excellent
modern instance of popular corruption of literature
that may be called contemporary. A correspondent
of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, of
1
The Topular Ballad, 63.
18