The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
villagers produce their traditional ballads. In
the last ten years Mr. Cecil Sharp, the Folk-Song
Society,
and aiders and
and their gramophones
abettors, have scoured our counties one by one ;
and from the cottage by day and the taproom by
night, from gleaners at noon and gypsies round
the evening fire, they have gathered hundreds of
songs. The first thing that strikes any collector
who takes up
this work is the reluctance of the
folk to impart their lore in cold blood the
;
second thing
is the way in which, under pressure,
they " work themselves up," and after delays,
grumblings, and false starts begin to sing. I have
sat through an afternoon in a rural workhouse
waiting for an old man to sing first he could
;
not, then he would not next he cleared his
;
throat and mumbled a snatch or two ;
shook his
head, harked back, stumbled, and at length, with
shaking head, gleaming eye, and tapping foot (an
instinctive
memory of the dance), burst out and
could hardly be stopped. A disused machine ;
it only needs a little coaxing, and perhaps a little
oil.
The worst enemy of the theory of collective or
communal composition is, naturally enough, the
rival composer the individual literary or literate
man. When the theory was first launched, little
more than a century ago, it was generally received
with laughter, the echoes of which have
not yet died away. Even to-day the trained
24