The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
with the best scholars in the balladry of our
tongue. England produced Bishop Percy and
Scotland Sir Walter Scott, it is true ; yet we
were too slow or too stupid to carry out the real
work ourselves, and the great scholar in English
and Scottish ballads was Francis James Child of
Harvard (1825-1896). He died before his great
work was completed ; but, in addition to having
laid down the right lines for the study of the
ballads, he had inspired and educated a school of
specialists, of whom two in particular have developed
the science according to his rules, and
summarised and analysed his results. The general
introduction or survey which Child did not live
to write may be found in the work of his pupils,
Professor Kittredge and Professor Gummere. 1
A short consideration of the task which faced
Child when he first turned his attention to
balladry 2 will assist us to a view of what I have
ventured above to call the " "
literary history of
our ballads. There were in existence numerous
collections of popular ballads such as Percy's
1
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited by Francis
James Child, five volumes is (Boston, 1882-98), the fountainhead
of information on the 305 ballads included therein. The
one-volume edition issued in 1905 omits five ballads and all the
apparatus criticus, and greatly abbreviates the introduction to each
ballad, but contains a very valuable introductory essay by
G. L. Kittredge. Another excellent is study F. B. Gummere's
The Popular Ballad (1907), which should entice its readers to the
same author's The Beginnings of Poetry.
-
Child had issued a collection in eight volumes in 1857-59.
36