The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
spurious ;
and to track patiently a thousand
will-o'-the-wisps till they vanished into nothing.
He had to make the best he could of several centuries
of disregard and contempt, to face without
dismay or regret conclusive evidence of loss and
damage due to that neglect, and to be content
with the very rare satisfaction of some compensating
accident that had casually preserved precious
material for his study.
The Rosetta Stone of English balladry
is
Percy's Folio manuscript. Somewhere about
1650 an unknown benefactor took it into his head
to compile a commonplace book. It was the
fashion of the time to do so ;
but it was not the
fashion of the time to record long, trivial narratives
about Robin Hood and Gawayne and other
mythical heroes. A hundred years later the book
was found by Percy in the house of his friend
Humphrey Pitt at Shifnal, in Shropshire, "lying
dirty on the floor under a bureau in the "
parlour
and Mr. Pitt's housemaids were lighting his
fires every morning with half-pages torn out
from unique ballads of Robin Hood and others.
Half-pages they did not :
destroy the evidence
entirely, but left enough to tantalise us, to exasperate
us with the realisation of the value of
what was lost for ever. Percy was only a young
man when he found it, and we must credit him
with the merit of preserving
it ; but, as he confessed
later, he had not then learn'd to
" rever-
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