The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
often with padding of his own
to please his
own taste :
exactly as the Elizabethan poet represents
Apelles to have used living models in limning
Aphrodite. In each case the artist or editor was
substituting cold art for warm life. Child knew
that the only scientific method of treating a
ballad was to present every available text that
showed any indication of genuine
"
popularity,"
and he preferred to err, if at all, on the side of
inclusion rather than on the side of exclusion.
Lesser scholars than Child might have done so
much ;
but it required a patient genius such as
his to arrange and annotate them fully.
Of the
305 ballads which finally passed his scrupulous
examination and were enrolled on the list of
English and Scottish Popular Ballads, very few
are the private property of this country. The
vast majority have relations amongst the balladry
of Europe, and many amongst the lore of the
other side of the world. All these parallels,
and
every scrap of relevant information, had to be
considered, weighed, tested and appropriately
utilised. For example, the ballad of Lady Isabel
and the Elf-Knight, also known as May Cohen,
has counterparts in nearly every country of
Europe, not to mention a possible kinship with
the Hebrew story of Judith and Holo femes and
in some countries, e.g. Germany, subdivides itself
into three distinct types. Despite his astonishing
powers of grasping a mass of details and pre-
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