Introductory Remarks' ON Popular Poetry, AND ON THE VARIOUS COLLECTIONS OF BALLADS OF BRITAIN, PARTICULARLY THOSE OF SCOTLAND. THE Introduction originally prefixed to "The Min- | various devices, often more ingenious than elegant, strelsy of the Scottish Border," was rather of a historical than a literary nature; and the remarks which follow have been added, to afford the general reader some information upon the character of Ballad Poetry. It would be throwing away words to prove, what all must admit, the general taste and propensity of nations in their early state, to cultivate some species of rude poetry. When the organs and faculties of a primitive race have developed themselves, each for its proper and necessary use, there is a natural tendency to employ them in a more refined and regulated manner for purposes of amusement. The savage, after proving the activity of his limbs in the chase or the battle, trains them to more measured movements, to dance at the festivals of his tribe, or to perform obeisance before the altars of his deity. From the same impulse, he is disposed to refine the ordinary speech which forms the vehicle of social communication betwixt him and his brethren, until, by a more ornate diction, modulated by certain rules of rhythm, cadence, assonance of termination, or recurrence of sound or letter, he obtains a dialect more solemn in expression, to record the laws or exploits of his tribe, or more sweet in sound, in which to plead his own cause to his mistress. that they may establish, if not an absolute claim to originality, at least a visible distinction betwixt themselves and their predecessors. Thus it happens, that early poets almost uniformly display a bold, rude, original cast of genius and expression. They havo walked at free-will, and with unconstrained steps, along the wilds of Parnassus, while their followers move with constrained gestures and forced attitudes, in order to avoid placing their feet where their predecessors have stepped before them. The first bard who compared his hero to a lion, struck a bold and congenial note, though the simile, in a nation of hunters, be a very obvious one; but every subsequent poet who shall use it, must either struggle hard to give his lion, as heralds say, with a difference, or lie under the im. putation of being a servile imitator. It is not probable that, by any researches of modern times, we shall ever reach back to an earlier model of poetry than Homer; but as there lived heroes before Agamemnon, so, unquestionably, poets existed before the immortal Bard who gave the King of kings his fame; and he whom all civilized nations now acknowledge as the Father of Poetry, must have himself looked back to an ancestry of poetical predecessors, and is only held original because we know not from whom he copied. Indeed, though much must be as This primeval poetry must have one general cha-cribed to the riches of his own individual genius, the racter in all nations, both as to its merits and its imperfections. The earlier poets have the advantage, and it is not a small one, of having the first choice out of the stock of materials which are proper to the art; and thus they compel later authors, if they would avoid slavishly imitating the fathers of verse, into poetry of Homer argues a degree of perfection in an art which practice had already rendered regular, and concerning which, his frequent mention of the bards, or chanters of poetry, indicates plainly that it was studied by many, and known and admired by all." It is indeed easily discovered, that the qualities ne These remarks were first appended to the edition of the doubted that the Iliad and Odyssey were substantially the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," 1830.-ED. works of one and the same individual. He said of the Wolfian hypothesis, that it was the most irreligious one he had 3 Sir Walter Scott, as this paragraph intimates, never heard of, and could never be believed in by any noet.-Eo cessary for composing such poems are not the portion of every man in the tribe; that the bard, to reach excellence in his art, must possess something more than a full command of words and phrases, and the knack of arranging them in such form as ancient examples have fixed upon as the recognised structure of national verse. The tribe speedily become sensible, that besides this degree of mechanical facility, which (like making what are called at school nonsense verses) may be attained by dint of memory and practice, much higher qualifications are demanded. A keen and active power of observation, capable of perceiving at a glance the leading circumstances from which the incident described derives its character; quick and powerful feelings, to enable the bard to comprehend and delineate those of the actors in his piece; and a command of language, alternately soft and elevated, and suited to express the conceptions which he had formed in his mind, are all necessary to eminence in the poetical art. different nations differs still more widely in the degree of excellence which it attains. This must depend in some measure, no doubt, on the temper and manners of the people, or their proximity to those spirit-stirring events which are naturally selected as the subject of poetry, and on the more comprehensive or energetic character of the language spoken by the tribe. But the progress of the art is far more dependent upon the rise of some highly gifted individual, possessing in a pre-eminent and uncommon degree the powers demanded, whose talents influence the taste of a whole nation, and entail on their posterity and language a character almost indelibly sacred. In this respect Homer stands alone and unrivalled, as a light from whose lamp the genius of successive ages, and of distant nations, has caught fire and illumination; and who, though the early poet of a rude age, has purchased for the era he has celebrated, so much rever ence, that, not daring to bestow on it the term of barbarous, we distinguish it as the heroic period. Above all, to attain the highest point of his profes- No other poet (sacred and inspired authors excepted) sion, the poet must have that original power of em- ever did, or ever will, possess the same influence over bodying and detailing circumstances, which can place posterity, in so many distant lands, as has been acbefore the eyes of others a scene which only exists inquired by the blind old man of Chios; yet we are ashis own imagination. This last high and creative sured that his works, collected by the pious care of faculty, namely, that of impressing the mind of the Pisistratus, who caused to be united into their present hearers with scenes and sentiments having no ex-form those divine poems, would otherwise, if preserved istence save through their art, has procured for the bards of Greece the term of Пorns, which, as it singularly happens, is literally translated by the Scottish epithet for the same class of persons, whom they termed the Makers. The French phrase of Trouveurs, or Troubadours, namely, the Finders, or Inventors, has the same reference to the quality of original conception and invention proper to the poetical art, and without which it can hardly be said to exist to any pleasing or useful purpose. The mere arrangement of words into poetical rhythm, or combining them according to a technical rule or measure, is so closely connected with the art of music, that an alliance between these two fine arts is very soon closely formed. It is fruitless to enquire which of them has been first invented, since doubtless the precedence is accidental; and it signifies little whether the musician adapts verses to a rude tune, or whether the primitive poet, in reciting his productions, falls naturally into a chant or song. With this additional accomplishment, the poet becomes doidos, or the man of song, and his character is complete when the additional accompaniment of a lute or harp is added to his vocal performance. at all, have appeared to succeeding generations in the humble state of a collection of detached ballads, connected only as referring to the same ago, the same general subjects, and the same cycle of heroes, like the metrical poems of the Cid in Spain,1 or of Robin Hood in England. In other countries, less favoured, either in language or in picturesque incident, it cannot be supposed that even the genius of Homer could have soared to such exclusive eminence, since he must at once have been deprived of the subjects and themes so well adapted for his muse, and of the lofty, melodious, and flexible language in which he recorded them. Other nations, during the formation of their ancient poetry, wanted the genius of Homer, as well as his picturesque scenery and lofty language. Yet the investigation of the early poetry of every nation, even the rudest, carries with it an object of curiosity and interest. It is a chapter in the history of the childhood of society, and its resemblance to, or dissimilarity from, the popular rhymes of other nations in the same stage, must needs illustrate the ancient history of states; their slower or swifter progress towards civilisation; their gradual or more rapid adoption of manners, sentiments, and re gulf of oblivion, must in every case possess consider able interest for the moral philosopher and general historian. Here, therefore, we have the history of early poetry | ligion. The study, therefore, of lays rescued from the in all nations. But it is evident that, though poetry seems a plant proper to almost all soils, yet not only is it of various kinds, according to the climate and country in which it has its origin, but the poetry of 1 The "Poema del Cid" (of which Mr. Frere has translated rome specimens) is, however, considered by every historian of Spanish literature, as the work of one hand; and is evi The historian of an individual nation is equally or dently more ancient than the detached ballads on the Adventures of the Campeador, which are included in the Canciou eros.—ED more deeply interested in the researches into popular! Such also is the unvaried account of the rose and the poetry, since he must not disdain to gather from the tradition conveyed in ancient ditties and ballads, the information necessary to confirm or correct intelligence collected from more certain sources. And although the poets were a fabling race from the very beginning of time, and so much addicted to exaggeration, that their accounts are seldom to be relied on without corroborative evidence, yet instances frequently occur where the statements of poetical tradition are unexpectedly confirmed. To the lovers and admirers of poetry as an art, it cannot be uninteresting to have a glimpse of the National Muse in her cradle, or to hear her babbling the earliest attempts at the formation of the tuneful sounds with which she was afterwards to charm posterity. And I may venture to add, that among poetry, which, however rude, was a gift of Nature's first fruits, even a reader of refined taste will find his patience rewarded, by passages in which the rude minstrel rises into sublimity or melts into pathos. These were the merits which induced the classical Addison to write an elaborate commentary upon the ballad of Chevy Chase, and which roused, like the sound of a trumpet, the heroic blood of Sir Philip Sidney.2 It is true that passages of this high character seldom occur; for, during the infancy of the art of poetry, the bards have been generally satisfied with a rude and careless expression of their sentiments; and even when a more felicitous expression, or loftier numbers, have been dictated by the enthusiasm of the composition, the advantage came unsought for, and perhaps unnoticed, either by the minstrel or the audience. brier, which are said to spring out of the grave of the hero and heroine of these metrical legends, with little effort at a variation of the expressions in which the incident is prescriptively told. The least acquaintance with the subject will recall a great number of commonplace verses, which each ballad-maker has unceremoniously appropriated to himself; thereby greatly facilitating his own task, and at the same time degrading his art by his slovenly use of overscutched phrases. From the same indolence, the ballad-mongers of most nations have availed themselves of every opportunity of prolonging their pieces, of the same kind, without the labour of actual composition. If a message is to be delivered, the poet saves himself a little trouble, by using exactly the same words in which it was originally couched, to secure its being transmitted to the person for whose ear it was intended. The bards of ruder climes, and less favoured languages, may indeed claim the countenance of Homer for such repetitions; but whilst, in the Father of Poetry, they give the reader an opportunity to pause, and look back upon the enchanted ground over which they have travelled, they afford nothing to the modern bard, save facilitating the power of stupifying the audience with stanzas of dull and tedious iteration. Another cause of the flatness and insipidity, which is the great imperfection of ballad poetry, is to be ascribed less to the compositions in their original state, when rehearsed by their authors, than to the ignorance and errors of the reciters or transcribers, by whom they have been transmitted to us. The more popular the composition of an ancient poet, or Maker, became, the greater chance there was of its being corrupted; for a poem transmitted through a number of reciters, like a book reprinted in a multitude of editions, incurs the risk of impertinent inter Another cause contributed to the tenuity of thought and poverty of expression, by which old ballads are too often distinguished. The apparent simplicity of the ballad stanza carried with it a strong temptation | polations from the conceit of one rehearser, unintellito loose and trivial composition. The collection of rhymes, accumulated by the earliest of the craft appear to have been considered as forming a joint stock for the common use of the profession; and not mere rhymes only, but verses and stanzas, have been used as common property, so as to give an appearance of zameness and crudity to the whole series of popular poetry. Such, for instance, is the salutation so often repeated, "Now Heaven thee save, thou brave young knight, Now Heaven thee save and see." And such the usual expression for taking counsel 'Rede me, rede me, brother dear, 1 See The Spectator, No. 70 and 74. 2 "I never heard the old song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with the sound of a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style."-SIDNEY. gible blunders from the stupidity of another, and omissions equally to be regretted, from the want of memory in a third. This sort of injury is felt very early, and the reader will find a curious instance in the Introduction to the Romance of Sir Tristrem. Robert de Brunne there complains, that though the Romance of Sir Tristrem was the best which had ever been made, if it could be recited as composed by the author, Thomas of Erceldoune, yet that it was written in such an ornate style of language, and such a difficult strain of versification, as to lose all value in the mouths of ordinary minstrels, who could scarcely repeat one stanza without omitting some part of it, and marring, consequently, both the sense and the rhythm of the passage. This deterioration 8 "That thou may hear in Sir Tristrem: If men it sayd as made Thomas; But I hear it no man so say But of some copple some is away," &o. of this degrading species of alchymy, by which the ore of antiquity is deteriorated and adulterated. While Addison, in an age which had never attended to popu he naturally took for his text the ordinary stall-copy, although he might, and ought to have suspected, that a ditty couched in the language nearly of his own time, could not be the same with that which Sir Philip Sidney, more than one hundred years before, had spoken of, as being "evil apparelled in the dust and cobwebs of an uncivilized age." The venerable Bishop Percy was the first to correct this mistake, by produ could not be limited to one author alone; others must have suffered from the same cause, in the same or a greater degree. Nay, we are authorised to conclude, that in proportion to the care bestowed by the author|lar poetry, wrote his classical criticism on that ballad, upon any poem, to attain what his age might suppose to be the highest graces of poetry, the greater was the damage which it sustained by the inaccuracy of reciters, or their desire to humble both the sense and diction of the poem to their powers of recollection, and the comprehension of a vulgar audience. It cannot be expected that compositions subjected in this way to mutilation and corruption, should continue to present their original sense or diction; and the accu-cing a copy of the song, as old at least as the reign of racy of our editions of popular poetry, unless in the rare event of recovering original or early copies, is lessened in proportion. But the chance of these corruptions is incalculably increased, when we consider that the ballads have been, not in one, but innumerable instances of transmission, liable to similar alterations, through a long course of centuries, during which they have been handed from one ignorant reciter to another, each discarding whatever original words or phrases time or fashion had, in his opinion, rendered obsolete, and substituting anachronisms by expressions taken from the customs of his own day. And here it may be remarked, that the desire of the reciter to be intelligible, however natural and laudable, has been one of the greatest causes of the deterioration of ancient poetry. The minstrel who endeavoured to recite with fidelity the words of the author, might indeed fall into errors of sound and sense, and substitute corruptions for words he did not understand. But the ingenuity of a skilful critic could often, in that case, revive and restore the original meaning; while the corrupted words became, in such cases, a warrant for the authenticity of the whole poem.1 In general, however, the later reciters appear to have been far less desirous to speak the author's words, than to introduce amendments and new readings of their own, which have always produced the effect of modernizing, and usually that of degrading and vulgarizing, the rugged sense and spirit of the antique minstrel. Thus, undergoing from age to age a gradual process of alteration and recomposition, our popular and oral minstrelsy has lost, in a great measure, its original appearance; and the strong touches by which it had been formerly characterised, have been generally smoothed down and destroyed by a process similar to that by which a coin, passing from hand to hand, loses in circulation all the finer marks of the impress. The very fine ballad of Chevy Chase is an example Henry VII., bearing the name of the author or tran- "The Percy owt of Northumberland, Becomes "The stout Earl of Northumberland From this, and other examples of the same kind, of which many might be quoted, we must often expect to find the remains of Minstrel poetry, composed originally for the courts of princes and halls of nobles, disguised in the more modern and vulgar dialect in which they have been of late sung to the frequenters of the rustic ale-bench. It is unnecessary to mention more than one other remarkable and humbling instance, printed in the curious collection entitled, a Ballad-Book, where we find, in the words of the ingenious Editor, a stupid ballad, printed as it was sung 1 An instance occurs in the valuable old ballad, called Auld Maitland. The reciter repeated a verse, descriptive of the defence of a castle, thus: "With spring-wall, stanes, and goads of airn Among them fast he threw." for casting darts or stones; the restoration of which reading gives a precise and clear sense to the lines. 2 See Perry's Reliques, vol. i. p. 2. 8 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq. The Ballad-Book was printed in 1823, and inscribed to Sir Walter Scott; the im Spring-wall, is a corruption of springald, a military engine Dression consisting of only thirty copies. in Annandale, founded on the well-known story of the will be accomplished, by shortly noticing the popular Prince of Salerno's daughter, but with the uncouth poetry of Scotland, and some of the efforts which have change of Dysmal for Ghismonda, and Guiscard trans-been made to collect and illustrate it. formed into a greasy kitchen-boy. "To what base uses may we not return!" Sometimes a still more material and systematic difference appears between the poems of antiquity, as they were originally composed, and as they now exist. This occurs in cases where the longer metrical romances, which were in fashion during the middle ages, were reduced to shorter compositions, in order that they might be chanted before an inferior audience. A ballad, for example, of Thomas of Erceldoune, and his intrigues with the Queen of Faery-Land, is, or has been, long current in Teviotdale, and other parts of Scotland. Two ancient copies of a poem, or romance, on the same subject, and containing very often the same words and turns of expression, are preserved in the libraries of the Cathedral of Lincoln and PeterDorough. We are left to conjecture whether the originals of such ballads have been gradually contracted into their modern shape by the impatience of later audiences, combined with the lack of memory displayed by more modern reciters, or whether, in particular cases, some ballad-maker may have actually set himself to work to retrench the old details of the minstrels, and regularly and systematically to modernize, and if the phrase be permitted, to balladize, a metrical romance. We are assured, however, that "Roswal and Lilian "" was sung through the streets of Edinburgh two generations since; and we know that the Romance of "Sir Eger, Sir Grime, and Sir Greysteil," had also its own particular chant, or tune. The stall-copies of both these romances, as they now exist, are very much abbreviated, and probably exhibit them when they were undergoing, or had nearly undergone, the process of being cut down into ballads. It is now generally admitted that the Scots and Picts however differing otherwise, were each by descent a Celtic race; that they advanced in a course of victory somewhat farther than the present frontier between England and Scotland, and about the end of the eleventh century subdued and rendered tributary the Britons of Strathcluyd, who were also a Celtic race like themselves. Excepting, therefore, the provinces of Berwickshire and the Lothians, which were chicfly inhabited by an Anglo-Saxon population, the whole of Scotland was peopled by different tribes of the same aboriginal race,2—a race passionately addicted to music, as appears from the kindred Celtic nations of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish, preserving each to this day a style and character of music peculiar to their own country, though all three bear marks of general resemblance to each other. That of Scotland, in particular, is early noticed and extolled by ancient authors, and its remains, to which the natives are passionately attached, are still found to afford pleasure even to those who cultivate the art upon a more refined and varied system. This skill in music did not, of course, exist without a corresponding degree of talent for a species of poetry, adapted to the habits of the country, celebrating the victories of triumphant clans, pouring forth lamentations over fallen heroes, and recording such marvellous adventures as were calculated to amuse individual families around their household fires, or the whole tribe when regaling in the hall of the chief. It happened, however, singularly enough, that while the music continued to be Celtic in its general measure, the language of Scotland, most commonly spoken, began to be that of their neighbours, the English, introduced by the multitude of Saxons who thronged to the court of Malcolm Canmore and his successors; by the crowds of prisoners of war, whom the repeated ravages of the Scots in Northumberland carried off as slaves to their country; by the influence of the inha Taking into consideration the various indirect channels by which the popular poetry of our ancestors has been transmitted to their posterity, it is nothing surprising that it should reach us in a mutilated and de-bitants of the richest and most populous provinces in graded state, and that it should little correspond with | the ideas we are apt to form of the first productions of national genius; nay, it is more to be wondered at that we possess so many ballads of considerable merit, than that the much greater number of them which must have once existed, should have perished before our time. Having given this brief account of ballad poetry in general, the purpose of the present prefatory remarks Scotland, Berwickshire, namely, and the Lothians, over the more mountainous; lastly, by the superiority which a language like the Anglo-Saxon, considerably refined, long since reduced to writing, and capable of expressing the wants, wishes, and sentiments of the speakers, must have possessed over the jargon of various tribes of Irish and British origin, limited and contracted in every varying dialect, and differing, at the same time, from each other. This superiority being 1 These two ancient Romances are reprinted in a volume of "Early Metrical Tales," edited by Mr. David Laing, Edinburgh, 1826, small 8vo. Only 175 copies printed. • The author seems to have latterly modified his original opinion on some parts of this subject. In his reviewal of Mr. P. F. Tytler's History of Scotland (Quart. Rev. vol. xli. D. 328,) he says, speaking of the period of the final subjuga tion of the Picts, "It would appear the Scandinavians had colonies along the fertile shores of Moray, and among the mountains of Sutherland, whose name speaks for itself, that it was given by the Norwegians; and probably they had also settlements in Caithness and the Orcades." In this essay, however, he adheres in the main to his Anti-Pinkertonian doctrine, and treats the Picts as Celts.-ED. |