The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England and Scotland were rich in popular poetry and in ballads. We must define the meaning of "popular" and "ballad" poetry, as used in this chapter.

Much confusion and much controversy exist regarding this matter of ballads and popular poetry. To understand the subject it is necessary to be acquainted with the results of research in the orally transmitted verse of peoples in every stage of culture; for till elementary instruction in reading and writing become universal, the untaught rural classes retain, in their songs, the literary methods of the quite uncivilized races of Australia, North America, Africa, and so on.

Taking the, peoples lowest in civilization, we find that the Australian blacks and the American Red Indians have several kinds of songs, usually sung in dances, whether festive or religious or magical. They have magic chants, and even hymns, often unintelligible to those who sing them in the dance, either because the language is obsolete, or because the songs have been borrowed from tribes of alien speech. It is clear that in Europe, too, the ballad was originally a dancing song ("ballad" is from ballare, to dance), and where a story was told, that was given in recitative, while the dancers followed each line of narrative with a chorus or refrain, such as

There were three ladies lived in a bower,
Oh wow! bonnie.
And they went out to pu\' a flower
On the bonnie banks o\' Fordie.

The story told in the recitative, in surviving examples, was probably, at first, composed by one author, versifying a popular tale, of unknown antiquity, or narrating some recent event. Even now in the remoter isles of the Hebrides, various singers, each in turn, improvise and chant verses, and thus a kind of ballad is made collectively. But it is plain that for each of our oldest surviving narrative ballads there must have been one original author, whether his theme was an old story or a recent occurrence,—on the Borders usually a cattle raid, the escape of a prisoner, or a battle. There would be no professional poet, as[Pg 148] Queen Mary\'s ally, Bishop Leslie of Ross tells us, in his "History of Scotland," "the Borderers themselves make their own ballads, about the deeds of their ancestors, or crafty raids or forays". Such unwritten songs would be altered by every singer, as time went by, so that these ballads as they stand are thoroughly popular and "masterless," many hands have combined to bring them into their present state.

The Robin Hood ballads, or songs about Robin Hood, are mentioned by Piers Plowman as popular among the peasants at the end of the fourteenth century. They would be sung in connexion with the very ancient festivities of May Day, held in England and Scotland, when money was collected, rather roughly, from spectators and passers-by. Now Wynkyn de Worde, the successor of Caxton as a printer, published a "Lytil Geste" of Robin Hood (about 1490). But we are not obliged to suppose that the songs known to Piers Plowman were borrowed from the "long Geste" of Robin Hood; more probably the "Geste" was derived from the popular traditions and rhymes of the May Day show of Robin Hood. How far these ballads as they now exist have been organized and improved upon by a professional minstrel it is hard to say. In any case the older ballads are worthy of merry England.

The ballads of King Arthur are manifestly popularized and reduced to the simple ballad form from the long literary romances, and are probably the work of lowly professional minstrels.

The long ballad of "Flodden Field" is the work of a partisan of the Stanley family, it is far too long (over 500 lines), and too full of historical detail, for a ballad made by the Borderers themselves. "Scottish Field" (Flodden) is another piece of the same sort, in alliterative measure.

The class of ballad which was made as a narrative of current events, or a satire on contemporaries (of such ballad-satires Henry VIII complained to James V) was usually, in England, the work of a versifying journalist of the humblest sort, and was printed. John Knox tells us that ballads were made on Queen Mary\'s Four Maries (Mary Livingstone, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton), and these, it is plain, were satirical. But the only survivor of these ballads, "Mary Hamilton," is romantic, and in all its many various forms transfers, to a non-existent Mary, the misfortunes of a French waiting-maid of the Queen, who, with her lover, an apothecary, was hanged for the murder of their child. In only one text is the lover an apothecary: the lady is sometimes not an apocryphal Hamilton, but a Campbell, daughter of the Duke of Argyll; or a daughter of the Duke of York, or even "Mary Mild" (or Mile) which is the name of our Lady in old carols. For the lover, the poet chooses Henry Darnley, husband of Queen Mary, or that old offender, "Sweet Willie," or any one; and this is a good example of the changes which popular ballads underwent in recitation. As they stand, the multitude has collaborated in them, reciters have altered the original in many ways.

Such ballads differ much from "Lady Bessy," with its 1080 lines, probably written by Humphrey Brereton in honour of the House of[Pg 149] Stanley and of Lady Bessie\'s revenge on Richard III. Some verses are as spirited as those of "Kinmont Willie," a Border ballad to which Scott lent the vigour of the last and greatest of the Border makers, for probably the finest verses in the song are by Sir Walter himself: at all events he improved what old verses he found.

At Bosworth Field, when all is lost, Sir William Harrington says to Richard III:—

"There may no man their strokes abide,
The Stanleys\' dints they be so strong,
Ye may come in another time;
Therefore methink ye tarry too long."

As lion-hearted as his namesake Richard I, Richard III replies:—

"Give me my battle-axe in my hand,
And set my crown on my head so high,
For by Him that made both sea and land,
King of England will I this day die.

"One foot of ground I will not flee
While the strength abides my breast within,"
As he said so did it be,
If he lost his life he died a king.

The early history of our purely romantic ballads, such as "Clerk Sanders," "The Douglas Tragedy," "The Dowie Dens o\' Yarrow," "Young Beichan," "The Wife of Usher\'s Well," "Fair Annie," "Tamlane," and many more, is obscure. They have analogues in all European countries, from Greece to Scandinavia, and in popular tales, the oldest things in literature. Their extraordinary charm, their touch of supernatural terror, their simplicity, their recurring formul? of words, their brevity and pathos, make them things apart. The heart of humanity is their maker, though in each country where they exist local allusions and local colour have been given to them by the singers. When such ballads have been worked over by some hack of the early Press they are often worthless; the best have been collected from oral recitation, or old written copies.

There can be no universal theory of the origin of ballads; each ballad must be examined by itself before we can say whether it is a popularized shape of a literary romance, or a versified "M?rchen" worked over by many hands in many ages, or a mere mythical news-letter, like "King James and Brown"; or the work, like "Otterburne," of a humbler poet than the minstrels of the Stanleys, but a better poet; or one whose work has been improved by the modifications of later singers; or whether the thing is a dance song, contributed to by each dancer in turn; or a brief and beautiful lament like "The Bonny Earl o\' Murray". The best traditional ballads have the colour and fragrance of wild flowers.

Curious and very ancient traits of popular usages may be gathered from the songs of merrymaking, for example in the songs of Ivy, the badge of the[Pg 150] women, and of Holly, the ba............