Probably no teacher of English literature in our schools or colleges
would gainsay the statement that the chief aim of such instruction is
to awaken in the student a genuine love and enthusiasm for the higher
forms of prose, and more especially for poetry. For love is the surest
guarantee of extended and independent study, and we teachers are the
first to admit that the class-room is but the vestibule to
education. So in beginning the critical study of English poetry it
seems reasonable to use as a starting-point the early ballads,
belonging as they do to the youth of our literature, to the youth of
our English race, and hence appealing with especial power to the youth
of the human heart. Every man of letters who still retains the
boy-element in his nature--and most men, Sir Philip Sidney tells us,
are "children in the best things, till they be cradled in their
graves"--has a tenderness for these rough, frank, spirited old poems,
while the actual boy in years, or the actual girl, rarely fails to
respond to their charm. What Shakespeare knew, and Scott loved, and
Bossetti echoes, can hardly be beneath the admiration of high school
and university students. Rugged language, broken metres, absurd plots,
dubious morals, are impotent to destroy the vital beauty that
underlies all these. There is a philosophical propriety, too, in
beginning poetic study with ballad lore, for the ballad is the germ of
all poem varieties.
This volume attempts to present such a selection from the old ballads
as shall represent them fairly in their three main classes,--those
derived from superstition, whether fairy-lore, witch-lore, ghost-lore,
or demon-lore; those derived from tradition, Scotch and English; and
those derived from romance and from domestic life in general. The
Scottish ballads, because of their far superior poetic value, are
found here in greater number than the English. The notes state in each
case what version has been followed. The notes aim, moreover, to give
such facts of historical or bibliographical importance as may attach
to each ballad, with any indispensable explanation of outworn or
dialectic phrases, although here much is left to the mother-wit of the
student.
It is hoped that this selection may meet a definite need in connection
with classes not so fortunate as to have access to a ballad library,
and that even where such access is procurable, it may prove a friendly
companion in the private study and the recitation-room.