The methods of ballad-work in the class-room must of course vary with
the amount of time at disposal, the extent of library privilege, and
the attainment of the students. Where the requisite books are at
hand, it may be found a profitable exercise to commit a ballad to each
member of the class, who shall hunt down the various English versions,
and, as far as his power reaches, the foreign equivalents. But
specific topical study can be put to advantage on the ballads
themselves, the fifty collected here furnishing abundant data for
discussion and illustration in regard to such subjects as the
following:--
/ Teutonic.
Ballad Language | Dialectic.
\ Idiomatic.
/ / Description.
/ Ballad Stanza | Peculiar Fitness.
| \ Variations.
|
Ballad Music | / Metre.
| Irregularities in | Accent.
| \ Rhyme.
\ Significance of
\ Irregularities.
/ Introduction.
/ Dramatic Element.
Ballad Structure | Involution of Plot.
\ Proportion of Element.
\ Conclusion.
/ Government.
Early English and Scottish | Family.
Life as reflected in the | Employments.
Ballads | Pastimes.
\ Manners.
Early English and Scottish / Aspirations.
Character as reflected | Principles.
in the Ballads \ Tastes.
Democracy in the Ballads.
Nature in the Ballads.
Color in the Ballads.
History and Science in the Ballads.
Manhood in the Ballads.
Womanhood in the Ballads.
Childhood in the Ballads.
Standards of Morality in the Ballads.
Religion in the Ballads / Pagan Element.
\ Christian Element. / Catholic.
\ Protestant.
Figures of Speech / Enumeration
in the Ballads | General Character.
\ Proportion.
/ Epithets.
/ Numbers.
Stock Material | Refrains.
of the Ballads | Similes.
| Metaphors.
\ Stanzas.
\ Situations.
Humor of the Ballads. / In what consisting.
\ At what directed.
Pathos of the Ballads. / By what elicited.
\ How expressed.
/ In Form.
Beauty of the Ballads. | In Matter.
\ In Spirit.
A more delicate, difficult, and valuable variety of study may be put
upon the ballads, taken one by one, with the aim of impression upon a
class the very simplicity of strength and sweetness in this wild
minstrelsy. The mere recitation or reading of the ballad, with such
unacademic and living comment as shall help the imagination of the
hearer to leap into a vivid realization of the swiftly shifted scenes,
the sympathy to follow with eager comprehension the crowded, changing
passions, the whole nature to thrill with the warm pulse of the rough
old poem, is perhaps the surest way to drive the ballad home, trusting
it to work within the student toward that spirit--development which is
more truly the end of education than mental storage. For these
primitive folk-songs which have done so much to educate the poetic
sense in the fine peasantry of Scotland,--that peasantry which has
produced an Ettrick Shepherd and an Ayrshire Ploughman,--are
assuredly,
"Thanks to the human heart by which we live,"
among the best educators that can be brought into our schoolrooms.