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"The plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."
Probably no teacher of English literature in our schools or collegeswould gainsay the statement that the chief aim of such instruction isto awaken in the student a genuine love and enthusiasm for the higherforms of prose, and more especially for poetry. For love is the surestguarantee of extended and independent study, and we teachers are thefirst to admit that the class-room is but the vestibule toeducation. So in beginning the critical study of English poetry itseems reasonable to use as a starting-point the early ballads,belonging as they do to the youth of our literature, to the youth ofour English race, and hence appealing with especial power to the youthof the human heart. Every man of letters who still retains theboy-element in his nature—and most men, Sir Philip Sidney tells us,are "children in the best things, till they be cradled in theirgraves"—has a tenderness for these rough, frank, spirited old poems,while the actual boy in years, or the actual girl, rarely fails torespond to their charm. What Shakespeare knew, and Scott loved, andBossetti echoes, can hardly be beneath the admiration of high schooland university students. Rugged language, broken metres, absurd plots,dubious morals, are impotent to destroy the vital beauty thatunderlies all these. There is a philosophical propriety, too, inbeginning poetic study with ballad lore, for the ballad is the germ ofall poem varieties.
This volume attempts to present such a selection from the old balladsas shall represent them fairly in their three main classes,—thosederived from superstition, whether fairy-lore, witch-lore, ghost-lore,or demon-lore; those derived from tradition, Scotch and English; andthose derived from romance and from domestic life in general. TheScottish ballads, because of their far superior poetic value, arefound here in greater number than the English. The notes state in eachcase what version has been followed. The notes aim, moreover, to givesuch facts of historical or bibliographical importance as may attachto each ballad, with any indispensable explanation of outworn ordialectic phrases, although here much is left to the mother-wit of thestudent.
It is hoped that this selection may meet a definite need in connectionwith classes not so fortunate as to have access to a ballad library,and that even where such access is procurable, it may prove a friendlycompanion in the private study and the recitation-room.
WELLESLEY COLLEGE,
March, 1904.