Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/163

 NOTES ON BALLAD ORIGINS.

BY A. LANG, M.A., LL.D., &C.

{Read at Meeting, 2^th March, 1903.)

For some reason the problems of the origin and diffusion of Ballads (by which brief traditional romantic narrative poems are here especially meant), have not much occupied the Folk-Lore Society. I now submit some remarks, suggested by a recent publication. Even the slight amount of discus- sion of the theme in England is enough to show that there are two ways of accounting for the wide diffusion, in Europe, of popular narrative poems on similar romantic plots. Thus Mr. T. F. Henderson and Mr. Courthope appear to hold that such ballads are degraded versions of literary mediaeval romances; cut down, vulgarises, and adapted to the tastes of the less cultivated classes. On the other hand, while admitting that certain ballads are of this origin^ I maintain that many others are the work of popular rhymers, often dealing with themes also current in Marchen of great antiquity, and not borrowing from literary sources. But my position does not seem to be clearly understood by the advocates of the other system.

In his " Prefatory Note " to his new and excellent edition of The Border Minstrelsy, ^ Mr. T. F. Henderson has re- marks on what may be called the Folklore Theory of popu- lar old narrative ballads, and he honours me by various references to my opinions. As the subject was first ap- proached by me thirty years ago, my opinions have naturally varied in some degree. I do not know that I ever said that ballads were " of communal origin." Where popular poetry is the work of collaborators in improvisation, even then each

' Blackwood, 1902. T 2