Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/175

 Notes on Ballad Origins. 159

is "a mere fancy," I can, of course, point to Sir Aldhtgar, William of Malmesbury's story, the corresponding J/arcA^w going back to the seventh century, and the ballad which Professor Child asserts to be the source of William's legend. But as I have only Professor Child's word for that ballad, Mr. Henderson may not care for the security.

It is not to be expected that my remarks will produce a favourable impression on my critic, but I am anxious to state my present position to the Folk-Lore Society. As far as I have succeeded in analysing Professor Child's opinions, out of his notes and introductions, I am fortunate enough to agree with that eminent specialist. This, at least, is encouraging.

Among other points, one needs particular attention. Why do the European ballads (if I am right) turn on but a few out of the many plots of European Mdrchen ? To answer the question needs wide comparative study. Have we any ballad, for example, on a theme so universally diffused as that of Cinderella ?

Not being acquainted with Celtic languages, I do not enter into the question why the Celts, as Mr. Nutt says, have no ballads, while he elsew^here applies the term " ballads " to lays of the Feinn.^

The Celts certainly have some of the prose Miirchen on which many European ballads are based, but, as some aver, the Celts have not made them the topics of brief traditional narrative poems. Why they have not done so I do not know, if they have not ; but I fail to see how their abstention affects the general argument. My opinion, ignorant of Gaelic as I am, rests on that of Campbell of Islay, who really did know Gaelic, was in the closest relations with the peasantry, and heard numberless recitals.

He attributes abundance of " ballads " to the Celts of the West Highlands {Popular Tales, vol. iv., p. 123, et seq.). These " ballads," as Islay calls them, are not con-

' Folk and Hero Talcs, pp. 401, 411.