Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/315

 12 S. VII. SEPT. 25, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

259

Old English Ballads 1553-1625, chiefly from

Manuscripts. Edited by Hyder E. Rollins.

(Cambridge University Press, 18s. 6d. net). SEVENTY-FIVE ballads have been brought together in this collection. Dr. Rollin furnishes each with a careful bibliographical and explanatory note, and to the whole supplies an interesting Intro- duction. The material of most of the ballads is highly controversial, and the Editor has rather increased than diminished the attractiveness of his work by his evident feeling for the actuality of the controversy as such. We were somewhat staggered by his unmeasured compliment to Ainsworth : he invites us to take our ideas of Mary, Elizabeth, Lady Jane and Northumberland from 'The Tower of London,' in the same way as we take our Henry V. and Richard III. from Shakespeare. Such a proposal rather shakes our confidence in his seriousness as a historian. We noticed, too, occasional touches.of carelessness : Thomas Cromwell, for example, is called " Lord Cromwell "; and now and again lapses into futility as when to the line,

As Erringe shippe, I haue sought thee, is appended the weighty note " shippe : perhaps sheep."

But these are neither frequent nor important enough to detract from the value of the work as bringing before the student, with sufficient elucidation, matters which are useful for rounding out a person 's conception of the period.

Dr. Rollin uses the words " splendid " and "admirable " of one or two ballads, and has a less enthusiastic but still, we think, over-appre- ciative liking for many more. We could not ourselves use such fine and sweeping adjectives of any of them. The solemn ones lack poetry and the wrathful ones lack edge. Of wit there are but few and feeble traces. However, there is one respect in which the ordinary reader cer- tainly does many of them less than justice : they are made to go to a tune, and he does not know the tune, or, at any rate, does not read the words to it in his head. We would urge as we have done before that verses which are sup- posed to go to a tune should have at least the notes of the melody supplied.

The order of the ballads is slightly confused. We have first a group of six relating to Queen Mary the best of which is Forrest's ' New Ballade of the Marigolde ' ; next three on Pro- testant martyrs ; then fifteen grouped as Catholic Ballads and esteemed by the Editor the best part of the book ; then nearly forty Protestant and moralizing productions, not arranged on any ascertainable principle ; and, lastly, a dozen Miscellaneous Ballads.

In the Catholic group Dr. Rollins has included the well-known hymn ' Hierusalem, my happie home ' upon the authorship of which he has nothing fresh to say ; and places beside it a hymn, in general character much resembling it, supposed to be a sixteenth century version of Ad perennem vitae fontem. By the way, it is curious to see, in a foot-note to this, so well-known a writer as Dr. Jessopp referred to as "an Anglican minister

Augustus Jessopp." ' Jerusalem, thy joys divine is even more minute and explicit than its better known compeer, in its detail of the beauties off heaven, and includes a bit of heraldry

The King, that heavenlie pallace rules, doethe beare vpon his goulden sheild

A crosse in signe of triumph, gules

erected in a vardiant feild.

There is a sound as of Coventry Patmore about the fall of these lines. The present writer cannot recall much use of heraldry in verse about heaven ,- and would be grateful to readers for further instances.

' In Crete when Daedalus first began ' is an interesting fragment. The MS. one would think- should afford an easy correction of the last line- as given here :

Be of good chear, myne owen sweet boy, says Daedalus,

Though e land and Seas be from vs Raft,

The skyes aloft, befor vs laste., where " laste ' must represent some form, rhyming with "Raft," which has tbe sense of "left."

A little song to console the blind asking them to consider what sights of evil they miss reminds one of the line of consolation adopted by Cicero in his letters to Romans in exile at the- time of the fall of the Republic. The instance the song-writer gives is Helen.

O happy troye haddest thou bene, if eyes faire Helene had not sene ; and there is certainly a few minutes' amusement to be had in thinking what sorrows numbers of " unlucky heroes would have escaped if they could have made their choice to be blind.

Not often do these ballads invite to idle stringing of thoughts : tney are mostly pondercms productions, whose chief weight is in their words rather than in their ideas. But they have their place in the field of illustration, whch, after all, is an essential part of the provinces both of" history and of literature.

Rabelais Readings. Selected by W. F. Smith ; with a Memoir by Sir John Sandys. (Cam- bridge University Press, 8s. Qd. net.) STUDENTS of Rabelais will welcome these last fruits of the labours of a master in Rabelaisian learning at once with gratitude and with regret. The selections comprise about fifty chapters of Rabelais' text with short summaries of the omitted parts inserted to make the narrative- intelligible. The text is copiously annotated from the notes in William Francis Smith's trans- lation of the author, the task of choosing these having fallen to Mr. Arthur Tilley. Their writer died a few weeks after the printing of the book: was begun, and saw no more of it than a speci- men page or two. The brief, but pithy and sym- pathetic notice by Sir John Sandys, can but renew the wish that more of the varied stores of learning; amassed by this distinguished scholar had been made available. We echo Mr. Tilley 's opinion that a handier edition of his translation, carrying: the revised notes which have been drawn upon for these pages, would be desirable undertaking. Meanwhile, the little volume before us should prove exceedingly useful. It contains the best