Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/24

xviii xviii INTRODUCTION. song of the folk? Chappell, in his invaluable work,^ shows us that the England of Elizabeth surpassed both Italy and France in the matter of music. High and low, every one loved to sing ; every one was expected to take a part, even in difficult songs ; and the very barber kept in his shop lute, cittern, or virginal for the amusement of waiting customers. Music was everywhere, and every- where were songs. How much of all that " masterless " lyric would come under the head of Mr. Saintsbury's folk-song, is a question outside of our present task; enough if we insist upon the indefinite, not to say preposterous, nature of his assertion, and the need of unequivocal terms. ^ With regard to the name of ballad, we are in no better case.* Confusion is rife in the use of the term, and error has even crept into some critical accounts of this con- fusion. The ballade of the schools, to be sure, as it was copied by Chaucer or Gower from the French, need not be reckoned among the immediate causes of trouble ; * and with it go other poems of different but complicated stanzaic structure.* The main source of error lies in the application of the word, however spelled, to almost any short narrative poem, to any short didactic poem, to 1 Popular Music of the Olden Time, I, 98. — For an older period of song in England, see ten Brink, Gesch. d. engL Lit,, I, 381 ff. — For the use of " old songs " in a play, see Chappell, I, 72. 2 In what way would Mr. Saintsbury dispose of the popular Scot- tish lyric mentioned above ? 8 Wolf, Lais, etc., pp. 45, 233. tresses clere," Legend Goode Women, 270. ^ Such is the " balet " printed by Ritsoa, Ancient Songs and Ballads, ed. Hazlitt, p. 149 (in the original ed., p. 86); compare the " balades " named in Lydgate's Bycorne and Chichevache. Guest proposed {Engl, Rhythms, II, 354) the spelling ballet for the related class of poems ; but the French ballade is surely better. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * " This balade," says Chaucer of his ** Hyd, Absalon, thy gilte