Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/25

Rh INTRODtrCTION. xix almost any sort of lyric, and to almost every conceivable form of reviling or grumbling in verse. No better proof of this confusion can be found than in the Register of the Company of Stationers in London.^ Now and then we meet the traditional ballad of the people : " a ballett of Wakefylde and agrene" (1557-58), is followed by "a ballett of admonyssion to leave swerynge " and " a ballett called have pytie on the poore " (i 559). John Aide pays his fee for " pryntinge of a balett of Robyn Hod '* (1562-63) ; but compare* this batch of seven " ballettes " : ^ Godly Imtnes used in the churches ; who are so mery as thay of y low estate; The prove r be is tru yat weddynge ys Destyne ; The Robery at Gaddes Hill ; holdeth ancer fast ; be mery, goodjone; the panges of love. Moral parodies of a popular song, hymns,* satire and personal attack, rimes about a duke's funeral or a campaign in Scotland or any nine days' wonder, — all these, with an occasional ballad of tradition, are entered in the registers under the convenient name.* In fact, but for older confusions, we might almost assign the term outright to the realm of trade, the actual making of broadsides,* and so give up all attempt to define its literary meaning. 1 Edited by Arber. 2 Ibid., I, 96. 8 The transcriber of the Asloane MS. (see Schipper's account of it, Poems of Dunbar y I, 6 ff .) in his table of contents uses " ballat " mainly for religious poems ; though The DeviCs Inquest^ a satire by Dunbar, has the same name. these broadsides came to be called a ballad. See Murray's English Dictionary^ s. v. Ballad^ No. 4. 6 In the Athetueiim for April i6th, 1881, Mr. G. Bamett Smith communicates the text of "the oldest English printed ballad in existence,** A Ballade of the Scottyshe Kynge, by John Skelton, in black-letter, and assigned by authorities of the British Museum to the year 1513. (See also Skelton's Works, ed. Dyce, I, 182 ff., Skelton Laureate against the Scottes, especially p. 185 f.) In 1882, Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * By a sort of synecdoche, any popular line or couplet frem one of