Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/26

xx XX INTRODUCTION, Often, again, the ballad of those days was purely a lyric, whether courtly lay to a mistress' eyebrow, or rough country strains for drink and dance, such as Autolycus laid in for his rural trade. No line was drawn between the song and the ballad. In a well-known dialogue of Walton's " Angler," the milk- woman asks : " What song was it, I pray ? Was it Comey Shepherds^ deck your heads, or As at noon Dulcina rested, or Phillida flouts me, or Chevy Chace, or Johnny Armstrong, or Troy TownV^^ We know, too, that Sidney uttered his famous praise of the "^///<? song of Percy and Duglas. " A passage in the "Complaynt of Scotland" ^ speaks of certain shepherds who first told pleasant tales, and then sang "sueit sangis," one of which is the lyric " Pastance vitht gude companye," — elsewhere^ called " The Kyngis Balade," because of its supposed composition by Henry VIII, — and another, the " Hunttis of Chevet," or the older version of Chevy Chace. Finally, the shepherds fell to dancing, and the author, who was looking on, tells us as many of the dances Mr. John Ashton published this ballad in fac-simile, with a very full introduction (London, Elliot Stock). The poem itself is a taunting affair, quite in Skelton's vein, without narrative, but full of allusions and personal abuse. It has little or nothing to do with our tradi- tional ballads ; it may be compared ( Works^ I, 22) with Skelton's more agreeable " dyvers Balettys and Dyties solacyous," which show French influence on their form, and have a complicated though irregular structure of the stanza. Here narrative occurs ; and in contents, at least, and in the burden {Hey^ lullay^ etc.)y one of these poems approaches our traditional ballads, and tells a tale not unlike that of the " Broomfield Hill " (ChUd, Ballads, Part H, p. 390). 1 Again, in Chapter xiv, " the good old song of the Hunting in Chevy Chace, or some other good old ballad." They were all sung. Fpr the tunes, see Chappell, especially I, 260. There is a grouping of lyric as against narrative in the list, but the name is indifferent. 2 Edited by Murray for the Early English Text Soc, 1872, p. 63 ff.; with commentary on the titles, p. Ixxii ff. of the Introduction. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * In a Ms. once owned by Ritson, now in the British Museum.