Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/29

Rh INTRODUCTION. xxiii On the whole, aside from remoter origins, the ballad under Elizabeth, so far as it had any literary meaning, evidently covered on the one hand poems of love or satire which more or less vaguely suggested the French type, and, on the other, poems independent of such influence, pointing back to the traditional ballad, with its refrain, its tune, and its hints of the dance. But any occasional poem, grave or gay, which appeared as a broadside could take the name unchallenged. In all this coil, two sources of confusion are clear to the critical eye ; and one of them will serve to explain a certain alternation of praise and scorn in contemporary judgment of the Elizabethan ballad. For the less import- ant evil, we have noted a failure to distinguish the lyrical from the narrative. In a merry scene of the Winter's Tale,^ country-folk "love a ballad in print," for then they are sure it is true, — that is, the narrative ballad, the genuine broadside ; while presently a ballad of the other sort is sung, a part-song, in which the pedler Autolycus joins because it is his "occupation." The second and more serious cause of trouble is the confusion between the ballad of tradition and the verses of men like Elder- ton, " who did arm himself with ale when he ballated," or Tom Deloney, "the ballading silk-weaver," who could turn into rime a chapter or two from Malory, and so make a ballad of Sir Lancelot.^ These men often inserted genuine old ballads in collections of their own, and got credit for " Flodden Field" or "The Fair Flower of the making of " sangis, ballatis, and playis," Works, ed. Small, II, 233. For a " ballad " of praise, in complicated stanza and with constant refrain, see the Ballade of Lord Bernard Stewart. A later example of the scurrilous ballad in Scotland is A Ballat maid upoun Margret Flemings Satirical Poems of the Reformation^ ed. Cranstoun, Scottish Text Soc, 1891, I, 391 ff., — a woeful affair. 1 iv, 4. 2 So think Hales and Furnivall, Percy Folio^ I, 84. Digitized by LjOOQIC