Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/32

xxvi xxvi INTRODUCTION. expression, or even description, are properly termed Songs,^ in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions which we now denominate Ballads." Germans, too, have thus cleared the field. "Our mode of speech,** says Scherer,^ "inclines to call it a song when the singer speaks of himself, a ballad when he speaks of others." ^ It is rather the confusion of traditional with artistic or written ballads, — not so much inferior songs for the rabble as imitations of the ballad by poets of good rank, — which still prevails, and allows modern usage to call by one name " Chevy Chace," " Barbara Frietchie," and Mr. Gilbert's " Rival Curates." With this word, ballad, we can do little in the way of reform, save to lament the equivocation of the fiend who first flung it into our lan- guage; but there is safety in an adjective. Professor Child takes " popular " for his refuge; it is, perhaps, better thus to ignore the distinction of volkspoesie and volksthumliche poesie, than to seek a fantastic title. ^ Ritson's taste lim]>ed behind his knowledge. He thinks feeble ballads of Deloney and others better than Chevy Chace; though in a note to Captain Car {Anc. S. and B,^ p. i8o f.) he praises such a chanted ballad of " the North Countre " at the expense of work by " a Grub-Street author for the stalls." 2 Poetikj p. 249; but see his Gesch, d. deutsch, Litj p. 257. 8 We have no space for the detail of German confusions, especially in the use of Herder's word volkslied. The student may consult, besides the dictionaries, MUllenhoff*s introduction to his Sagen^ Mdrchen u. Lieder d, Herzogthiimer Schleswig-Holstein u. Lauenburg^ pp. XXX, xxxvi; Talvj, Charakteristik u. s. w., p. 8 ff .; Burger's Gedichte^ ed. Tittmann, pp. xliii f., liii f.; Vilmar, Handbuchlein f. Freunde d. deutschen Volksliedesy p. 138 f.; Wackemagel, Poetik^ p. 96 f.; Bohme, Altdeutsches Liederbuch^ pp. xxi f., xxviii f. (who, while approving Uhland's word volksballade^ notes that the medieval term for song or poetry of the people was in Latin carmen vulgare, or barbarum or rusticum^ but never populate, and in the vernacular always Peasants' Song, Mountain Song, what not, until Herder called the whole genus volkslied); and Uhland, Schriften, VII, 12, 360, and II, 587. Digitized by LjOOQIC