Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/35

Rh INTRODUCTION. xxix giants of ballad criticism are not too happy in the way of a definition ; the ballad, he says,^ has " a naive objectivity, without any reflection, any sentimentalism ; it has lively, erratic narrative, full of leapings and omissions, sudden change from narrative to dialogue, no ornamentation, the art of making with few strokes a vigorous sketch of events and situations." Simplicity of thought and speech, he adds, are in the ballad, and a naturalness that borders on savagery. Another critic ^ insists on the spontaneous character of ballads ; they never give us poetry for poetry's sake, but are born of an occasion, a need ; they have as little subjectivity as speech itself. These are the cardinal virtues of the ballad ; * with respect to its conditions, critics unite in regarding oral transmission as its chief available test.* The ballad, then, must give us the sense of tradition, and a flavor of spontaneity ; riches of the emotions and of direct vision, poverty of intellect and reflection. Its poetic diction must be unschooled, close to life, and no dialect, although full of recurring phrases which give occasion for loose talk about the " ballad slang." ^ We ^ Romanzenpoesie d, Spaniery in Wiener Jahrbucher^ CXVII, 126. 2 Burdach, in Haupt*s Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alterthum, XXVII, 344- 466. ^ The recurring phrases of the ballad have a well-known parallel in epic, and are a mark of poetry of the people. Thus they are as common in Russian ballads as in English or German : see Bistrom, Das russische Volkseposm the Zeitschr. f. VolkerpsychoL^ etc, V, 188, 193. Motherwell, Minstrelsy ^ Amer. ed., I, 7, calls them "common- places ... an integrant portion of the original mechanism of all our ancient ballads . . . one of their most peculiar and distinctive char- acteristics." It is evident that such recurring phrases make for the communal character of the ballad. An artist avoids commonplaces, avoids the evident, and seeks to vindicate his own self. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * See also Professor Child in JohnsorCs Cyclopcedia^ 1893, I, 464,
 * See Brandl in Paul's Grundriss d. germ. Philologies II, i, 839.