Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/49

Rh INTRODUCTION. xliii in a living circle, sung to the harp and animated by the voice, the vigor and the courage of the singer or poet ; now '* — that is, with printing, — " they stood fixed in black and white, prettily printed on rags ! " The poet now wrote ** for a paper eternity," where once he had sung to the living heart and to the listening ear. And this audience of old time was no class, no fragment, but the race itself. " Folk," cries Herder, " that does not mean the rabble of the streets." ^ Thus his doctrine, his sermon. But there is something to be learned from his selections and translations,* which did so much to beget a taste for ballads. Like Percy, Herder included in his collection much that could not be brought under the head of ballads ; bits of the Edda, soliloquies from Shakspere, even sheer vers de socUtS, were mixed with ballads like " Edward," in order to rescue his chances with the public.^ Yet Herder would evidently include the plays of Shakspere in his poetry of the people. He cared little or nothing for origins. If a poem seemed to express thought or emotion of a national character, if it smacked of outdoor life and not of the study, it fell under his category of volkslied. He did not ask whether it came from a community or race as a representative creation, as their own making, but whether, whatever its origin, it would express any race or commu- nity, and correspond to their taste, their sentiment, their 1 Works, XXV, 323. 2 The first edition was printed in two parts, and bore the title VolkslUder (1777 and 1778) ; whereas the second edition was called Stimmen der Vblker, But there was a still earlier collection than these, now first made public by Suphan, which Herder and his wife sent to the press in 1775 ; for some reason it was withdrawn from publication. •Later editors of ballad-collections have followed the example of Percy and Herder, but without their excuse. Digitized by LjOOQIC
 * ' Aforetime," runs his Jeremiad, " these songs rang out