Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/70

lxiv Ixiv INTRODUCTION, in question, gives us pause when we are asked to set down the problem of the origin of the ballad as a matter definitely adjusted by modern criticism. It seems to us, and not at all in the way of Uhland's compromise, that the modern school make a very perilous leap when they conclude from the safe assertion of nebulosity and lack of meaning in any notion of the ballad as singing itself, that therefore the primitive ballad, which we do not see and never have seen, was made as any other poem is made, and is differenced simply by oral transmission. Let us frankly give up this phrase, that the ballad " makes itself." Let us go further, and give up for any ballads in our control the assumption that they were made by a whole race or community as such. But let us not surrender so hastily the autonomy of the ballad, the dualism of poetry of the people and poetry of the schools ; let us maintain opposition between the throng and the artist, between the chorus and the lyric. At least, let us not give up all this until we have completed our critical task, until we have rendered better account of the essential elements of the ballad as it must have been at its best. VIL It is impossible to watch a ballad in its making ; that merry art is dead. Even if one could uncover the origins of any English ballad, it is not likely that one would see a folk in verse behind it. It might be traced, like "Thomas Rymer," to some romance, or, like " St. Stephen," to a legend of the church, or, like " King Orfeo," to a distorted tale from the classics. " Mary Hamilton " seems as Scottish and as local as may be ; but for all its versions, the source of it is probably to be found in the court of Peter the Great. " Bewick and Grahame " is surely no loan from abroad ; but it belongs, at the earliest, to the Digitized by LjOOQIC