Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/73

Rh All of the English and Scottish ballads, by the very conditions of their preservation, lie this side of the purely communal stage. The "Gest" is an epos in the making, with local traditions and local characters; its central figure is no immortalized hero, but rather an idealized type of the woodland outlaw,—certainly not a tottering relic of pagan divinity, whether Woden or even Brandl's field-and-forest demigod. This admirable poem shows no defect in sharpness of outline, although transmission and the fusion of several independent ballads have destroyed identity of person and legend; like any good epic, it bears the double grace of a popular origin and an incipient artistic control. Only madness could regard such an altogether charming piece as mere gregarious makings, like the Färöe ballad of the frustrated fisher, jostled into unity by the chances of time. "Otterburn" and "The Hunting of the Cheviot" are in the same class: traditional verse of the people at its best, handed down by shifty singers. So it is with "Johnie Cock" and "Johnie Armstrong"; each has overwhelmingly popular character, yet a form and a cohesion which suggest the beginning, however feeble, of literary tact. "Kinmont Willie" should be compared with the other two; whatever Scott's share in it, its literary suggestion is far more prominent. "Sir Andrew Barton" is a good story, well told in parts, but far gone into the way of broadsides. Of the shorter ballads, "Spens," "Brackley," "Mary Hamilton," and others, reveal the charm of tradition and that pathos