A Collection of Ballads

by Andrew Lang
Contents:

Sir Patrick Spens
Battle Of Otterbourne

Tam Lin
Thomas The Rhymer

"Sir Hugh; Or The Jew's Daughter"
Son Davie! Son Davie!

The Wife Of Usher's Well
The Twa Corbies

The Bonnie Earl Moray
Clerk Saunders

Waly, Waly
Love Gregor; Or, The Lass Of Lochroyan

The Queen's Marie
Kinmont Willie

Jamie Telfer
The Douglas Tragedy

The Bonny Hind
Young Bicham

The Loving Ballad Of Lord Bateman
The Bonnie House O' Airly

Rob Roy
The Battle Of Killie-Crankie

Annan Water
The Elphin Nourrice

Cospatrick
Johnnie Armstrang

Edom O' Gordon
Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament

Jock O The Side
Lord Thomas And Fair Annet

Fair Annie
The Dowie Dens Of Yarrow

Sir Roland
Rose The Red And White Lily

The Battle Of Harlaw - Evergreen Version
Traditionary Version

Dickie Macphalion
A Lyke-Wake Dirge

The Laird Of Waristoun
May Colven

Johnie Faa
Hobbie Noble

The Twa Sisters
Mary Ambree

Alison Gross
The Heir Of Lynne

Gordon Of Brackley
Edward, Edward

Young Benjie
Auld Maitland

The Broomfield Hill
Willie's Ladye

Robin Hood And The Monk
Robin Hood And The Potter

Robin Hood And The Butcher
INTRODUCTION

When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads,
from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under

certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely
understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to

study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great
Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then

adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads
of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our

own, with European MARCHEN, or children's tales, and with the
popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage

peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly
stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every

man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses
himself in song. A typical example is the Song of Lamech in

Genesis -
"I have slain a man to my wounding,

And a young man to my hurt."
Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil,

Skarphedin, are always singing. In KIDNAPPED, Mr. Stevenson
introduces "The Song of the Sword of Alan," a fine example of

Celtic practice: words and air are beaten out together, in the
heat of victory. In the same way, the women sang improvised

dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danae in
Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of

life, war, agriculture, the chase, had its appropriatemagical and
mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among

Australian blacks. "The deeds of men" were chanted by heroes, as
by Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls,

like Homer's Nausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and
medicine-men accompanied rites and magical ceremonies by songs.

These practices are world-wide, and world-old. The thoroughly
popular songs, thus evolved, became the rude material of a

professional class of minstrels, when these arose, as in the heroic
age of Greece. A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a

noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the
people. In either case, this class of men developed more regular

and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; the LAISSE of the
CHANSONS DE GESTE; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian

poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The
narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the

mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed
into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many

cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in
professional and literary hands. The mediaeval minstrels and

JONGLEURS (who may best be studied in Leon Gautier's Introduction
to his EPOPEES FRANCAISES) sang in Court and Camp. The poorer,

less regular brethren of the art, harped and played conjuring
tricks, in farm and grange, or at street corners. The foreign

newer metres took the place of the old alliterative English verse.
But unprofessional men and women did not cease to make and sing.

Some writers have decided, among them Mr. Courthope, that our
traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary

poetry. The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the
same as those of some literary mediaeval romances. But these plots

and situations, in Epic and Romance, are themselves the final
literary form of MARCHEN, myths and inventions originally POPULAR,

and still, in certain cases, extant in popular form among races
which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the ampler and more

polished and complex GENRES of literature. Thus, when a literary
romance and a ballad have the same theme, the ballad may be a

popular degradation of the romance; or, it may be the original
popular shape of it, still surviving in tradition. A well-known

case in prose, is that of the French fairy tales.
Perrault, in 1697, borrowed these from tradition and gave them