THE

LEGENDARY BALLADS

OF

ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

COMPILED AND EDITED BY

JOHN S. ROBERTS.

(EDITOR OF THE CROWN EDITION OF BURNS' WORKS.)

With Original Illustrations and Steel Portrait.

LONDON:

FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.

BEDFORD STREET, COVENT Garden.

NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, WELFORD, AND CO.

1868.

A

HARVARD COLLEGE LIVORY

1570, Aug. 8.

in Fiend.

LONDON:

SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.

38.7

12

PREFACE.

WHEN I assigned to myself the task of editing a collection of "Legen-
dary Poetry," the time at my disposal would not have admitted of my
doing more than simply gathering into a garland the best readings of
the more meritorious ballads. A period of enforced leisure, under cir-
cumstances which made it very desirable to forget in some genial
employment many things which were extremely painful to me, led
to my attempting something of greater magnitude and responsibility.
Under any
circumstances, in view of the many able men who have
preceded me in this field, I would have hesitated before dealing with
the subject at all, had not the early ballad poetry of my country been
familiar to me from boyhood. Born in a rural district, where books
were not plentiful, the cottage library consisting, in most cases, of a
Brown's "Commentary and Dictionary of the Bible," a "Book of
Devotion,"
a "Pilgrim's Progress," the "Works of Robert Burns," and
"Ralph Erskine," a miscellaneous collection of songs in small books
or in broadside, and a variety of the then popular "chap books,"
such as "Wise Willy and Witty Eppie," Leper the Tailor,"
"Simple Jock Sandeman," "Geordie Buchanan, the King's Fool,"
&c., the long winter evenings were frequently spent in story-telling,
&c. Even then, after the publication of "Scott's Minstrelsy,'
"Motherwell's" and "Buchan's" collections of Legendary Poetry, &c.,
many of the Ballads existed in the district in a traditionary shape.
(the printed versions, or even the fact that they were printed, being
unknown), to be utterly forgotten by the humbler classes when
the aged people to whom they had been known from childhood had
passed away.

66

I can only indulge in vain regrets that I cannot now remember a hundredth part of the old stories, ballads, and songs with which I was then familiar. Removing early in life to a town, and living in a society where the modern newspaper, the "Waverley Novels," and the literature these had called into being, were the subject of universal attention, the humble Tales and Ballads which had delighted the firesides of the Forfarshire cottages had almost passed from my remembrance, until a wider acquaintance with books surprised me into the

knowledge that many of them had become part and parcel of our literature. Snatches and stanzas of old and inedited rhymes still cling to me, but although I have made anxious inquiries in my native district for complete copies, or even presentable fragments, of Ballads which have never been printed in any collection, I have not succeeded in securing anything worthy of preservation, the spread of education, and the interest taken in cheap books and serials among the lower classes, having driven the unprinted literature which delighted their ancestors out of existence.

Several years ago it began to be whispered in certain literary circles that the bulk of our Legendary Ballad Poetry" was of no later date than the beginning of the last century, and Mr. Robert Chambers gave this heresy form and substance by the publication of a paper * on the subject in 1860. According to Mr. Chambers, the better known romantic Ballads, such as "Sir Patrick Spens," "Gil Morrice," "Edward Edwards," "Edom o' Gordon," "Young Waters," "Mary Hamilton," "The Gay Goss-Hawk," "Johnnie o' Braidislee," "The Douglas Tragedy," "Young Huntin," "Burd Helen," and several others, were in all likelihood composed by Lady Wardlaw, of Pitreavie, who died in 1727, and who for a time had succeeded in palming aBallad entitled "Hardyknute" upon her contemporaries as a genuine antique. This Ballad, though highly spoken of by Sir Walter Scott and others, is a clumsy and laboured performance as compared with the Ballads Mr. Chambers endeavours to ascribe to her, on no stronger plea than that certain phrases in these occur in " Hardyknute." In his zeal he fails to notice that, as the authoress was avowedly imitating the antique Ballads, she would naturally adopt their phraseology and style. He further argues that, because expressions occur in the Ballads which could not have been in use beyond the commencement of last century, they must have been composed since, forgetting that, as they existed only in a traditionary form, the language would necessarily change with the altered habits and speech of the people.

The best evidence as to the genuineness of our Ballad Poetry is the fact that they were current in various forms all over the country, incidents and names of heroes and heroines being altered to suit the locality of the reciter. That one or more writers during the last century produced these Ballads, and that the manuscripts passed from hand to hand, until they became thoroughly rooted in the memories of an entire people, and that more than one version of each -as many as four, five, and six of some-should exist simulta

* "The Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship." By Robert Chambers, F.R.S.E.