A Book of Old English Ballads by George Wharton Edwards

With an Introduction by Hamilton W. Mabie

'A Beautiful Book, an Embrace of the Classic, a World Passed by...'

CLASSIC ENGLISH BALLADS

Music Song Sheets

'The work of the singer was only a ripple in the stream of national poetry.

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally "dancing songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides. The form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.

"Song and playing were cultivated by peasants, and even by freedmen and serfs. At beer-feasts the harp went from hand to hand. Herein lies the essential difference between that age and our own.

When the conditions which produced the popular ballads become clear to the imagination, their depth of rootage, not only in the community life but in the community love, becomes also clear. We under stand the charm which these old songs have for us of a later age, and the spell which they cast upon men and women who knew the secret of their birth; we understand why the minstrels of the lime, when popular poetry was in its best estate, were held in such honour, why Taillefer sang the song of Roland at the head of the advancing Normans on the day of Hastings, and why good Bishop Aldhelm, when he wanted to get the ears of his people, stood on the bridge and sang a ballad! These old songs were the flowering of the imagination of the people; they drew their life as directly from the general experience, the common memory, the universal feelings, as did the Greek dramas in those primitive times, when they were part of rustic festivity and worship.

In the selection of the ballads which appear in this volume, no attempt has been made to follow a chronological order or to enforce a rigid principle of selection of any kind. The aim has been to bring within moderate compass a collection of these songs of the people which should fairly represent the range, the descriptive felicity, the dramatic power, and the genuine poetic feeling of a body of verse which is still, it is to be feared, unfamiliar to a large number of those to whom it would bring refreshment and delight.

Includes the Following Classic ballads;

Chevy Chace

King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid

King Leir and his Three Daughters

Fair Rosamond

Phillida and Corydon

Fair Margaret and Sweet William

Annan Water

The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington

Barbara Allen's Cruelty

The Douglas Tragedy

Young Waters

Flodden Field

Helen of Kirkconnell

Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale

Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne

Robin Hood's Death and Burial

The Twa Corbies

Waly, Waly, Love be Bonny

The Nut-brown Maid

The Fause Lover

The Mermaid

The Battle of Otterburn

The Lament of the Border Widow

The Banks o' Yarrow

Hugh of Lincoln

Sir Patrick Spens