Excerpt from English Popular Ballads: Edited, With an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary

Chronology has been disregarded; the groups, and within the groups the ballads themselves, have been roughly arranged according to the relative complexity and elabora tion of the narrative art. For this there are two reasons, one pedagogical, the other scientific. For the student, it is desirable to begin with the briefest and simplest ballads and to proceed to the longer and more complex. So arranged, the ballads may form also a natural and an admirable intro duction to the study of the narrative art. They will, more over, be more easily remembered, than if, for example, they were printed in what might be conjectured to be the chrono logical order. It happens also that in the present collection most of the linguistic difficulties occur toward the end of the volume. Moreover, from the scientific point of View an' arrangement based on stage of development may conceiv ably be of value as an introduction to the problem of liter ary evolution and to the problem of the beginnings of poetry. These matters have, it is true, been hitherto mainly the concern of specialists; yet both have great human inter est and the general reader may well have some curiosity in regard to them. Certainly they stimulate reading and appreciation.

In the Introduction an attempt has been made to trace the development of the narrative art from the simple ballad of situation to the popular epic of Robin Hood, from the m'anner of the ballad par excellence, the ballad of the multi tude, to the manner of a rudimentary poetry of art, the poetry of the individual poet. Typical ballads are analyzed, and, incidentally, compared with the poetry of art. An attempt is made, finally, to interpret the results in the light of Professor Gummere's theory of communal origins.

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