these races, and children of their ballads were their epics-Iliads, Nibelungenlieds, Cids, and the long train. of metrical romances that followed them. Autochthones in every land, like the fairy tales which the Germans call Märchen, they wandered up and down the world like gypsies, homeless but happy in the lanes and byways long after their epical descendants had built for themselves palaces. Wherever they have been found, in France, or Portugal, or Italy, or Greece, in Denmark, or England, or Scotland, the stamp of their common parentage is upon them.

Whether the makers of these vernaculous old productions were the minstrels who sang them to the people, or the people themselves of whom these minstrels were the wandering voices, cannot now be determined. They existed like the song of birds and the music of running waters. The first thing that strikes our notice in them (as Motherwell has pointed out) is the almost uniform dramatic character of their structure. "The action of the piece commences at once. It does not, like the metrical romance, proceed, after craving the attention of lord and lady, and invoking the aid of the Virgin Mary, etc., to give a sketch of the parentage, education, and promising qualities of the doughty knight or gentle squire who is to figure in it. There is no pompous announcement of the exquisite enjoyment to be derived. from the carping of such noble gestes. If such particulars are at all alluded to, they are noticed merely incidentally, and dashed off perhaps in a single line. The characters and the destinies of those who form the subject of such tales are learned from their actions, not by the descriptions of the poet. They generally open

with some striking and natural picture, pregnant with life and motion. The story runs on in an arrowlike stream, with all the straightforwardness of unfeigned and earnest passion. There is no turning back to mend what has been said amiss, to render more clear that which may have been dimly expressed or slightly hinted; and there is no pause made to gather on the way beautiful images or appropriate illustrations. If these come naturally and unavoidably, as it were, good and well; but there is no loitering and winding about and about, as if unwilling to move on till these should suggest themselves. The charm of the composition lies in the story which it evolves. Strained and artificial feeling has no place in it, and rhetorical embellishments are equally unknown. Descriptions of natural scenery are never attempted, and sentiment is almost unheard of. Much is always left for imagination to fancy, and for the feelings of the auditors to supply, roused as they cannot fail to be by the scenic picture rapidly and distinctly traced before the mind's eye. In his narrative, the poet always appears to be acting in good faith with his audience. He does not sing to another what he discredits himself, nor does he appeal to other testimony in support of his statements. There is no reference to 'as the boke tells,' or 'as in Romans I rede,' for a corroboration of what he affirms. He always speaks as if the subject which he handles. were one quite familiar to those whom he addresses, and touching which nothing but a perfectly honest and circumstantial statement of facts could be relished. If fifteen stalwart foresters are slain by one stout knight, single-handed, he never steps out of his way to prove

the truth of such an achievement by appealing to the exploits of some other notable manslayer. If a mermaid should, from a love of solitude and the picturesque, haunt some lone and lovely river, and there, while kembing her yellow locks, peradventure fascinate some unhappy wight, the poet never apologizes for the appearance of the water-woman by covertly insinuating how marvellous be the inhabitants of the ocean. And though an Elfin knight should unceremoniously adopt for his paramour some young lady whom he meets of a summer's evening, while rambling through the gay greenwood, and whose taste for the loveliness of nature is certainly more remarkable than her prudence, he never betrays any surprise at the circumstance, but treats it as a matter of every-day occurrence and historical notoriety. Should an unhappy ghost wander back to earth, the poet is perfectly master of the dialogue he holds with the maid he left behind him; nor is he at a loss accurately to describe how the fiend can, with a single kick of his cloven foot, sink a goodly bark, although reasonable doubts may well be entertained how such facts could have transpired, seeing none of its crew ever reached the land to sing of such an 'unhappy voyage,' more terrific by a deal than that performed under the melancholy auspices of that 'brisk and tall young man' hight 'William Glen,' who was bound for, but alas, never returned from, 'New Barbarie.' But be the subject of the narrative what it may, whether it be of real life fraught with an interest deeply tragical, or one of wild superstition and romantic incident, it will ever be found clearly, succinctly, and impressively told. There is no unnecessary waste of

words—no redundancy of circumstances, nor artful evolution of plot, and no laying on of color above color, to give a body and brilliancy to the picture. It stands out in simple and severe beauty-a beauty arising, not from the loveliness of any one individual feature, but from the perfect harmony and wholeness subsisting among and sustaining all."

As might be expected from their antiquity, the spirit with which the old ballads is animated is pagan, if not barbaric. There is that in them—even in those that were manifestly composed after the extension of Christianity throughout Europe-which is averse from the religious sentiment. They are without morals, and without conscience. The thought of the balladist never goes beyond his ballad. It is his business to narrate, but not to judge: whether the good are rewarded, or the bad punished, is no concern of his. The ballads of England and Scotland, in which we are chiefly interested here, divide themselves into two classes,-the Personal, which turns upon the adventures of the hero, or heroine, of the balladist, who may or may not have been taken from real life, and the Historical, which turns upon the adventures of other heroes, or heroines, who figure in, or at least are mentioned in, history. Belonging to the former class are Lady Maisry and Clerk Saunders, to the latter Chevy Chace, and probably Sir Patrick Spens. In reading these old ballads, which were never meant to be read at all, we should remember that their makers were poets, and not historians, or biographers: of history and biography, as we understand them, they knew absolutely nothing. King Arthur was as veritable to them as Robin Hood,

of whom, and whose exploits they were never tired of singing.

The advent of Robin Hood in English balladry cannot be traced, owing to the obscurity in which that balladry is involved. It must have occurred, however, before the fourteenth century, when he was already a popular hero. Langland refers to him and the body of song which had grown up around him in the fifth Passus of The Vision of Piers Ploughman (circa 1360), where an ignorant, idle, and bibulous priest confesses, in the character of Sloth,

"I kan noght parfitly my pater-noster

As the preest it syngeth;

But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood,

And Randolf erl of Chestre ;

Ac neither of oure Lord ne of our Lady
The leiste that evere was maked."

Fordun, the Scottish historian, a contemporary of Langland, speaks of Robin Hood, and Little John, and their fellows, "of whom the foolish vulgar in comedies and tragedies make lewd entertainments, and are delighted to hear the jesters and minstrels sing them above all other ballads:" Boethius, another Scottish historian, also a contemporary, speaks of the same merry pair of outlaws, "of quhom ar mony fabillis and mery sportis soung amang the vulgar pepyll;" and Major, another Scottish historian, contemporary with the three, and a little less credulous, declares that "the exploits of this Robert are celebrated in songs throughout all Britain." It was a twice-told tale which Major told, for about thirty years before he published his history (1521), Wynken de Worde had made a collection.