390 



UALISTJE BALLAD. 



remonstrated against the power which Edward as- 

 sumed over Scotland, he was summoned to his tribu- 

 nal as a vassal. Irritated at this, Baliol concluded a 

 treaty with France, on which a war wiih England 

 immediately commenced ; and, after the battle of 

 Piinhir. lit- Mil-rendered his crown into the hands of 

 the English monarch, who sent him and his son to 

 London, to be imprisoned in the Tower. The pope 

 interceded for them, and they were liberated, and 

 committed to his legate, in 12H7. linliol retired to 

 his estate in France, where lie died in 1314. 



BALIST.C, or BALUST.E ; a kind of machines for 

 besieging, or attacking the besiegers, in use among 

 the ancients, by which heavy stones, also arrows and 

 other weapons, were thrown ; and even burning sub- 

 stances and dead bodies, by the besiegers. Many of 

 the ancient writers confound the balistce with the 

 catapulta, but Polybius makes a difference, using 

 the latter won! only for those machines which threw 

 stones. The mechanism of these machines is not 

 quite' clear. There is a third name for a kind of 

 these machines onager. The weight of the stones 

 thrown was from 10 to 300 pounds. Sometimes a 

 large quantity of stones was thrown at once. A clear 

 idea of these instruments cannot be formed without 

 the study of treatises on the arms and warfare of the 

 ancients. 



BALIZE ; a sea-port of Mexico, in Yucatan, at the 

 mouth of the river Balize. Vessels of burden can- 

 not come near the town, on account of a bar in the 

 river. It is the only settlement of consequence, be- 

 longing to the British, on the coast, and consists of 

 about tOO houses, built of wood. The chief trade 

 is in logwood and mahogany. 



BALK ; the ancient Bactria. (See Afghanistan^ 



BALKAN (anciently called Hccmut) ; a lofty and 

 rugged chain of mountains, extending from cape 

 Emineh Burum, on the Black sea, in European Tur- 

 key, to cape San Stefano, in the Adriatic sea, from 

 23 to 27 E. Ion. Near Sulu Derbent (Porta Tra- 

 jani), this mountain, called, by the Turks, Emineh 

 Slag, separates from Rhodope, and divides the,' valley 

 of the Danube, which constitutes Bulgaria, (inhabi- 

 ted mostly by wandering tribes), from Romania, or 

 Rumelia. A branch extends from north to south 

 (mount Athos) ; another runs through ancient Greece, 

 and comprehends the mountains Olympus, (Eta, Pin- 

 dus, Parnassus, Helicon. The highest peak, Orbe- 

 lus, rises 9000 feet above the surface of the sea. After 

 the overthrow of the empire in Constantfnople, only 

 the Greeks of the plains and the sea-coast submitted 

 to the Mussulmans. The warriors, and those who 

 had no landed property, fled into the mountains, into 

 thf armatolics, and have, in general, maintained a 

 continual contest with the pachas of the plain : 

 some have paid a small tribute to the Turkish pacha, 

 and some have become Mahominedans. The dis- 

 tricts where the Catholic is the prevailing church, 

 contain the wildest inhabitants, and have never been 

 subjected to the emperors of Constantinople for any 

 length of time. 



BALL. Ball-playing was practised by the an- 

 cients, and old and young amused themselves with 

 it, particularly in the thermae. Tht Greeks and Ro- 

 mans had four kinds of balls. One was of leather, 

 filled with air, and consequently similar to our foot- 

 ball ; the second a leathern ball, which was thrown 

 on the earth, and after which many ran it once ; the 

 third, a small ball, similar to our shuttlecock, which 

 three persons, placed in a triangle, struck towards 

 each other ; the fourth was thickly stuffed with fea- 

 thers, and used particularly in the country. In a 

 Roman villa, a sphteristerium, (a place appropriated 

 for playing ball) was always to be found. In the 

 middle ages, there were houses appropriated to ball- 



playing. In these, certain persons were employed to 

 pick up the balls of the players, who, in France, were 

 called nanquett, and, in later times, maryiieurt. In 

 Italy, there are still public places, where people play 

 with large balls, which they strike with a kind of 

 wooden cylinder, fastened round their wrists, to an 

 immense height. The spectators often pay tor ad- 

 mission to the spectacle, and, in some cities, the play- 

 ers form a company. From what we have seen in 

 different countries, we think the national Gemma 

 ball-play the most interesting, and the one which af- 

 fords the best exercise. 



BALLAD ; a short epic song, (from the. Italian bal- 

 lata, an old kind of song,) of an entirely lyric nature. 

 Ballata is derived from ballare, to dance, probably 

 from the German wallen (pronounced valleti), which 

 signifies a waving motion. Though the name is 

 Italian, the species of poetry which we now under- 

 stand under the word ballad, belonging to England 

 and the other northern nations of Europe, is of Teu- 

 tonic origin, at least Percy and Bouterweck agree 

 in this, and Frederic Schlegel, in his History of An- 

 cient and Modern Literature (Vienna, 1815), seems 

 to be of the same opinion. The word ballata passed 

 from the Italians to the Provenqales, from whom the 

 Normans took it, and carried it to England, where it 

 was applied to short songs, particularly to the most 

 popular ones, which were short tales in verse, de- 

 scribing the deeds of heroes, the adventures of lovers, 

 &c. I? we wish to trace the English and Scottish 

 ballad to its origin, we must have recourse to those 

 songs which existed among the inhabitants of the 

 island before the Norman conquest, and were of a 

 kind common to all the Teutonic nations. It is re- 

 lated of king Alfred, that he sang in the camp of 

 the Danes. All the Scandinavian nations delighted 

 in songs celebrating the deeds of heroes, or describ- 

 ing the passions and adventures of lovers; and the 

 three great divisions or cycles of the Teutonic poetry 

 of the middle ages, the stories of the Nibelungen, 

 those of Charlemagne (particularly such as relate to 

 his war against the Arabians, and the battle of Ron- 

 cesvalles), and the tales of king Arthur's round 

 table, consist of what, at a later period, were called 

 ballads. 



The true home of the English ballad is the north- 

 ern part of England (the North Country), and the 

 southern part of Scotland, where the influence of 

 the Normans was less than in the south of England. 

 Those Normans who >?ettled hi these parts despised 

 the native poetry, which they did not understand , 

 and thus it was left entirely to the people, and re- 

 tained, for that reason, its simple and popular cha- 

 racter, even after it grew into esteem among the 

 descendants of the Norman conquerors. The feudal 

 wars of the Norman knights, and their highly chi- 

 valric spirit, which flourished in England as long, 

 and in as much purity, as in the southern countries 

 of Europe, afforded new subjects to the ballad, and 

 contributed to modify its cnaracter. The minstrels 

 were accustomed to sing the deeds of their ancestors, 

 with all the additions which a lively imagination dic- 

 tated. They soon commemorated, in the same way, 

 the achievements of their contemporaries, and now 

 the ballad, properly so called, originated. The for- 

 mer bards became minstrels, who, in connexion with 

 the jongleurs, or jovgleurs (resembling the modern 

 jugglers, who have derived their name from them), 

 waited upon the barons, like the French menetriers, 

 devoting themselves to their amusement, and receiv- 

 ing in return, pecuniary rewards and hospitable en- / 

 tertainment (Minstrel and menetrier are both de- 

 rived from the Latin ministerialist) As the popular 

 poetry of the first centuries after the Norman con. 

 quest did not acquire a literary reputation, and pro- 



