The English Lyric 29 



One may safely appeal to the consensus gentium, — not of boors 

 and milkmaids, but of poets. Sidney's clarion phrase rings im- 

 pulsively to mind : " I never heard the old song of Percy and 

 Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a 

 trumpet." That alone were sufficient were we not over-rich 

 in corroboration. Perhaps one may best name the poets of our 

 later era who have found model and inspiration in the popular 

 balladry: Scott, Burns, Keats, the Rosettis, Swinburne, Kipling 

 . . . but the whole gamut must be run to name them all ; for no 

 influence has better seasoned modern English poetry than this 

 of the native song of the people. 



No words are better on this theme than the sane appraisal 

 given by Professor Gummere at the close of The Popular Bal- 

 lad : The majority of our ballads, he says, " must be classed as 

 inferior poems. The best, even, cannot compete with great 

 poems of art; but there is a greatness of their own in their 

 attitude towards life, in their summary and transcript of it. 

 They know, as the lords of tragedy in Hellas knew, as Shakes- 

 peare knew, that only the anguish of some inevitable conflict 

 is worth while. They know by instinct, as lyric poets have 

 known in their ' recollected emotion/ that while tragedy is 

 insoluble, it holds the solution of existence in its own mystery, 

 and that only from death springs the meaning of life." 



" They know by instinct," and with instinctive surety press 

 home, that poignancy of life which is the soul of poetry. 



But my present interest is to show in the ballad literature the 

 first clear fusion of the Saxon and Celtic modes; and this asks 

 the reader's assent only to the genuineness of the ballad inspira- 

 tion, as voicing the character and ideals of the normal English- 

 man of the mid-period. Which conceded, it is due time for il- 

 lustration. I will not quote in extenso nor cite more than 

 typical instances; the reader may call to mind further substan- 

 tiation. 



Let us begin with the untouched Saxon mode, — and there are 

 many ballads similar in construction and theme to this Scottish 

 ballad of Edzvard, which Brahms has so magnificently inter- 

 preted in the sister art: 



371 



