Perrow—The Last Will and Testament in Literature. 719 
into Creseid’s mouth a very pretty testament. 1 The beautiful, 
ill-starred heroine of Trojan story is dying of grief, exposure, 
and disease. Her wretched body she bequeaths to the worms. 
Her few worldly possessions the rest of the leper-folk are to 
have in pay for burying her. The ring that her lover had given 
she sends back to him in token of her repentance. Her spirit 
she bequeaths to Diana. lAt last overcome with the thought of 
her faithlessness, she dies with her Testament unfinished. 
Just where in the history of the Testament one should place 
those found in the popular ballads is a difficult matter to de¬ 
termine. Although the writing down of the ballad material 
has been comparatively late, it is very probable that some of 
the testaments found therein go back fully as far as the fif¬ 
teenth century. The connection of the testament found in the 
ballad with that found in the more sophisticated literature is 
another difficult problem. It is not inconceivable that the 
testament feature of the ballad may, in same cases, have been 
inspired by examples in literature less popular in origin. But 
it seems to me more likely that this feature goes back in its 
origin to a much earlier period than that in which the testa¬ 
ment of literature rose into prominence. 
Aside from the fact that there is always a possibility for the 
testament to arise whenever the ballad makers were trying to 
represent just what the person dying actually did say, the fact 
that the testament is a widely spread feature of the ballad 
points also to a vulgar rather than a literary origin. While 
only three of Child’s collection of English and Scottish ballads 
eontain the testament, Prof. Child points out a large number 
of ballads in other languages that contain this feature, and he 
says that the testament “is highly characteristic of ballad 
poetry.” 2 It is probable that the testament in the ballad goes 
back to a period falling shortly after the Church had brought 
to western Europe a knowledge of the legal document, and the 
feature may go back still further to the last words and fare¬ 
wells that must have been customary even in very primitive so- 
1 Skeat’s Oxford Chaucer, vol. 7, p. 327. 
2 F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Boston and 
New York, 1882-1898, no. 11, Introduction. 
