The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
November 16, 1906, wrote to the editor to enquire
where he could find the poem " in which
these lines occur " :
" I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul.
I have not shrunk or cried aloud
Beneath the bludgeonings of fate.
head is bloody but unbowed.
My
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."
The editor did not reply ;
but again the investigator
of the methods of oral tradition pricks
his ears. The original poem is dated 1875 by
Henley see what it has become in
; thirty years
!
But we must return to the point ;
the ballad is
not literature. In current parlance a man may
"
say, I have written a ballad," but that is to use
the word loosely.
Most written " ballads,"
whether by Rossetti, Gilbert or Kipling, cannot
be admitted to our category, because they were
given definite form once for all by their authors,
who conceived them, composed them, and wrote
them down. They are literature ; they are not
" old ballads." Old in a sense such ballads
may
be ;
for imitation ballads were written in the
eighteenth, seventeenth, and for all we know in
"
the remoter centuries. Let us now praise
famous men . . . such as found out musical tunes
and recited verses in " :
writing
that is the piety
of an artist towards his artistic ancestors, famous
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