The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
under similarly stimulated conditions, he will be
forced to admit his error.
We all must have realised the effects of " pastime
with good company " ;
many
must have
recognised in themselves the exhilaration, the
sharpening of the wits, the access of high spirits,
that come from being associated with others on
some festal occasion, though it be but a political
meeting. It is a phenomenon cognate to panic,
a contagious emotion that grows by what it
feeds on.
" We may," says Shaftesbury in his
Characteristics of Men, " call every Passion Pannick
which is rais'd in a Multitude, and convey'd
by Aspect, or as it were by Contact or Sympathy.
. . . There are many Pannicks in Mankind, besides
merely that of Fear." It is one such
" Pannick
" that now confronts us ;
our multitude
is, according to the hypothesis, passionate.
It is full of the lust of battle, or it is
delighted at
having safely garnered its harvest, and celebrates
Mars or the corn-spirit
in a rhythmic utterance
associated with one or the other.
As collective emotion is necessary to the production
of such a composition,
it
might be expected
that a revival of the same emotion would
be accompanied by the revival of the song. Even
to-day we can discover, I believe, a hint of this
ingrained association in the curious passion with
which folk-singers the genuinely illiterate storehouses
of folk-lore that still survive in a few old
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