The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
rights in a " west-country " song. England and
Scotland have combined so long in balladry that
it is a hopeless task to separate them ;
Ireland
and Wales maintained the Celtic tongue too long
to enter the same category for we are already
within the circle of history, and the story of the
Tower of Babel applies. If I
may digress a
moment, nothing is more striking to a student
of the English ballads and folk-speech than to
analyse the V new " Irish speech of the peasants,
recorded for us to-day by the pioneers of the
dramatic revival in Ireland. Synge's people of
few
Donegal and the Isle of Arran may speak a
sentences which if translated into the corresponding
English vernacular would be appreciated by
"
our rustics ;
but then, lo, the Lady Helen of
Troy with a . . .. nosegay in her golden shawl "
!
Ballads exchange phrases, but only with each
other, not with the literature of art. It is true
that Orpheus has just managed to survive, but
one cannot think that the Shetland peasant who
sang of the " king o' Ferric " knew whom he was
naming.
Our English and Scottish ballads, then, are enclosed
in the Germanic ring which surrounds the
north of Europe. The rings are not concentric,
for we approach Scandinavia more nearly. But
while our neighbours have for the most part
studied the ballads of their countries for themselves,
we have left it to America to provide us
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