The ballad - Index of

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natural things, we may feel that they indicate a
high degree of native interest in other worlds and
mysterious beings but
; although
it is true that
some of our finest ballads Thomas Rymer, Tarn
Lin, Clerk Sanders, The Daemon Lover, The Wife
of Usher's Well 1 come in this category, we in
Britain do not harp so constantly on that theme
as our neighbours of Scandinavia. Naturally
enough, we share with them the of gist many
a ballad, and it
may well be that the basis
of our English
2
dirge, with its
magnificent
refrain, came over the North Sea once upon a
time.
So far the ballads have dealt with life and
death ;
but man begins to dream what may come
afterwards. There is,
besides the future world,
the " other " parallel world, the world of supernatural
beings fairies, demons, nixies or pixies ;
and a tale of the relations between mortal and
immortal would seem always to have held a fascination
for the folk. True, Thomas " the
Rhymer " and Tarn Lin were each carried away
by the queen of the elfin world and we
;
possess
a lovely little lyrical fragment of the complaint
uttered by
a mortal mother abducted to be the
1
All in my Second Series, i, 47, 66, 112, and 60 respectively.
2
The Lyke-Wake Dirge, a traditional lyric not narrative,
and therefore no ballad may be studied in my Second Series, 88
and Appendix.
50