The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
" Queen of Elfin's Nourice." 1 Whereas these
fairy-ballads seem to be most at home in their
2
Scottish versions, there is a ballad of the dead,
which survived until 1868 in Sussex tradition,
and contains a very ancient and popular belief,
namely, that excessive grief for the dead will not
let them rest.
But we must go back to Scotland for The Wife
of Usher's Well, certainly the best ballad in its
kind that we possess, perhaps the best that the
lore of any folk possesses.
It is too well known to
require any remark of mine but the fact that
;
even the most fastidious connoisseurs of literature
seem to find room for it in their hearts gives
me cause to exclaim once more that no ballad is
literature. The anthologist of the Oxford, Book
of English Verse includes it,
with a dozen others
of our supreme ballads and some " masterless "
carols and songs, between Bunyan and the matchless
Orinda ! Yet Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch is a
true enough lover and judge of both popular
verse and the artistic lyric to know that wherever
he might attempt to weave the ballads into his
garland they would look and smell like rathe
primroses among hothouse flowers.
To return : in the history of ballads, men and
heroes have now passed, and their deaths and
future state have been sung ;
we proceed to the
1
Second Series, 6.
a The Unquiet Gra*ve t
Second Series, 41.
51