The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
where literature and anthropology are delightfully
mingled.
If I end where I began, with a warning that
ballads are not " literature," it is
perhaps with a
tendency to broaden the interpretation of the
word in order that it
may comprehend them.
But, as long as the definition of literature hypothecates
an individual origin, the distinction must
be made. The poetry of art is aristocratic, and
the poet should have as divine a right as a king ;
the poetry of the folk is democratic, common
property, of universal appeal, yet possessing (as
"
the headmaster said of the boys' neckties) no
efflorescences." You do not quote a single line
from a ballad, exclaiming at its excellence ;
at
the least you quote
literature the thing
is
a verse of four lines. In
not so much what a man
says as the way in which he says it ;
in ballads
the criterion is reversed. I would like to be able
to say that you never know what a ballad will say
next, though you do know how it is
going to say
it ! The ballad-language
is common popular
stock ;
the folk will have nothing to do with the
phraseology of the artists. The man in the street
does not allude to " The Prisoners (Temporary
Discharge for Ill-health) Act," but to " The Cat
and Mouse Act." His ancestor, the man in the
country or village-community, was content to
call ladies " gay," and water " wan " to know
;
that the former were usually
to be found " sew-
61