The Balladists Famous Scots Series docx

CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII The Balladists, by John Geddie The Balladists, by John Geddie 1 The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Balladists, by John Geddie This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The Balladists Famous Scots Series Author: John Geddie Release Date: August 17, 2009 [EBook #29713] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BALLADISTS *** Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE BALLADISTS [Illustration: THE BALLADISTS BY JOHN GEDDIE FAMOUS ·SCOTS· ·SERIES· PUBLISHED BY OLIPHANT ANDERSON & FERRIER · EDINBURGH AND LONDON ] * * * * * The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and the printing from the press of Messrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh. * * * * * PREFACE Not much more has been attempted in these pages than to extract the marrow of the Scottish Ballad Minstrelsy. They will have served their purpose if they help to awaken, or to renew, a relish for the contents of the Ballad Book. To know and love these grand old songs is its own exceeding great reward; and it is also, alas! almost the only means now left to us of knowing something concerning their nameless writers. Questions involving literary or critical controversy as to the age and genuineness of the ballads have been, as far as possible, avoided in this popular presentation of their beauties and their qualities; and in case any challenge may be made of the origin or authenticity of the passages quoted, I may say that, in nearly every case, I have prudently, and of purpose, refrained from giving the authority for my text, and have taken that which best pleases my own ear or has clung most closely to my memory. The Balladists, by John Geddie 2 J. G. July 1896. CONTENTS PAGE The Balladists, by John Geddie 3 CHAPTER I BALLAD CHARACTERISTICS 9 CHAPTER I 4 CHAPTER II BALLAD GROWTH AND BALLAD HISTORY 24 CHAPTER II 5 CHAPTER III BALLAD STRUCTURE AND BALLAD STYLE 43 CHAPTER III 6 CHAPTER IV THE MYTHOLOGICAL BALLAD 58 CHAPTER IV 7 CHAPTER V THE ROMANTIC BALLAD 83 CHAPTER V 8 CHAPTER VI THE HISTORICAL BALLAD 108 CHAPTER VI 9 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION 128 CHAPTER VII 10 [...]... Arden they no sooner look than they sigh; they no sooner sigh than they ask the reason; and as soon as they know the reason they apply the remedy Or, mounted on 'high horseback,' the lover comes suddenly upon the lady among her sisters or her bower-maidens 'playin' at the ba'.' 'There were three ladies played at the ba', Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O! There cam' a knight and played o'er them a',... This is peculiarly true of the Scottish ballads The best of them are dipped in gloom of the grave They breathe the very soul of 'the old, unhappy far-off times.' Even over the true lovers, Fate stands from the first with a drawn sword; and the story ends with the 'jow of the deid bell' rather than with the wedding chimes Superstitious terrors, too, add a shadow of their own to these tragedies of crossed... think of them apart The analogy of the Scottish psalmody may, perhaps, be used in illustration In it, also, there is a 'common measure' that can be fitted at will to the common metre in the psalms, as in the ballads, the alternation of lines of four and three accented syllables In the one case, as in the other, there is a certain family resemblance, in the melody as in the theme, that to the untrained... Romance They furnish examples of nearly all the root-ideas and typical tales which folklorists have discovered in the vast jungle of popular legends and superstitions the Supernatural Birth, the Life and Faith Tokens, the Dragon Slayer, the Mermaid and the Despised Sister, Bluebeard of the Many Wives, the Well of Healing, the Magic Mirror, the Enchanted Horn, the Singing Bone, the Babes in the Wood, the. .. the Wood, the Blabbing Popinjay, the Counterpart, the Transformation, the Spell, the Prophecy, the Riddle, the Return from the Grave, the Dead Ride, the Demon Lover, the Captivity in Faởryland, the Seven Years' Kain to Hell, and a host of others Certain of them, like Thomas the Rhymer and Young Tamlane, are 'fulfillộd all of Faởry.' One can read in them how deeply the old superstition, which some would... imitation But even the Wizard's hand is not cunning enough to patch the new so deftly upon the old that the difference cannot be detected The genuine ballad touch is incommunicable; to improve upon it is like painting the lilies of the field CHAPTER I 13 In the ranks of the Balladists, then, we do not include the many writers of merit some of them of genius who have worked in the lines of the elder race... phrases that reappear in The Douglas Tragedy, Gil Morice, and their variants In Johnie Armstrong o' Gilnockie, The Border Widow, and The Sang of the Outlaw Murray, also in which we should perhaps see the reflection, in the popular mind of the day, of the efforts of James IV and James V to preserve order on the Borders it is on the side of the freebooter rather than of the king and the law that our sympathies... least as late as the middle of the seventeenth century that of the Ordeal by Touch In Young Benjie another test is applied to find the murderer; and at midnight the door of the death-chamber is set ajar, so that the wandering spirit may enter and reanimate for an hour the 'streikit corpse': 'About the middle of the night The cocks began to craw; And at the dead hour o' the night, The corpse began to... of these Mythological Ballads must be, if not in their actual phraseology, in the dark superstitions they embody and in the pathetic glimpses they afford us of the thoughts and fears and hopes of the men and women of the days of long ago the days before feudalism; the days, as some inquisitors of the ballad assure us, when religion was a kind of fetichism or ancestor worship, when the laws were the. .. day.' And when they are buried, there springs up from their graves, as has happened in all the ballad lore and mọrchen of all the Aryan nations: 'Out of the one a bonnie rose bush, And out o' the other a brier,' that 'met and pleat' in a true lovers' knot in emblem of the immortality of love, as love was in the olden time These are all hackneyed phrases and incidents of the old balladists, the merest counters, . EBOOK THE BALLADISTS *** Produced by Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE BALLADISTS [Illustration: THE BALLADISTS BY JOHN GEDDIE FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES PUBLISHED. painting the lilies of the field. CHAPTER I 12 In the ranks of the Balladists, then, we do not include the many writers of merit some of them of genius who have worked in the lines of the elder. other hand, the folk-song reflects the sunnier hours of the days of old. This is peculiarly true of the Scottish ballads. The best of them are dipped in gloom of the grave. They breathe the very