Publisher's Synopsis
"When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely under-stood, and was little practised. Editors were con-tent to study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and North-ern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the bal-lads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our own, with Eu-ropean Märchen, or children's tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more re-cent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song. A typical ex-ample is the Song of Lamech in Genesis-"
