Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Ballad Book
What Shakespeare knew, and Scott loved, and Mac Donald echoes, can hardly be beneath the admiration of high school and university students. Rugged language, broken metres, absurd plots, dubious morals, are power less to destroy the vital beauty that underlies all these. There is a philosophical propriety, too, in beginning poetic study with ballad lore, for the ballad is the germ of all poem varieties. From it are successively developed the epic, lyric, and drama.
This volume attempts to present such a selection from the old ballads as shall represent them fairly in their three main classes, - those derived from superstition, whether fairy-lore, witch-lore, ghost-lore, or demon-lore; those derived from tradition, Scotch and English; and those derived from romance and from domestic life in general. The Scottish ballads, because of their far superior poetic value, are found here in greater number than the English. The notes state in each case what version has been followed.
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