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Title: Story-Telling Ballads Selected and Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the Boys' and Girls' Own Reading Author: Frances Jenkins Olcott Release Date: November 23, 2020 [eBook #63858] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORY-TELLING BALLADS*** E-text prepared by MFR, Susan Carr, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/storytellingball00olc STORY-TELLING BALLADS THE LIFT GREW DARK, AND THE WIND BLEW LOUD, AND GURLY GREW THE SEA (page 5) STORY-TELLING BALLADS SELECTED AND ARRANGED FOR STORY-TELLING AND READING ALOUD AND FOR THE BOYS’ AND GIRLS’ OWN READING BY FRANCES JENKINS OLCOTT Colophon BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY FRANCES JENKINS OLCOTT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A TO MY SISTER VIRGINIA OLCOTT THE FOREWORD Here are 77 story-telling ballads and narrative poems, that will make the heart beat faster and the pulse bound, of any boy or girl from twelve to fifteen years of age. They offer a feast of good things—romances, hero-tales, Faërie legends, and adventures of Knights and lovely Damsels. They sing of proud and wicked folk, of gentle and loyal ones, of Laidley Worms, Witches, Mermaids with golden combs, sad maidens, glad ones and fearless lovers, moss-troopers, border-rievers, and Kings in disguise. All their doings are related in the stirring, leaping, joyous—or at times martial and mournful-ballad measure. The ancient ballads are here presented exactly as when in days of old they were sung by minstrels and recited by gaffers and gammers. No alterations are made in the texts of the ballad-collectors and collators, except the changing of a few objectionable words. Two or three of the less well-known ballads are done into modern spelling. A number, not hitherto found in children’s collections, will be delightfully new to young people. Some popular ballads, like “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,” and “The King and the Miller of Mansfield,” are omitted because they are in Story- Telling Poems. A goodly number of famous modern ballads are included; and at the end of the volume are 10 short narrative poems of “Pilgrimage and Souls so Strong.” At the end of the book are a Glossary and Indexes of subjects, authors, titles, and first lines. TEACHERS, STORY-TELLERS, AND BALLADS Since great care has been taken to choose authoritative texts (see Acknowledgments, page xv and Suggestions for Teachers, page 363), the teacher will find this collection helpful when instructing classes in early English literature or in ballad structure and measure. The Glossary for classroom use is placed at the back of the book, not in footnotes, because children who are reading for enjoyment easily learn new words from the context. The collection may be used for story-hours; or, as older boys and girls prefer being read aloud to, in it may be found an abundance of material for weekly poetry hours and for memorizing. YOUTH IN THE BALLADS Ballads are the natural heritage of every boy and girl. Ballads are tuned to the very pulse of Youth. They are red- blooded: joyous with the freshness of Springtime, and robust with the early Summer of Life. They appeal with peculiar delight to growing boys and girls, satisfying, as do no other poems, their craving for emotional expression in quick, rhythmic form. Ballads not only feed the romantic spirit of young people, but teach them much homely wisdom. They are essentially democratic and human. In them Kings and tinkers, Knights and shepherds, meet, talk, and feast together like comrades. And because the vigour of Youth so animates the old ballads, young folk read them eagerly, learn them almost without effort, and recite them with gusto. The wild, free life in the good greenwood, the chivalry, mystery, pathos, heroic deeds, and thrilling experiences—in fact, Life itself running the whole gamut of human emotions—enthrall the ever eager, questioning, shifting moods of boys and girls. HOW THE BALLADS GREW The human and universal in the ancient ballads, their eternal youthful appeal, are rooted deepset in the daily life of the People. Their very meter and airs are natural growths like the sheath of a wildflower. For in those good old ballad- making days, minstrels, the welcome guests of rich and poor, wandered from castle to cot and inn, from eyrie-like retreats of Highland chiefs to fortified border-towers of the Lowland or “North Contraye.” And as the minstrels rested their harps or bagpipes on the earthen floors of cottages, or while they sat feasting with nobles in baronial halls, they heard peasants, working-folk, servitors, squires, ladies, and returned Crusaders, telling of their adventures on land and sea, in fights, battles, border-raids, in abductions of lovely maidens, in combats with Saracens and with Laidley monsters, in meetings with Faërie Knights and Elfin Queens all under the greenwood-shade. They heard, also, tales of changelings and visits to Fairyland; stories of Ghosts, Ghouls, and Witches; legends of the sea; and traditions of national heroes. This material, so varied, so freshly spontaneous and imaginative, the minstrels shaped into ballads, setting them to music now wild and weird, now tragic and mournful, now sweet and debonair. So they played and sang the ballads in cottage, bower, and hall, moulding them to the delight and humours of their hearers, changing them to suit time and place. Thus there grew up many versions of a single ballad. The old folk, too, the gaffers and gammers by the fireside, learned the ballads and recited or sung them to the children; who in their turn, when they became old, told them to other children. Thus the old songs were passed along by word of mouth from generation to generation, from countryside to countryside, and even from one land to another. MAKING A COLLECTION FOR CHILDREN [Pg vii] [viii] [ix] [x] [xi] As was natural in those coarse old times, much that was unsuitable for children was woven into the ballads; which to- day makes it a difficult task to compile a representative juvenile collection. For, as Spenser so aptly put it when writing of Irish bards, they “seldom use to choose unto themselves the doings of good men for the arguments of their poems, but whomsoever they find to be ... most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition, him they set up and glorify in their rhymes, him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow.” But Spenser’s criticism of the Irish bards is far too violent a stricture on all Scottish and English ballad literature. For there are Scottish and English ones, clean, merry, and nobly heroic; fine and wholesome reading for our boys and girls. For Sir Walter Scott’s romantic tastes and his interest in Highland and Border life were awakened and fired, when he was a boy, by reading ballads. And Sir Philip Sydney wrote in his Defence of Poetry, “Certainly, I must confess mine own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style ... In Hungary I have seen it the manner at all feasts, and all other such-like meetings, to have songs of their ancestors’ valour, which that right soldier-like nation think one of the chiefest kindlers of brave courage.” But in making a collection of ballads for modern boys and girls, it is not enough to choose those that will arouse only the higher emotions. The interests of young people have to be consulted; while nothing in extremely difficult Scottish dialect may be included, nor in very old English. Then there are many versions of individual ballads to choose from. Of “Hynd Horn” there are eight or more; of “Young Beichan and Susie Pye,” fourteen or more; and of other ballads many versions. Next, authoritative texts must be found, for some transcribers have made mistakes or have altered the originals. So it may be seen what a painstaking task it is to compile a collection of ballads for educational purposes as well as for the boys’ and girls’ own reading. As for this volume, it covers so wide a range of fascinating subjects that it will surely entrance any lad or lass who, opening its pages for pleasure-reading, steps with Valentine and Ursine, Robin Hood and Clorinda, and the brave outlaw Murray, into The gude green-wood amang the lily flower. [xii] [xiii] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks are due Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company for the use of the following modern ballads, “The Ballad of the Oysterman,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes; “The Luck of Edenhall,” “The Three Kings,” and “The Skeleton in Armour,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; “The Singing Leaves,” by James Russell Lowell; “Barclay of Ury,” by John Greenleaf Whittier. Among the authoritative texts from which I have taken ancient and popular ballads, are Bell’s Early Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England; Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and his Folio Manuscript, edited by Hales and Furnivall; A Collection of Old Ballads, London, 1723-25; Dixon’s Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (Percy Society); Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs; Monk Lewis’s Tales of Wonder; Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern; Nicholson’s Historical and Traditional Tales ... Connected with the South of Scotland; Ritson’s Robin Hood; Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; Sheldon’s Minstrelsy of the English Border; also the scholarly collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, compiled and edited by Professor Francis James Child, for the use of which my acknowledgments are due its publishers, Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company. The best texts available have been followed for the original ballads by Sir Walter Raleigh, George Herbert, Hogg, Scott, Lover, Kingsley, Tennyson, Campbell, and Keats. [xiv] [xv] [xvi] CONTENTS THE SALT BLUE SEAS The Stormy Winds Do Blow 2 Sir Patrick Spens 3 The Dæmon Lover 7 The Mermaid Dr. John Leyden 10 A-HARROWING O’ THE BORDER The Galloway Raid 20 The More Modern Ballad of Chevy-Chase 21 The Ballad of Meikle-Mouthed Meg 32 Belted Will Frederick Sheldon 47 BRAVE HEARTS AND PROUD Earl Haldan’s Daughter Charles Kingsley 58 Lady Clare Alfred, Lord Tennyson 59 Proud Lady Margaret 62 The Famous Flower of Serving-Men 65 Cochrane’s Bonny Grizzy 70 The Greeting of Kynast Charles T. Brooks, from Rückert 74 LAYS O’ FAËRIE The Fairy Tempter Samuel Lover 80 Alice Brand Sir Walter Scott 81 The Erl-King Sir Walter Scott, from Goethe 86 The Fairy Thorn Samuel Ferguson 87 La Belle Dame sans Merci John Keats 91 Thomas the Rhymer 93 The Kelpie of Corrievreckan Charles Mackay 97 Kilmeny The Ettrick Shepherd 101 LAYS O’ WONDER The Wee Wee Man 114 The Earl of Mar’s Daughter 115 Kemp Owyne 122 The Lady of Shalott Alfred, Lord Tennyson 124 The Singing Leaves James Russell Lowell 131 The Luck of Edenhall Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from Uhland 135 May of the Moril Glen The Ettrick Shepherd 138 The Laidley Worm o’ Spindleston-Heughs 148 MERRY GESTES A Tragic Story William Makepeace Thackeray, from Chamisso 158 Little Billee William Makepeace Thackeray 159 Brian o’Linn 160 Dicky of Ballyman 162 The Ballad of the Oysterman Oliver Wendell Holmes 164 The Cinder King Modern, anon. 167 The Frolicksome Duke; or, the Tinker’s Good Fortune 169 King James the First and the Tinkler 173 King Alfred and the Shepherd 176 SAD GESTES The Sands of Dee Charles Kingsley 190 Fair Anny of Roch-royal 191 The Cruel Sister 196 Barbara Allen’s Cruelty 201 Song: Earl March Looked on his Dying Child Thomas Campbell 203 Lord Lovel 204 PRETTY MAYS AND KNIGHTS SO BOLD The Noble Riddle 208 Blancheflour and Jellyflorice 209 Glenara Thomas Campbell 212 The Beggar-Maid Alfred, Lord Tennyson 214 Lochinvar Sir Waller Scott 215 The Gay Goss-Hawk 218 Bonny Baby Livingston 224 [xvii] [xviii] [xix] Hynd Horn 231 Young Beichan and Susie Pye 237 The Child of Elle 244 FOR HALLOWEEN AND MIDSUMMER EVE The Spell John Gay 254 The Young Tamlane 255 The Wife of Usher’s Well 263 Sir Roland 265 The Skeleton in Armour H. W. Longfellow 270 Sweet William’s Ghost 276 The Eve of St. John Sir Walter Scott 279 ALL UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE The Birth o’ Robin Hood 290 Robin Hood and Little John 291 Robin Hood and Clorinda 297 Song of the Outlaw Murray 301 Valentine and Ursine 314 O’ PILGRIMAGE AND SOULS SO STRONG The Pilgrim John Bunyan 332 The Heart of the Bruce William Edmondstoune Aytoun 333 Barclay of Ury John Greenleaf Whittier 341 The Touchstone William Allingham 347 Sir Galahad Alfred, Lord Tennyson 348 Pilgrimage Sir Walter Raleigh 351 The Royal Court Modern, anon. 353 True Valour John Bunyan 355 Peace George Herbert 356 The Three Kings Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 357 APPENDIX Suggestions for Teachers 363 Programme for a Year of Ballad-Reading and Study 366 Glossary 373 Subject Index 385 Index of First Lines 390 Index of Titles and Authors 392 [xx] [xxi] ILLUSTRATIONS The lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, and gurly grew the sea Frontispiece “I fear not sign,” quoth the grisly elf, “that is made with bloody hands” 84 He turned him round; but still it hung behind him 158 But springing up, he raised his club, and aimed a dreadful blow 318 THE SALT BLUE SEAS [2] THE STORMY WINDS DO BLOW One Friday morn when we set sail, Not very far from land, We there did espy a fair pretty maid With a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, With a comb and a glass in her hand. While the raging seas did roar, And the stormy winds did blow, While we jolly sailor-boys were up into the top, And the land-lubbers lying down below, below, below, And the land-lubbers lying down below. Then up starts the captain of our gallant ship, And a brave young man was he: “I’ve a wife and a child in fair Bristol town, But a widow I fear she will be.” Then up starts the mate of our gallant ship, And a bold young man was he: “Oh! I have a wife in fair Portsmouth town, But a widow I fear she will be.” Then up starts the cook of our gallant ship, And a gruff old soul was he: “Oh! I have a wife in fair Plymouth town, But a widow I fear she will be.” And then up spoke the little cabin-boy, And a pretty little boy was he: “Oh! I am more grievd for my daddy and my mammy, Than you for your wives all three.” Then three times round went our gallant ship, And three times round went she: For the want of a life-boat they all went down, And she sank to the bottom of the sea. While the raging seas did roar, And the stormy winds did blow, While we jolly sailor-boys were up into the top, And the land-lubbers lying down below, below, below, And the land-lubbers lying down below. [3] SIR PATRICK SPENS The king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine; “O whare will I get a skeely skipper, To sail this new ship of mine?” O up and spake an eldern knight, Sat at the king’s right knee,— “Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor, That ever sailed the sea.”— Our king has written a braid letter, And seal’d it with his hand, And sent it to sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. “To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o’er the faem; The king’s daughter of Noroway, ’Tis thou maun bring her hame.” The first word that sir Patrick read, Sae loud loud laughed he; The neist word that sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his ee. “O wha is this has done this deed, And tauld the king o’ me, To send us out, at this time of the year, To sail upon the sea? “Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet, Our ship must sail the faem; The king’s daughter of Noroway, ’Tis we must fetch her hame.”— They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn, Wi’ a’ the speed they may; They hae landed in Noroway, Upon a Wodensday. They hadna been a week, a week, In Noroway, but twae, When that the lords o’ Noroway Began aloud to say,— “Ye Scottishmen spend a’ our king’s goud, And a’ our queenis fee.”— “Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud! Fu’ loud I hear ye lie: “For I brought as much white monie, As gane my men and me, And I brought a half-fou o’ gude red goud, Out o’er the sea wi’ me. “Make ready, make ready, my merrymen a’! Our gude ship sails the morn,”— “Now, ever alake, my master dear, I fear a deadly storm! “I saw the new moon, late yestreen, Wi’ the auld moon in her arm; And, if we gang to sea, master, I fear we’ll come to harm.” They hadna sail’d a league, a league, [4] [5] They hadna sail’d a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly grew the sea. The ankers brak, and the top-masts lap, It was sic a deadly storm; And the waves cam o’er the broken ship, Till a’ her sides were torn. “O where will I get a gude sailor, To take my helm in hand, Till I get up to the tall top-mast; To see if I can spy land?”— “O here am I, a sailor gude, To take the helm in hand, Till you go up to the tall top-mast; But I fear you’ll ne’er spy land.” He hadna gane a step, a step, A step but barely ane, When a bout flew out of our goodly ship, And the salt sea it cam in. “Gae, fetch a web o’ the silken claith, Another o’ the twine, And wap them into our ship’s side, And letna the sea come in.”— They fetch’d a web o’ the silken claith, Another o’ the twine, And they wapp’d them round that gude ship’s side, But still the sea cam in. O laith, laith, were our gude Scots lords To weet their cork-heel’d shoon! But lang or a’ the play was play’d, They wat their hats aboon. And mony was the feather bed, That flatter’d on the faem; And mony was the gude lord’s son, That never mair cam hame. The ladyes wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair, A’ for the sake of their true loves; For them they’ll see na mair. O lang, lang, may the ladyes sit, Wi’ their fans into their hand, Before they see sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand! And lang, lang, may the maidens sit, With their goud kaims in their hair, A’waiting for their ain dear loves! For them they’ll see nae mair. O forty miles off Aberdeen, ’Tis fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude sir Patrick Spens, Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet. [6] [7]