Edward, Edward: A Scottish Ballad and a Footnote- Bronson 1940
Bertrand Bronson's "Edward, Edward. A Scottish Ballad and a Footnote," published in the Southern Folklore Quarterly in 1940 and reprinted in 1969 in The Ballad as Song.
[Proofed once- not carefully]
Edward, Edward: A Scottish Ballad and a Footnote- Bronson 1940
"Edward" has justly held a place of honor among ballads ever since it was first given to the world, in 1765, in the Reliques of Thomas Percy. For many persons, indeed, it has come to typify the whole category, so that "Edward" is what they think of when the popular ballad is mentioned. Ballad-lovers who wish to win converts, are likely to point first to "Edward" as exemplifying more strikingly than any other piece the particular merits of this kind of literature. No class in public speaking neglects it; no concert baritone but includes it from his repertory. All this is sufficient testimony to its universal appeal.
It's right to these laurels was confirmed by the great master, Francis James Child. "Edward," he said, "is not only unimpeachable, but has ever been regarded as one of the noblest and most sterling specimens of the popular ballad." [1] Child's approbation is the hallmark of balladry; and since he pronounced "Edward" sterling, few indeed have been rash enough to announce their suspicion of an alloy in the metal. Yet before Child's "I have said" doubts had been expressed more than once, and after almost sixty years of respectful silence, during which period the ways of oral tradition have been explored with results richly informative, it may be permissible once again to raise the question. "Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past."
Percy printed the ballad as "from a ms. copy transmitted from Scotland"; and supplemented that information, in his fourth edition, with a further note: This curious Song was transmitted to the Editor by Sir David Dalrymple, Bart. late Ld. Hailes, a Lord of Session"[2] -- the same Lord Hailes that revealed the secret of Lady Wardlaw's composition, "Hardyknute" when the rest of the world believed it to be a genuine old ballad, discovered, in a vault, on scraps of paper "wrapped round the bottom of clues." Lord Hailes had an active interest in old Scots ballads, and had himself printed such pieces from time to time. He supplied Percy with some of the finest ballads that adorned his Reliques-- all from manuscripts of unspecified origin, or, at best, deriving from the "memory of a lady since dead." A "lady," be it noted, not a peasant. Lord Hailes was not the man to spend valuable time taking down songs from the mouths of the peasants in order to get the exact words of unvarnished tradition. It was not yet generally known that the common people were the residuary legatees of things of this sort; nor, if it had been, would it have appeared desirable to perpetuate clumsy ineptitudes where improvement was easy. Percy put the general attitude frankly enough in the Preface to his fourth edition: "the old copies, whether MS. or printed, were often so defective or corrupted, that a scrupulous adherence to their wretched readings would only have exhibited unintelligible nonsense, or such poor meager stuff, as neither came from the Bard, nor was worthy the press; when, by a few slight corrections or additions, a most beautiful or interesting sense hath started forth, and this so naturally and easily, that the Editor could seldom prevail on himself to indulge the vanity of making a formal claim to the improvement." [3]
In his failure to be specific about sources, Lord Hailes was no more careless than his contemporaries, including Scott and excepting Ritson. For is there the slightest reason to suppose that he would have been any more likely to respect the letter than were his contemporaries, again including Scott and excepting Ritson. Percy himself, as is abundantly clear, was almost incredibly unscrupulous in this matter. A text, therefore, which comes to us, as "Edward" comes, through the medium of the Reliques, must provide itself with incontrovertible vouchers for its authenticity. Nothing in that work can be accepted merely on trust: literally everything has to be tested by other authority, as the publication of Percy's Folio manuscript demonstrated beyond contradiction.
"The affectedly antique spelling in Percy's copy," writes Child in his headnote to "Edward," "his given rise to vague suspicions concerning the authenticity of the ballad, or the language: but as spelling will not make an old ballad, so it will not unmake one. We have, but do not need, the later traditional copy to prove the other genuine." [4] But, of course, the existence of a later traditional copy will not by itself prove Percy's copy genuine, nor anything like it. The closer it is to Percy's copy, the more likely it is either to have been derived from that copy, or to have been influenced by it--and the Reliques was one of the most widely known books of its half-century. And the more unlike such a traditional copy is to its printed predecessor, the less serviceable it becomes in proving the authenticity of the ipsissima verba of the earlier version. The most it will do is offer corroborative evidence of the existence of such a ballad in traditional circulation.
The traditional copy to which Child refers was picked up by William Motherwell from the recitation of an old woman in Kilbarchan, sixty years after the publication of the Reliques. There are wide differences between it and the Percy version. Parricide has become fratricide, and the tragedy is revealed as having its origin in a casual quarrel "about the cutting of a willow wand." Thus any suggestion of guilt on the mother part becomes rather pointless; and in fact this version does not accuse her of evil counsel to justify the bequest of "a fire of coals." One may therefore choose between supposing either that the ballad was so old that the lines of the plot had become obliterated in transmission, or that the suggestion of the mother's guilt was due to contamination by the Percy version. The latter supposition would be supported by the fact that wherever else the ballad has been found--in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, or America- the mother remains unimplicated in her son's crime.
In other respects, too, the traditional version differs from Percy's. The name of the protagonist has become "Davie." In printing his version, Motherwell observes that "there is reason to believe, that his Lordship [Lord Hailes] made a few slight verbal improvements on the copy he transmitted, and altered the hero's name to Edward, a name which, by-the-bye, never occurs in a Scottish ballad, except where allusion is made to an English King."[5] Whether or nor Lord Hailes made the alterations suspected, it can be confidently stated that Motherwell's copy is entirely lacking in the magic of Percy's version. Motherwell himself says he prints it chiefly to introduce the melody to which it- is traditionally sung- a promise which he curiously and regrettably neglected to redeem in his appendix of tunes; and probably no educated reader, from that day to this, has thought his version worth memorizing in preference to the other. Nevertheless it is his version, rather than Percy's, which has been unmistakably perpetuated in oral tradition.
About the middle of the last century, Robert Chambers attempted to cast doubt on the folk origins of all the Scottish romantic ballads and propounded the theory-- which has nowhere found acceptance-- that the whole body of them was written by one person, about the commencement of the eighteenth century, and that that person was probably Lady Wardlaw. Thus, "Sir Patrick Spens," "Gil Morrice," "Edward," "Young Waters," "Edom of Gordon" and the rest are cheaply provided with a parent. It was perhaps with Chambers's untenable theory in mind, as well as in allusion to Motherwell's comment, quoted above, that Child wrote his headnote to "Edward," asserting its genuineness in the face of vague suspicions.
Now if Child's remarks were prompted by the thought of some general theory like that of Chambers as it bore on the authenticity of such a ballad as "Edward," a possibility arises which is of very considerable importance to our discussion. It becomes possible, it even begins to look probable, that Child has been generally misunderstood. He may not, after all, have been asserting his belief in the authenticity, in the confined sense of the term, of the Percy-Hailes version, but rather his certainty that "Edward," regarding all its versions as a single entity-"Child No. 13"-- was a genuine popular ballad. In saying that the traditional version proved the Percy version "genuine," he may not have meant to imply his acceptance of the latter, word for word in the form in which it appears in the Reliques, as the product of the popular muse uncontaminated by "literary" influences, but only his belief that basically it was not a Poem of individual authorship. When he went on to declare that "Edward" was "unimpeachable," he may have had the larger concept still more entirely in his view. If he were defending this multiform entity, with its continental analogues, from a general attack like Chambers', he would nor so easily have noticed the ambiguity of his words. He could pass insensibly from a discussion of the Percy version to the ballad taken as the sum of its versions, without marking the distinction. And, in fact, he does allow that the word "brand," in Percy's first stanza, "is possibly more literary than popular," though he goes no farther in that direction. "Further than this," he declares, "the language is entirely fit." The "language," that is, the vocabulary: he does not say whether he harbors any suspicion of subtler kinds of literary influence.
If this be the drift of Child's remarks--I do not insist that it is-- he has certainly been misapprehended, for in common reference his praise of this ballad is always applied specifically to Percy's version, while the other versions are ignored or forgotten. Assurance that his words were to-be interpreted as I have suggested that they may be, would at least be comforting to a critic who is not at all bent on showing that- the ballad's life began with Lord Hailes's manuscript copy, but only that that copy is itself open to the gravest suspicion. Whatever Child thought of it, we must now scrutinize this version for evidence of literary rehandling.
In estimating the degree of literary influence that may be present in Percy's "Edward," we ought not at the start, on the strength of a knowledge of the habit of ballads, to ignore the superior artistry of this ballad over others of similar pattern, nor to minimize the skill with which the technique is employed here, even if we think the process largely unconscious. Too much emphasis on the virtues of the method tends to make one discount the value of the result, because, in spite of our era, most of us still respect conscious contrivance more highly than we do a mechanical necessary. In this ballad, we have been told, what seems the cunning of art in the ordonnance of the narrative is- simply the product of ballad machinery. Given a familiar story plus the ballad conventions of the climax of relatives and the legacy formula, "Edward" is the automatic result. Thus, in an otherwise admirable introduction to the ballads, we read:
. . . the telling-unexpectedness at the close of Edward is due, nor to conscious art, but rather to the instinctive use of formulas wide-spread and well established in ballad literature. Much, then, that looks like the last word in modern narrative method, the concentration of attention upon a single situation, the use of concrete terms, the omission of explanation and of all unessential, or even essential, matter, the development of the situation with due regard to suspense and climax, all this is natural and unconscious in the ballad[6].
By thus seeming to emphasize the mechanics of the ballad as being in large measure responsible for its success, the critic involuntarily does it an injustice. Much in the ballad that "looks like the last word in modern narrative method" is the last word in modern narrative method, though not necessarily the final word. Let us not overstate the unconsciousness of the process: ballads do not make themselves in any esoteric sense; their employment of convention is deliberate and proceeds with foreknowledge of the intended result -which is to let their story told in their own fashion. The folk who sing the ballads never, if memory serves, lose sight of the story. We must disagree with the opinion that the singers of the ballad "Edward" had a greater interest in making lyrical comment on the story than in telling the story itself, or that they took the story for granted. Such an assumption is contradicted by the experience of every one who has collected ballads from the mouths of the people and it leads to a false estimate of the importance to the folk-singer and his normal audience of the elements of suspense and surprise in the ballads. Naive minds are just as susceptible to these appeals as educated minds, probably more susceptible. As every one has noticed in children, suspense and surprise have their way with the hearer, no matter how familiar the story or how numerous the repetitions. With such listeners, at least, the pleasures of suspense are just as vivid whether or not the outcome is known, and the surprise is re-experienced at every fresh telling. Even the cultivated reader responds in some degree to these appeals, so long as a work of art that possesses them continues to exert any hold on him. Under the spell of the art-experience, he imaginatively resumes the condition of ignorance even while he knows the issue. He knows but he does not know. This divided consciousness, which actually enriches his experience, is no more contradictory and no less real, then the "willing suspension of disbelief," and no less vital to full enjoyment of the work of art. We must have become deadened to the experience of "Edward" if we do not, every time read the ballad, feel the atmosphere grow more and more charged as question and answer succeed one another, until the final revelation chills us with a fresh shock of horror. And if we with our comparatively objective attitude react in this fashion, we cannot doubt the force of these appeals on minds that lack our detachment and yield themselves to the story with unconstrained spontaneity. But, whatever the degree of surprise, it is safe to declare that the complexity of pattern wherein the suspense is built up and the skill with which the terrible secret is withheld to the last is sui generis in the whole range of popular balladry. To be sure, the devices here employed are the familiar ones of incremental repetition, the legacy formula, the climax of relatives. Nevertheless, no other ballad makes use of them with anything like the same sophistication. "Lord Randal," for example, an admirable ballad, employs the same devices, in a similar pattern. But the effect is naive when compared with "Edward." In "Lord Randal," the questions of the other are answered by the son in a straightforward manner; the truth in the case is early divined through Randal's insistence on his weariness, or sickness, immediately after his admission that he has been with his sweetheart; and there is no melodramatic and unlooked-for revelation at the close.
In the ordering of the questions and answers in "Edward," the degree of art over and above the ballad norm must be neither overlooked nor minimized. At the ordinary level, the questions of the mother would conventionally be asked in threes and so answered. Thus, for example:
O hae ye killed your hauke sae guid,
Or hae ye killed your reid-roan steid,
Or hae ye killed your fadir deir.
My deir son, now tell me O.
I hae nae killed my hauke sae guid,
Nor hae I killed my reid-roan steid,
But I hae killed my fadir deir,
Alas, and wae is me O,
Fortunately, instead of this, each question here has its answer in turn (taking the double question at the outset as one) before the next question is asked. No mere mechanical principle directs the selection of the more effective arrangement. Then, for the ordinary straightforward answer there is substituted a lying evasion, which, in turn, is answered by a statement of incredulity that in each case does duty for another question. Moreover, the form of the mother's reply to each successive evasion is unusual in balladry. We should ordinarily find her expressing her disbelief with much more directness, as, for instance:
Ye lee, ye lee, my bonny son,
Sae loud's I hear ye lee O:
Your haukis bluid was neir sae reid,
My deir son, I tell thee O.
Or she might even omit altogether the reason for her disbelief, letting the accusation of untruth stand alone. But here, instead, she omits the accusation itself and merely states the reasons, leaving the rest to inference:
Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,
and again,
Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair,
Sum other dule ye drie O.
Once more, when the legacy motive is employed, we do not find it in its normal form. We should expect, as in "Lord Randal," a series like
What'll ye leave to your brither,
Edward, Edward. . .
What'll ye leave to your sister. . . to your bairns, . . . to your wife, . . . to your mother . . .
Instead of this normal procedure, the mother's questions are framed in such a fashion as to catch up into themselves the material of the usual ballad reply, thereby in turn prompting replies of an imaginative reach far beyond the ordinary ballad compass. Hence, instead of something like
'What'll you leave to your bairns and your wife,
Edward, Edward?
What'll you leave to your bairns and your wife,
My dear son, now tell me O.,
'I'll leave them baith my houses and lands,
Mither, Mither,' &c.
we find--it is a vast difference--
And what wul ye doe wi your towirs and your ha?
followed by a most unconventional, but highly dramatic, reply:
I'll let thame stand tul they doun fa.
And next:
And what wull ye leive to your bairns and your wife.'. .
The warldis room, late them beg thrae life, &c.
And finally, the thrilling and awful conclusion, which gains still greater effectiveness by two features that are, once again, out of the ordinary. First, there is the mother's implication of an emotional bond between herself and her son, so that, instead of a question put with the usual impersonality, we have
What wul ye leive to your ain mither deir?
The other feature is the son's turning upon his mother the full force of direct address, instead of continuing the third person reference of her question, or avoiding the use of the pronoun
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Sic counseils ye gave to me O.
contrast the effect of this with that of the final stanza in Motherwell's version:
'What wilt thou leave to thy mother dear,
A fire o coals to burn her, wi' hearty cheer,
And she'll never get mair o me.'
The last line of Percy's version- "Sic counseils ye gave to me o"--raises another matter for consideration: the artistic substitution of a new and appropriate line at each repetition for the last part of the refrain. Thus, we might have expected something like
My deir son, now tell me O
to keep recurring throughout the ballad in the alternate quatrains. Instead, we find the following:
And why sae sad gang yee O?
My deir son I tell thee O. . .
Sum other dule ye drie O. . .
My deir son now tell me O. . .
That were sae fair to see O. . .
Whan ye gang ovir the sea O.
Similarly with the corresponding line in the intermediate quatrains: instead of a formula, as in "Lord Randal," we find continual
change:
And I had nae mair bot hee O. . .
That erst was sae fair and frie O. .
Alas, and wae is mee O!
And Ile fare ovir the sea O. . .
For here nevir mair maun I bee O.
For thame nevir mair wul I see O.
Sic counseils ye gave to me O.
It need hardly be said that this use of the refrain, instead of providing points of rest, or opportunities for choral assistance by the audience-- the customary habit of ballads which have preserved their refrains-offers instead additional material on which the hearers would not be expected-nor indeed be able to encroach. A similar use of the refrain occurs in Deloney's version of the "Fair Flower of Northumberland" and in a few other ballads where literary influence is to be presumed. The richness and irregularity of the refrain material in the present ballad is further elaborated by the alternation of "Edward, Edward" with "Mither, Mither" in the other half of the refrain--an exploitation of the dramatic possibilities of the refrain which can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere in ballads.
The antique spelling in which Percy (or Lord Hailes) saw fit to dress the ballad need not disturb us any more than it did Professor Child. But certain points of style and phraseology should not be overlooked. There is first the word brand, which Child himself noted as "possibly more literary than popular." The usual ballad word for a man's weapon is blade or sword, not brand--except passion in Peter Buchan's versions of the ballads. Again, the form of the first question invites attention: instead of
What bluid's that upon your sword?
or
How gat ye that bluid upon your sword?,
the extraordinary rhetoric of
Why dois your brand sae drap wi' bluid?
Is this the language of oral tradition or of an embryonic Macbeth? It will hardly pass muster as good ballad diction. Again, for this question to be followed immediately by the further query, with its unheroic, not to say sentimental, implications, so unlike the ancient habit,
And why sae sad gang yee O,-
where sad, one may well feel, carries connotations of an eighteenth-century melancholy rather than of medieval hardihood: this, too, is surely worthy of remark. Even though the word sad be allowed the weight of an older habit, it will still seem somewhat out of key with the right tone of the tragic ballad, seem inappropriate to the unintrospective, unbrooding acceptance of grim realities in a stern and hostile world.
Possibly the next point is too subjective to find ready acceptance. One reader, at any rare, has the feeling that the closely knit sequence of the lines,
Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair,
Sum other dule ye drie O,
is much more reasonably argumentative than it has any business to be for good traditional ballad style. The point is tied-up with the unnatural richness of the questions and answers. And it has already been suggested that here and throughout the remainder, this ballad, in its whole ordonnance, is the apotheosis of convention, pushing the devices it employs quite beyond their traditional manners and uses.
Motherwell's suggestion that Lord Hailes changed the original name of the hero to Edward is very brusquely dismissed by Professor Child. "Dalrymple, at least," he writes, "would not be likely to change a Scotch for an English name. The Bishop might doubtless prefer Edward to Wat, or Jock, or even Davie. But as there is no evidence that any change of name was made, the point need not be discussed." [7] Quite true, but if Motherwell is right in saying that the name does not elsewhere occur in a Scots ballad, it may still be permissible to wonder if it belongs in this one. The doubts which Child himself raises as to the authenticity of many lines and stanzas in Walter Scott's versions of the ballads he printed rest on exactly the same sort of grounds: a feeling as to what is or is not appropriate to the proper style of the pieces in question.
We should not care to go so far as the late T. F. Henderson, who after calling attention to this ballad's "utter linguistic superiority to the average Scottish traditional ballad versions," its "masterly wording" and "the admirable art of its construction," roundly declares it to be "verse with which the desecrating muse of popular tradition has had, so far as can be discerned, no commerce." [8] It is a fact, however, whether the fact mean much or little, that the ballad cannot be shown to have existed in British tradition before the publication of Percy's Reliques. Since Percy's time, "Edward" seems to have had a very limited circulation. In Scotland, it was found once by Motherwell (about 1825) and a fragment of it was picked up, at about the same time, by Alexander Laing. Since then it has not, so far as I know, been found by Scottish collectors.[9] Gavin Greig's sixty-odd volumes (ms.) of traditional verse gathered at the turn of the century contain no trace of it. It has apparently never gained a foothold in England.[10] In the southern mountains of the United States, however, it has been recovered several times in our own day. Cecil Sharp found it some eight times, in the Appalachians, more or less complete and in a form far closer to Motherwell's version than to Percy's. In this southeastern form, Edward (who is never named) kills his brother in a quarrel concerning a bush that might have made a tree. Although, as we have seen, in Motherwell's version the mother's guilt is suggested, the American versions bear no trace of this aspect of the plot. Since the Scandinavian variants also lack that AEschylean feature, it is natural to surmise that the implicating of the mother in the crime may not be a traditional element of the ballad, but may be rather some individual's stroke of genius, to give the due measure of pity and terror. Without it, at any rate, the ballad is left an undistinguished story in which an unpremeditated murder of a brother drives a man to flight from his home and family. Few things could be more tasteless, or more lacking in the tragic qualm, than these American versions. One example will serve for all:
How came that blood on the point of your knife?
My son, come tell to me.
It is the blood of my old coon dog
That chased the fox for me, me, me,
That chased the fox for me.
How come that blood, &c.
It is the blood of that old horse
That ploughed that field for me, &c.
How come that blood, &c,
It is the blood of one of my brothers
Which fell out with me, &c.
What did you fall out about? &c.
We fell out about a holly-bush
That would have made a tree, &c.
What will you do when your father comes home? &c.
I'll put my foot in a bunkum boat
And sail across the sea.
And what will you do with your old gobbler? &c.
I'll leave it here with you when I'm gone
To gobble after me.[11]
One cannot resist calling attention to that last stanza, with its introduction of new material into the ballad. Here is the "epical process" in esse!
Professor Child was wont to declare that the popular ballad was inimitable. Looking at "Edward," whether in Percy's version or in that of Mrs. Meg Shook, one inclines, for divergent resons, to agree with Child. One feels, at any rate, that, as sent to Percy by Lord Hailes, it was, so far as its form is concerned, very close to its fountainhead. And its form, apart from its formulas, is what makes all the difference between Percy's version and the inept Appalachian variants.
A Footnote To "Edward, Edward"
Dare one ask those who believe Percy's version of "Edward" to be the natural product of unsophisticated folk composition whether they have fully considered the implications of their position?
So far as I am aware, no one is disposed to quarrel with professor W. M. Hart's admirably lucid analysis of the elements of the ballads, which he has ranked according to the degree of their narrative complexity. Except, perhaps, in the heroic ballads, most examples of which are Danish, he finds greatest attention to the element of character in, the Gest of Robyn Hode, where the hero displays qualities of humor, loyalty, pity, rudimentary notions of social justice and class consciousness, besides the more physical attributes of hardihood, bravery, and so on the simpler stages of balladry, in due proportion, are shown to lack this elaboration of character. Thus we learn that in the Robin Hood cycle "description of States of Mind is still an undeveloped element' " that the border heroes "rise to a dignity of a type, embody popular ideals"; that in the Simple Ballads, the hero is a "mere doer of deeds. . . nothing more." [12] Of this least complex class of ballads, where there is no emphasis on character, and where the focus of interest lies entirely in event or situation, "Edward," has been cited as an outstanding example.
The superiority of "Edward"-- I speak only of Percy's version-- is chiefly due to its surprise ending which delays the climax to the very end, administering the shock of the horrible revelation when the hearer believes he already knows all the essential facts in the story, so that he must reconstruct his attitude to everything that has preceded. Without this ending, the climax occurs in the middle of the ballad, and the denouement is inartistically protracted. The violence of the readjustment which the voices upon us has possibly hindered our drawing certain inferences relating to the conduct of the narrative and to the character of the persons involved in the ballad.
It is obvious that the whole dialogue, in the light of the final implication of the mother in her son's guilt, is converted into an intellectual fencing bout. The mother already knows everything. Her son knows she knows. Why, then, does she ask her questions? Why does he postpone admission of the truth by lies and evasions? To answer these questions plausibly, from the point of view of character, is to construct psychological portraits of considerable complexity. One cannot justify the analogue without presuming two highly self-conscious beings. From the psychological point of view, it's is no simple explanation of such reticence and indirection as theirs.
But, from the narrative point of view, there is a simpler explanation. It may be argued that the dialogue is so arranged, not to exhibit any subtlety of character--and manifestly not to clarify the facts in the minds of either mother or son--but with deliberate cunning, to keep the hearer in the dark so that he may be surprised by the ending.
Either explanation is unacceptable to the orthodox view of the traditional ballad and its ways. The first compels us to assume a subtlety of character portrayal absolutely without parallel, not only among simple ballads of situation, but even in the classes of greatest complexity. People ask questions in ballads in order to learn what they do not know, or -in the case of the riddling ballads--because they believe the persons questioned do not know and cannot answer. "Lord Randal" and "Riddles Wisely Expounded" exemplify the types. Where else than in "Edward," on the contrary, can one find a character in a ballad asking for information which he or she knows that the informant knows that the questioner already possesses? But if we take the second explanation, we have to acknowledge a narrative technique of highly sophisticated artistry, quite charateristic of the "natural and instinctive" use of conventional formulae in the traditional ballad. Where else can one observe a deliberate withholding of the crucial fact in the story? If the reader shies at the word deliberate, he is thrown back opott the other horn of the dilemma' And if it be argued that such a degree of narrative craft is not beyond the presumable skill of a popular singer steeped in the best ballad tradition, we may reasonably ask for other evidence of the same technique in the best ballad tradition.
Earlier, I have pointed out what seem to me- good grounds for regarding Percy's "Edward" with suspicion, if proposed as an authentic exemplar of traditional balladry. I am glad to find that Professor Archer Taylor, in a scholarly and ingenious comparison of all the available variants of the ballad, in whatever language, has already arrived, by an entirely different route, at a similar conclusion: that the ending of Perry's version must be "surrendered as a contamination," and that in other respects as well the same version is "disordered." [13]
Footnotes:
1. F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, I (1882), 167.
2. T. Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, I (1794), 61.
3. Ibid., I, xvi-xvii.
4 Child, loc. cit.
5. W. Motherwell, Minstelsy: Ancient and Modern (1827), p. 340
6. W. M. Hart, English Popular Ballads (1916), p. 16. The author of the passage has taken friendly "exception to my understanding of his words. The phrase instinctive use, he feels makes due allowance for the play of the artistic sense,
and he would not deny the presence of such an element in the shaping of the ballads. I would suggest that the more importance one is willing to grant to the presence of this element, the less one leaves of any such distinction between the ballads and works of "conscious art."
7. Child, loc. cit.
8 T. F. Henderson, The Ballad in Literature (1912), pp. 25-26.
9 This is now (1968) no longer true. Several versions have been found by Scottish collectors, that sung and recorded by Jeannie Robertson, out of Aberdeen, titled "My Son David," is now well known. Cf. Tradition Records, TLP. 1947,
Side 1, band 7, Recorded by Hamish Henderson, 1951.
10. A textually confused variant has lately been collected in Hampshire (Aldershot).
11 C. J. Sharp and M. Karpeles, English FoIk Songs frorn the Southern Appalachians, I (1932), 49. Version sung by Mrs. Meg Shook, Clyde, North Carolina, August 2, 1917.
12 W. M. Hart, Ballad and, Epic (1907), pp. 77,70, 53.
13 Archer Taylor, "Edward" and *Sven i Rosengard,, (1931), pp. 26,36, 39.