Francis James Child and the 'Ballad Consensus'
by Dave Harker
Folk Music Journal, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1981), pp. 146-164
Francis James Child and the 'Ballad Consensus'
*This essay is the first part of a study of the 'ballad consensus'. A second essay will deal with the development of the 'consensus' up to the 1930s, and a third will examine its influence up to the present day.
DAVE HARKER
TO MANY PEOPLE, Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads has the immobility of a monument. Its sheer bulk, wealth of detail, and apparently exhaustive critical apparatus do, indeed, present a formidable appearance; yet a closer inspection of the theoretical foundations of Child's edifice will reveal not only a circularity of argument, but also, ironically, a distinct lack of self-confidence.[1]
Bert Lloyd was one of the first to challenge the notion of an 'unquestioned aristocracy' of so-called 'Child ballads', which
can only refer to a limited selection of ballads, if at all. And whatever the literature dons might think, not all these nobles are in Francis J. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, nor can all the items in that great compilation be numbered among the peers of the folk song realm. The majority of Child's selection represents but one stage of the ballad, a middle stage lying between the old form of epic song and the newer form of domestic ballad, journalistic ballad, street song and the like.[2]
So, when Walter Hart noted in 1906 that 'the significant fact is that for at least forty years Professor Child retained without essential change his conception of the traditional ballad as a distinct literary type' ('PCB', p. 800), he pointed to the basis of the theoretically incestuous process which underpins the formation of what I propose to call the 'ballad consensus'.
* * *
We still do not have a full-length critical or biographical study of Child. There are sketches available,[3] but the US folklore industry has yet to grasp the nettle of coming to terms with its founding father. Only a brief outline is possible here. Child was born in Boston in 1825, the third child of eight in a sailmaker's family. He went to state schools, but was 'discovered' by the headmaster of the town's Latin School, and encouraged to prepare himself for Harvard. He entered the college when he was seventeen, his fees being paid for him, and he quickly excelled in classics, English, and mathematics. He graduated in 1846, and was appointed college tutor in mathematics, then in history and political economy ('FJC', pp. xxiii-xxiv). Between 1849 and 1851, he travelled in Europe, returning to become Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. He was 'at home in the best methods and traditions of German universities', and was later awarded an honorary doctorate from Gottingen ('FJC', pp. xxiv-xxv). Above all, he was influenced by the ideals of Germanic philology:
The ideals of erudition and of a large humanity were not even suspected of incompatibility. The imagination was still invoked as the guide and illuminator of learning. The bond between a ntiquity and mediaevalism and between the Middle Ages and our own century was never lost from sight. ('FJC', p. xxv)
Kittredge felt that Child's 'greatest contribution to learning' may even, in a very real sense, be regarded as the fruit of these years in Germany. Throughout his life he kept a picture of William and James Grimm on the mantel over his study fire-place.('FJC'p, . xxv)
For twenty-five years, Child's interests in literary and linguistic study had to be subordinated to the demands of teaching, administration, and examinations. His publications, from Four Old Plays, through the general editorship of a series of one hundred and fifty volumes of British Poets, to his own compilation, English and Scottish Ballads of 1857-59, were essentially by-products, almost a leisure-time pursuit, for it was not until 1876 that he was appointed to the more congenial chair of English at Harvard ('FJC', pp. xxiv-xxv). In later years, Child down-graded his first ballad collection, above all to the great Danish ballad scholar, Svend Grundtvig, to whom he wrote that The collection was made as a sort of job - forming part of one of those
senseless huge collections of British Poets. (BBBM, p. 246) And because it was important to make the book 'tolerably saleable'
(BBBM, p. 255), the necessary comparative ballad study was sacrificed to 'the progress of the series' (ESB (1861), i, x). Only in
1872 did the two scholars begin to correspond, and it was Grundtvig who wrote first (BBBM, p. 242). Their early letters underline the marginality of ballad study both to their academic careers and to their material concerns (BBBM, pp. 242 and 245). We also learn that Child's basic ideas and assumptions about balladry were well-established twenty-five years before the appearance of his magnum opus.
Child knew what he meant by the term 'true popular ballads' (ESB (1861), i, vii), by 1861, though he claimed not to have decided finally until a few years later:
These volumes have been compiled from the numerous collections of Ballads printed since the beginning of the last century. They contain all but two or three of the ancient ballads of England and Scotland, and nearly all those ballads which, in either country, have been gathered from oral tradition, - whether ancient or not. (ESB (1861), i, vii)
Yet when we probe this apparently unimpeachable criterion, we find that Child is quick to qualify, especially with regard to the broadside ballad:
No words could express the dulness and inutility of a collection which should embrace all the Roxburghe and Pepys broadsides. (ESB (1861), i, viii
If such slurring fails to convince us, we must trust Child's subjective value-judgments:
Widely different from the true popular ballads, the spontaneous products of nature, are the works of the professional ballad-maker, which make up the bulk of Garlands and Broadsides. These, though sometimes not without grace, more frequently not lacking in humour, belong to artificial literature of course to an humble department. (ESB (1861), i, vii)
Such couplets - popular/professional, spontaneous/artificial, nature/art - beg the key questions. Did broadside-makers really try to make 'art', but fail; or were theirs different criteria? Was there only one literary tradition - the current custodians of which included Harvard professors - or were there several? But instead of historical evidence about the nature of majority culture in medieval Britain, Child offers his own opinion, backed up by that of other litterateurs and literature scholars; and in the end, he fudges his previous confident assertions with two catch-all riders:
This distinction is not absolute, for several of the ancient ballads have a sort of literary character, and many broadsides were printed from oral tradition. (ESB (1861), i, vii, note)
Later, to Grundtvig, he confessed that he had felt obliged to include everything the English[ sic] had been accustomed to
call a Ballad, at least in specimens. It is true that I might have separated the proper Volksballade from the others: and I wish that I had done so. (BBBM, p. 262) The 'English', of course, were still the literary mediators, not the people at large.
What focused Child's theory and practice was the appearance of Grundtvig's Danske Folkeviser. Though he saw it 'quite late'
(BBBM, p. 262), he spent the rest of his life adapting himself to Grundtvig's ideas, and apologizing for his own earlier efforts, such as the inclusion of longer pieces in his first ballad collection, because they were 'not of the nature of ballads' (ESB (1857), i, xi note). In his second edition, Child set about a radical restructuring:
Certain short romances which formerly stood in the First Book, have been dropped . . . in order to give the collection a homogeneous character. (ESB (1860), i, xii)
And in the 1861 edition, he wrote of the 'popular ballads' that Many of the older ones are mutilated, many more are miserably c orrupted, but as long as any traces of their originals are left, they are worthy of attention and have received it. When a ballad is extant in a variety of forms, all the most important versions are given. (ESB (1861), i, viii)
Deference apart, Child knew what an 'original' ballad looked like, and so understood when it had been 'corrupted'. More, he already had a hierarchy of what was to be esteemed 'important', and felt no qualms in relegating 'all those pieces which are wanting in general interest' to an appendix, for the benefit of 'readers for pleasure' (ESB (1861), i, viii). Already, a self-produced aura of scientificity surrounded his work, supported by his undoubtedly high editorial standards:
For the Texts, the rule has been to select the most authentic copies, and to reprint them as they stand in the collections, restoring readings that had been changed without grounds, and noting all deviations from the originals, whether those of previous editors or of this edition, in the margin. Interpolations acknowledged by the editors have generally been dropped.
In two instances only have previous texts been superceded or greatly improved. (ESB (1861), i, x)
Yet by relying on his own untheorized assessment of the 'best' previous editors and mediators, in what he terms 'The Principal
Collections', Child was simply underwriting his own methods and assumptions, and ignoring other, differing criteria completely,
writing off some collections arbitrarily as 'of slight or no importance' (ESB (1861), i, xiii).
Child evidently despaired of matching Grundtvig's edition, for 'the material is not to be had', though 'schoolmaster and clergyman' in those retired n ooks w here tradition longest lingers, have b een very active in taking down ballads from the mouths of the people. (ESB (1861), I, xi) A large number of manuscripts had been placed at his disposal (ESB (1861), i, xi); but, apart from the publication of the Percy Manuscript, there was little to be done, for Civilization has made too great strides in the island of Great Britain for us to expect much more from tradition. (ESB (1861), i, xi-xii) 'Civilization', in other words, is defined as being antagonistic to 'tradition'. And for all his avowed reverence for that abstraction, 'the people', Child had but little respect for real workers in country or in town. In 1857 he wrote:
One uncommonly tasteless stanza, the interpolation of some nursery-maid, is here omitted. Too many of Buchan's ballads have suffered in this way, and have become both prolix and vulgar. (ESB (1857), i, 306 note) In such asides we discover the hidden criteria, most of them negative, which were used to 'define' the 'true popular ballads'. Unsurprisingly, such criteria were those of contemporary bourgeois* taste, which sometimes required the suppression even of 'true' pieces, because of the objectionable nature of their subjects (BBBM, p. 264). The interested reader was referred to the general index for the sources of pieces like The Bonny Hynd and The Baffled Knight, which threatened to offend ears polite (ESB (1861), I, vii, note); yet, as Gershon Legman remarks, when we consider that Child's chosen ballads silently condone sadism, butchery, murder, and any amount of physical violence, it is curious that sexual relations had either to be apologized for or silently omitted.[4] The whole process of the 'refining definition' was, of course, circular. Exceptions were shanghied to 'prove' rules. If the ballad was fundamentally inimitable, then Sir Patrick Spence, if not ancient, has been always accepted as such by the most skilful judges, and is a solitary instance of a successful imitation, in manner and spirit, of the best specimens of authentic minstrelsy. ('PCB', pp. 796-97) However, his appeal to authority was by no means a blanket one:
I cannot assent to the praise bestowed by Scott on The Outlaw Murray. The story lacks point and the style i s affected- not that o f the unconscious poet of the real traditional ballad. (ESB (1857), vi, 22)
By implication, of course, we are being asked to accept that 'traditional' balladry consists of stories w ith a point, in an unaffected style, and not written by a poet conscious of his or her role. And, in general, it never seems to have struck Child as crucial that, while challenging the dubieties of some previous ballad mediators, he was effectively underwriting the mediating p ractices of the remainder, though they were as innocent of theorizing as could well be. Underpinning Child's apparently objective empirical scholarship, and making it possible, is the prior assumption that there are such 'permanent forms' as 'ballad' and 'folksong', just as in literature it is assumed that 'epic' and 'romance' exist, and then all our active study is of variations within them, variations that may be admitted to have proximate causes, even a social history, but that in their
essential features are taken in practice as autonomous, with internal laws.[5]
So, as in normative literary criticism, tradition is seen not as it is, an active and continuous selection and re-selection, which even at its latest point in time is always a specific choice, but now more conveniently as an object, a projected reality, with which we have to come to terms on its terms, even though those terms are always and must be the valuations, the selections and omissions, of other men. ('FLG', p. 7)[6]
In the production of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, the chief of the 'other men' was Grundtvig, to whom Child all but
disowned his previous edition: 'I never pretended that the arrangement was founded on a deeper principle than convenience'
(BBBM, p. 254); and though 'In general, I suspected everything that was not vouched for by some other [sic] collector of credit', he admitted that 'I certainly ought to have proceeded upon a clearer principle' (BBBM, p. 270). However, his misgivings did not prevent him from defining 'ballad' for Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, but he soon wished the article 'to be neither quoted nor regarded as final' ('PCB', p. 756). There, too, what is most noticeable is the almost complete absence of positive statements, after the standard dictionary definition of a 'ballad' as 'a narrative song, a short tale in lyric verse' ('PCB', p. 781). Other than that, he adds a Social Darwinist dimension to the place of the 'popular' ballad in cultural history. This 'distinct and very important species of poetry' has a 'historical and natural place', anterior to the appearance of the poetry of art, to which it has formed a step, and by which it has been regularly displaced, and, in some cases, all but extinguished. ('PCB', p. 756)
Hence, in part, the attempt at chronological arrangement in the first compilation: hence, also, the need to dissociate the largely literate culture of nineteenth-century British workers from that of their own ancestors. Necessarily, Child does violence to any rational (or even empirical) conception of history, resorting instead to the authority of the brothers Grimm, or to the unmitigated romanticism of his favourite editor, William Motherwell:[7]
Whenever a people in the course of its development reaches a certain intellectual and moral stage, it will feel an impulse to express itself. . . The condition of society in which a truly national or popular poetry appears explains the character of such poetry. It is a condition in which the people are not divided by political organization and book-culture into markedly
distinct classes, in which consequently there is such community of ideas a nd feelings that the whole people form an individual. Such poetry . . . will always be an expression of the mind and heart of the people as an individual, and never of the personality of individual men. The fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is thereforet he absence of subjectivity and of self-consciousness. Though they do not 'write themselves', as William Grimm has said, though a man and not a people has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous. ('PCB', pp. 756-57)
This alleged cultural homogeneity, before the cultural watershed of the appearance of 'art' (as reinforced by literacy and print), is implicitly contrasted with the cultural variety and individualism of Child's own society, against which he and other liberal intellectuals strove gamely, while forgetting the underlying divisive nature of the capitalist mode of production. Working people's role in even the transmission of balladry is systematically minimized:
The primitive ballad, then, is popular not in the sense of something arising from and suited to the lower orders of a people. As yet, no sharp distinction of high and low exists, in respect to knowledge, desires, and tastes. An increased civilization, and especially the introduction of book-culture, gradually gives rise to such a division; the poetry of art appears; the popular
poetry is no longer relished by a portion of the people, and is abandoned to an uncultivated or not over-cultivated class - a constantly d iminishing number. . . The popular ballad is not originally the product or the property of the lower orders of the people. Nothing, in fact, is more obvious than that many of the ballads of the now most refined nations had their origin in
that class whose acts and fortunes they depict - the upper class. ('PCB', p. 757)
The role of 'the lower orders' is merely instrumental.
By contrast, what 'the lower orders' preserved is seen as a positive acquisition for Child's own class culture, in one of its romantic, populist modes; while the products of the broadside publishers, from the sixteenth century to the later nineteenth century, are stigmatized as a different genus; they are products of a low kind of art, and most of them are, from a literary point of view, thoroughly despicable and worthless. ('PCB', p. 757)
So, manuscript sources get precedence over printed ones; and the whole range of alternative, often commercially-oriented institutions, made and used by the majority British population, are condemned out of hand. In this way does Child seek to impose his own, essentially static, conception of cultural development. After each literary 'species' has reached its Darwinian apogee, its status is that of a delicate fossil:
ballads which have been handed down by long-repeated tradition have always departed considerably from their o riginal f orm. If the transmission
has been purely through the mouths of unlearned people, there is less
probabilityo f wilful change, but once in the handso f professionals ingers
there is no amount of change which they may not undergo. ('PCB',
pp. 757-58)
Change equals corruption: professionalisation of a social role equals
individualism; the absence of formal education is all but aprecondition
of accurate transmission, and the onily effect of 'unlearned
people' on balladry is a deleterious one. Having read the minds of
the makers of the 'original form' of the ballad, Child has no need of any further understanding of the complexities o f medieval c ulture. Instead, he is content to underwrite the cultural e xpropriation o f the majority, historically, and in his own day ('PCB', p. 758)
* * *
The relationship b etween C hild a nd G rundtvig w as f undamentally a commercial one. The Danish scholar had to ask for money, 'painful and disgusting' though it was (BBBM, p. 245), in order to help with The English and Scottish Popular Ballads:
Though my assistance is not to be bought, yet it must be paid for, or else, I am sorry to say, it cannot be given. The fact is, that as a professor of the university I have only a small salary, and all my spare hours therefore must be turned to profit, not only in an ideal, but also in a material point of view. ... To speak plainly, I must value the time it would take me to give you all
the information I could wish, to the sum of 500 American dollars.( BBBM,
p. 245)
Child's response was matter-of-fact, unsurprised, and even grateful: Your cooperation I regard, I need not say, as beyond any money value, and the very small sum you mention it would not be out of my power to advance, in expectation of receiving it back finally from the profits of the work. Unfortunately professors all the world over are for the most part far from independent in their circumstances, and I belong to the great majority, though I fancy I am much better paid than much superior men at Copenhagen. (BBBM, p. 247)
In the event, Grundtvig's cash didn't reach him until almost five years later (BBBM, p. 272); though Child's weather-eye for the
chance to 'drop the Ballad Society' and to 'seek for a publisher' with a view to getting royalties, indicates that he was well aware of the commercial possibilities of exploiting Grundtvig's reputation and scholarship (BBBM, p.247).
Grundtvig's advice and example was crucial, not only to the contents of Child's magnum opus, but even to its structure. Every
problem Child had encountered was gone over thoroughly in their correspondence, with the American placing himself explicitly in the posture of a willing disciple: 'With your help I feel sure that I could do the work somewhat as it ought to be done' (BBBM, p. 247).
Thus, when the Dane praised Child's first edition, and criticized Hales and Furnivall as 'dilletantes, not scholars', because of their inclusion of 'many insignificant or utterly worthless late transcripts of old metrical tales and romances', compounded by an ignorance of 'corresponding foreign literature' (BBBM, p. 243), Child humbly agreed, even though he had been responsible for pushing Furnivall and the Ballad Society into producing the edition of the Percy Manuscript in question (BBBM, p.246). In response to his master's invocation of 'genuine popular ballad lore' (BBBM, p. 243), Child claims to have pressed Furnivall for the inclusion of 'the genuine national ballad', which the latter had 'half consented' to do (BBBM, p.247):
I told him that not even the stolid patience of a book-collector, a most useful though often well nigh imbecile creature, would suffice for twenty years of Roxburghe Ballads. (BBBM, p. 247)
And so as to reassure his mentor, Child reiterated his position on broadsides:
The immense collections of Broadside ballads, the Roxburghe and Pepys, of which but a small part has been printed, doubtless contain some ballads which we should at once declare to possess the popular character, and yet on the whole they are veritable dung-hills, in which, only after a great deal of sickening grubbing, one finds a very moderate jewel. Some of the later
Robin Hood ballads I have scarcely patience or stomach to read: but the declension is so gradual from the freshest and raciest to the thoroughly vulgar (by which I mean always t he essentially vulgar, the absolutely mean and stupid) that it will be very hard, and to me at this moment looks impossible, to draw a line. (BBBM, p. 254)
His solution was to draw on Grundtvig's advice for the problems of 'compass' and 'arrangement' which still gave a 'great deal of
trouble', even in 1872 (BBBM, p. 253):
We cannot of course exclude all ballads which have not been taken from the mouths of the people - nor perhaps include all such. The oldest Robin Hood ballads are derived from MS., and very many others of the best and oldest, and on the otherh ands ome ballads written in comparatively recent times, especially historical ones, are found in the mouths of the people . . .
It is not easy always t o distinguish a ballad and what we should call a short romance . . . The Horn of King Arthur I incline to exclude, and yet I fear that my reasons are vague . . . It is a pity one can't consistently insist on the lyrical, or singable, character as a criterion.( BBBM, pp. 253-54)
He was still puzzled, two years later, and asked Grundtvig's view on the criterion of a popular ballad, the distinction between ballad and tale, fabliau, and between genuine national or people's ballads and all varieties of base kind . . . I should like to have you try to express the more subtle characteristics of an old popular b allad in words.( BBBM, p. 268)
Both men shared a form of romantic, populist nationalism; and Grundtvig not only believed firmly in what he termed 'the Angloscotic department of the common Gothic Middleage Ballad Poetry' (BBBM, p. 249), but even suggested that Child should call his new work The Popular Ballads of the English Race (BBBM, p. 252), allowing some autonomy to the developing culture of each European nation-state:
there is no doubt that the ballad poetry of the Gothic nations is upon the whole contemporary and of a homogeneous character both with regard to its contents, treatment, style of poetry and form of verse, but nevertheless each departmenth as its own peculiarities.( BBBM, p. 276)
Child seems to have accepted this view without demur, given that he had taken Danske Folkeviser 'for a model from the beginning', determining, 'if I ever saw the way to another edition, to make your work my pattern' (BBBM, p. 262). In fact, so implicit was Child's faith that he told Grundtvig he did not 'esteem it necessary to search in any place where you have passed' (BBBM, p. 255), because 'Every time you edit a ballad which occurs in English you do a large part of my work for me' (BBBM, p. 282). Only on the mediations of Peter Buchan does Child have qualms. Grundtvig responded:
what you [namely Child] term the 'vulgarity' of the Buchan texts is to me the best proof of their material authenticity. For it must be remembered - and is well known to the ballad collectors of the old world, where the tradition of bygone days still lingers on, - that in the recent traditions of the common country people (peasantry) the old ballad cannot always appear in a stately and knightly form and apparel, but must in many instances exhibit the traces of a long dwelling in humble company. (BBBM, p.. 249)
All Child could do was to try to rationalize his remaining doubts: They exhibit an artificial vulgarity, i t seems to me, and as I have said, there is no variety to this, which makes me fear that it comes from a man and not from a class of people . . . The vulgarity that I mean consists in a tame, mean, unreal style of expression, far from volksmassig [popular]. (BBBM, p. 264)
Implicitly, then, Child claims to understand the nuances of both medieval and contemporary British workers' speech and syntax, on the basis (so far as we can judge) of an extremely limited and predominantly literary knowledge of medieval courtly culture. An apparent humility barely hides a breathtaking pretentiousness. The problem of arrangement dragged on for years:
Outlaw ballads separate themselves pretty well . . . My Trylleviser will make a natural class, and I have no doubt that this class should come first. But what to put second I wot not. (BBBM, p. 254)
Because he did not wish to do all Child's work for him, Grundtvig stressed beforehand you must have formed your plan and fixed upon the order of contents, which I think ought to be something more systematic than in your former editions, and I should say without any appendices. (BBBM, p. 249)
When his employer persisted in picking his brains, Grundtvig back-tracked:
In fact I do not think that the question of arrangement is of any great weight or consequence. The chief point is that the edition contains every bit of genuine ballad lore, and consequently all that may be genuine, and I might say, all that has been so. (BBBM, p. 260) Instead of bothering about niceties of form, Grundtvig urged his pupil to start publishing - this was in 1874 (BBBM, p. 266). Yet Child demurred (BBBM, p. 269):
I shall be reluctant to begin until I have got most of the matter ready. The question of arrangement puzzles me exceedingly. There is not a sufficient criterion for me to make an unexceptionable division. I might make three divisions of the earliest - later - and recent; but of course they would be called arbitrary, and would b e so in some degree. I shouldh ave to separate
a great mass of the Robin Hood ballads from the few really early ones. This is what I shall probably do, however. I shall be very glad to have your opinion. (BBBM, p. 257)
Of course, a chronological order would have been more problematical than he admits: indeed, he later asked Grundtvig if he had 'formed any view as to the time when the English ballads were produced' (BBBM, p. 278). In any event, by 1875 he decided to make only two divisions,' Romantic', stretching the name, and Historical. I have not made up my mind precisely as to the order of individual p ieces, but shall p ut the 'Wonder B allads' first.( BBBM, p. 269) The cash nexus (he had yet to be paid) obliged Grundtvig to produce what was to be the rationale for the arrangement, though he had misgivings too:
Upon the whole I think the subject, the theme, the contents is [sic] no rational or natural principle of classification for the English B allads, and ought not to be the ruling principle here, if another more suitable and scientifically w arrantable m ay be found. This is what I have tried to find, and which I now flatter myself to have found, in making not the subject, but the form, the meter of the ballad the ruling principle of division . . . the subject of the ballad should be made only a secondary h elp in the arrangement. (BBBM, p. 277)
Child immediately appropriated the formula, forgetting to acknowledge its source until Grundtvig remarked on his apparent
discourtesy (BBBM, pp. 290 and 292). Indeed, he asked the Dane to 'go on with the arrangement, with a reason now and then in difficult cases' (BBBM, p. 278), as though Grundtvig were the equivalent of a present-day research assistant. In fact, there may have been more than a touch of irony in Grundtvig's apparent pleasure in having his ideas adopted wholesale by 'the very best men of the present day' (BBBM, p. 284)!
Even in the 1870s, Child worried about what he termed 'the chemistry of the English and Scottish ballad', which seemed to him
to be 'mostly, as indeterminable as that of Greek myths' (BBBM, p. 272). This difficulty did not prevent him from asserting that 'The sources . . . may be regarded as sealed or dried up forever', or from trying to collect 'such ballads as may be left with the people' in Scotland (BBBM, pp. 248 and 255).
I have endeavored by a considerable amount of correspondence- and by the circulation throughout Scotland of an 'Appeal', two thousand copies of which were dispersed, so that every clergyman and schoolmaster in the country was reached, both to ascertain how much is left of traditional ballads in the memory of the people, and to get, whatever there is, collected. Several gentlemen have taken a warm interest in the matter, and some have pushed their enquiries very zealously. The fruits, however, are small. I have not received one ballad that has not before been printed, and the copies taken down from recitation are in general much inferior to those that have already been printed. (BBBM, p. 256)
This was in 1873: four years later, he felt that he had 'got all the manuscripts that are to be had', and had 'no reason to wait longer'for what might arise from his friends' collecting in Aberdeenshire (BBBM, p. 271), given that most collected texts were 'recollections of modern print, a most undesirable aftergrowth of oral tradition' (BBBM, p. 263).
Apart from the general problems arising from using people from one class to collect cultural products from another, in 1880 Child came across other material blockages in a postal blitz amongst the 'gentlemen' of Shetland:
I had supposed that, as the Scotch had been 300 years in possession of the islands, enough of them might have gone there to plant Scottish ballads. But that seems doubtful; at any rate, an intelligent correspondent says that the Scotch clergy as a class have done their best to destroy any relic of antiquity in the shape of tradition or ballad. Some Norse traditions of value
may remain, and the Norse population are said to be much more amenable to appeals in behalf o f traditional remains.( BBBM, p. 283)
Still he persisted with his 'gentlemen' amateurs, though by 1881 he had evidently abandoned Great Britain in favour of his own
country.
I have issued circulars (there are to be 1000) inviting students throughout the country to unite in gathering ballads from the Irish American population. (BBBM, p. 288)
And, disclaimers apart, that circular specifies what Child meant by a ballad he gives instructions for the proper recording of ballads, burdens, and airs, and prints copies of The Cruel Sister and of Sir Hugh by way of specimens of the sort of thing desired. (BBBM, p. 288 note) In just this way were Child's followers to harden up his collection of ballads into the effective definition of 'popular balladry' in general.
* * *
The E nglish and Scottish Popular Ballads b egan appearing i n 1882. Child justified the 'unrestricted title' by 'having at command every valuable copy of every known ballad' (ESPB, i, vii). In fact, he had 'not found one unknown ballad since the Percy MS was printed' in 1867-68 (BBBM, p. 274): and, compared with his first collection, of the three hundred and five ballads in the new edition, only ninety are new; and these are, for the most part, unimportant additions to the body of ballad literature. .. The main addition of the later collection is thus rather in the way of new versions o f important ballads, or of more authentic v ersions based directly upon the manuscripts; in the citation of a larger number of foreign parallels; and, generally, in the
matterc ontainedi n the introductions. ('PCB',p p. 792-93)
One hundred and fifteen ballads had been excised from the first collection ('PCB', p. 793), most of which would not have appeared there, had Child been clearer as to his criteria ('PCB', p. 796). Even in the later work, those criteria (though present) are never systematically argued through in the promised (and perpetually delayed) 'elaborate introduction'. Instead, we have scribbled notes, a set of extracts from other scholars, and the obiter dicta sprinkled through his works ('PCB', p. 755, and 'FJC', p. xxix).
The debt to Grundtvig is acknowledged, but only sparingly (ESPB, i, ix); yet Hustvedt believed that not only the plan but even
the contents of the work published by Child were attributable to Grundtvig, especially to his Index of English and Scottish ballads, which itself changed over the years. For example, the second Index seems to have been pruned according to specific criteria:
the following have been excluded, out of different reasons, partly because they were of too local a character, as the Border ballads, partly as decidedly political pieces, some also while they seemed to be of too recent a date or were of a doubtful antiquity. (BBBM, p. 301)
Child asked Grundtvig for a recommended list for the new edition, in the later 1870s, and several items were then restored to favour (BBBM, p. 302). This third Index, Hustvedt is sure, 'exercised a considerable influence on the formation of the canon of English balladry' (BBBM, p. 303);[8] though Child rejected the book-based chronology offered to him, in favour of a chronology of his manuscript sources (BBBM, pp. 303-04).[9] The hierarchy of those sources is made explicit:
Of hitherto unused materials, much the most important is a large collection of ballads made by Motherwell. (ESPB, i, vii) Next came items from Kinloch's collection, followed by the ballads sung by the professor's daughter, Mrs Brown of Falkland, to which
'No Scottish ballads are superior in kind' (ESPB, I, vii). [10] But Child also relied on the collecting work of other English amateurs, like Frank Kidson and the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould (ESPB, ii, v, and IV, v), whose reliability has lately been questioned. [11] Robert White, the Newcastle antiquarian who had purchased John Bell's collection of manuscript songs, allowed Child to look through his collections in 1873, and subsequently made 'a copy of such things as I needed' (ESPB, I, viii). In this case, the 'copy' which appeared in the American's edition is not the same as the version which appears in the manuscript collection. [12]
Because Child was for the most part mediating the mediations of other collectors, it was all but inevitable that he believed that
The gathering from tradition has been, as ought perhaps to have been foreseen at this late day, meagre, and generally of indifferent quality. (ESPB, I, vii)[13]
None the less, tradition remained the keystone of the new collection, supplemented by the notion of 'oral transmission', at every stage of which we must suppose that some accidental variations from what was delivered would be introduced, and occasionally s ome wilful variations. Memory will fail at times; at times the listener will hear amiss, or will not understand,
and a perversion of sense will ensue, or absolute nonsense, - nonsense which will be servilely repeated, and which repetition may make more gross. (ESPB, v, 309)
Ironically, Child elsewhere claimed that the wilful, servile, forgetful and generally unintelligent people who sustained this process often transmitted accurately. Indeed, he believed that the ballad was 'at its best' when it has come down by a purely domestic tradition, yet even so it is sometimes influenced by printed literature; and much depends on the experience and selection of the reciters, and on their varying memory, which is, however, ordinarily remarkable for its tenacity.( 'PCB',p . 805)
Thus, his earlier statements notwithstanding, the broadside ballad 'may . . . become tradition' ('PCB', p. 805), and it is certain that 'old tradition does not come to a stop when a ballad gets into print' ('PCB', p. 760). One of his versions of Queen Eleanor's Confession was probably one of the 'traditional variations of printed copies':
The ballad seems first to have got into print in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but was no doubt circulating o rally s ometime before that, for it is in the truly popular tone. (ESPB, III, 255)
Child seems to have been coming to believe that, because the ballad 'suffers i n transmission', it will be 'at its best when it is early caught and fixed in print' ('PCB', pp. 805-06). Yet Hart found that Child's later collection is much more chary of the admission of broadsides or sheet-ballads: in many cases they are relegated to introductions or appendices; in many more, omitted. ('PCB', p. 793) [14]
The advantage to Child of the broadside was its minimization of the human element in the process of transmission; and, if anything, his contempt for those agents seems to have increased. Hind Etin, in one version, 'has been not simply damaged by passing through low mouths, but has been worked over by low hands' (ESPB, i, 360); while the very idea that Richard Sheale, the Tamworth minstrel, could have written a version of The Hunting of the Cheviot 'is preposterous in the extreme' (ESPB, iii, 303). No evidence is adduced: the piece is at most 'part of his stock as minstrel' (ESPB, IiI, 303). Child knows better than the very agents in the culture what is and is not traditional (ESPB, i, 317).
Other acts of faith are required of Child's disciples. Apparently, the 'lyrical quality' of a piece 'is to be regarded as no less significant than plot as the trait of a true ballad' (ESPB, ii, 204 note):
A simple but life-like story, supported by the burden and the air, these are the means by which such old romances seek to produce an impression. (ESPB, ii, 204 note) Either we agree, with Child, that Johnie Cock really is a 'precious specimen of the unspoiled traditional ballad', or we don't: he does not deign to argue (ESPB, in, 1). And, in general, we must subscribe to a long list of criteria, almost all of them negatives, which effectively constitute Child's ballad 'idea'. Hart summarized these 'litmus tests' thus:
Necessary as the story is . . . it is seldom completely told in the ballad . . . Transitions are usually abrupt . . . These abrupt transitions do not, then, result . . . in incoherence, which accompanies corruption and is a sign of degeneracy . . . Coherence, on the contrary, is a characteristic of the true ballad, an important phase of ballad excellence. ('PCB', pp. 782-83)
Brevity, apparently is a ballad characteristic; but then come more negatives:
Introductions, not closely connected with the ballad story, are not characteristic . . . The action is seldom carefully localized . . . In dealing with the supernatural the way of the true ballad is to omit description or explanation. . . Ghosts, though not thought sufficiently s trange to demand special treatment, should, nevertheless, 'have fair reason for walking'. ('PCB', pp. 783-85)
Chipping and peeling away at the whole body of song, so as to get at (or at least near) the kernel of the 'true ballad', Child is able to make that imaginative leap ahead of the evidence, operating on the principle that, as Hart put it, there are 'degrees of departure from the popular style', and 'degrees of departure from the popular matter' ('PCB', p. 766). Intuitively, Child feels himself possessed of the essence, the 'idea', and he builds up a kind of negative photo-fit picture, with only an occasional positive detail on the 'face'. The 'English ballad', apparently, i s characterized b y 'innocuous humour' (ESPB, III, 258). A change of nationality i s 'accompanied b y change of the scene of action'; and ballads have a tendency to 'combine' ('PCB', p. 798). Ballad style is 'artless and homely' ('PCB', p. 785); and ballads have their own conventions, the most striking of which i s the use of 'commonplaces('' PCB', p. 788). But then we return to the shadows around the face, to the things which the ballad is not. 'Learned words do not occur in ballads' (ESPB, v, 309). Extravagance, exaggeration, cynicism, sophistication, overrefinement, moralizing, and triteness of plot, are 'not characteristic' ('PCB', pp. 779-81). Ballad subject-matteri s not 'horrible', and ballad style is 'not feeble in execution, not prolix and vulgar, and not affected' ('PCB', p. 800). Neither was a ballad historically accurate: 'A strict accordance with history . . . would be almost a ground of suspicion' (ESPB, ii, 19).
Such a web of arbitrary assertion should give pause to those people inclined to fetishize Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, and is the reason why he was not only unwilling but unable to theorize his assumptions. Having disowned his article in the Universal Cyclopaedia ('PCB', p. 755), and with no contemporary scholar having w hat Kittredge termed the 'hardihood' to do his job for him ('FJC', p. xxix), later generations have been left to struggle as best they can with the whole. mass of information. We have to try to tease out underlying p rinciples f rom i nsufficient d ata; but we can fairly conclude that Child's magnum opus is simply its own definition - a product of a particular stage of academic scholarship. And so long as we are careful not to confuse its underpinning ideology with science, or to take at face value its comments on the cultures from which the ballads came, and through which they passed, we may continue to use the texts as highly mediated examples of the kinds of songs described by late nineteenth centuryE nglish-speakingli terarys cholarsa s 'ballads'. About the lives, interests and general culture of the people who made, remade and used these songs, however, a compilation such as Child's can tell us almost nothing. [15]
Notes
N.B. In order to minimize repetition, each source will be given in full when first mentioned, but will then be referred to in the text in parentheses by the initials of the title (which are given after the first full reference to that title), and the edition, where
necessary.
*This term, and all other terms associated with marxist analysis, will be used here strictly in their scientific meanings.
1 The chief sources are Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt's Ballad Criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain during the Eighteenth Century (BCSGB) (New York: American- Scandinavian Foundation, 1916), and especially his Ballad Books and Ballad Men
(BBBM) (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930), which contains the Child-Grundtvig correspondence during the years 1872-83, and the Index compiled during the preparation of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (ESPB) (Cambridge Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1882-98) which has been reprinted (New York: Dover, 1965). Additionally, there is Walter Morris Hart's 'Professor Child and the Ballad' ('PCB'), which contains Child's obiter dicta from the article in the Universal Cyclopaedia and from the editions of English and Scottish Ballads (ESB) (for example Boston Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, 1857-59, and London: Sampson Low, Son and Company, 1861). Hart's article may be found in the Dover reprint of Child ESPB (1965), v, and in the Publications of the Modern Languages Association of America, 21 (1906), 755-807.
2 A. L. Lloyd, Folk Song in England (FSE) (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1967), p. 135.
3 For example G. L. Kittredge, 'Francis James Child' ('FJC'), in Child ESPB (1965), i, xxiii-xxxi.
4 See, for example, G. Legman, The Horn Book (New York: University Books, 1964), pp. 343-52.
5 Raymond Williams, 'From Leavis to Goldman' (FLG'), New Left Review, 67 (1971), 7.
6 Compare David Ian Harker, 'Popular Song and Working-Class Consciousness in North-East England' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976), pp. 5-14.
7 Compare William Motherwell, Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern (Glasgow: J. Wylie, 1827), Introduction passim.
8 Compare Child, ESPB, v, 182.
9 Interestingly, almost 51% of Child's main texts came from printed sources (including broadsides), while the remaining 49% came from either manuscript or oral sources.
10 A preliminary survey reveals that of the 1700 and more texts used by Child in ESPB (excluding appendices, but including major additions, and using the first-given source for each variant), Motherwell's MSS, note-book, and published texts account for almost 12%, Buchan's for almost 9%, and Kinloch's and Scott's for 7% apiece. Together with Herd and Percy, the work of six individuals accounted for approximately 43% of the texts used.
11 See, for example, A. E. Green's 'Foreword' to Frank Kidson, Traditional Tunes (Wakefield: E. P. Publishing, 1970), pp. v-xviii.
12 The Belll White Manuscript Song Collection, edited by David Ian Harker and Frank R utherford ( Durham: The Surtees Society, forthcoming).
13 Only about 5% of Child's texts seem to have come from such sources, directly.
14 Some 15% o f Child's m ain t exts seem to havec ome from broadsides a nd g arlands, and especially those which have to do with Robin Hood.
15 See, for example, David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (London: Routledge and K egan Paul, 1972), a ndt he critiques o f that w orkw hich a re n ow appearing for example, Bob Munro, 'The Bothy Ballads', History W orkshop J ournal, 3 (Spring 1977), 184-93. For an analysis of the mediating work of Cecil Sharp, see the early article by the presentw riter,' CecilS harpi n Somerset: S ome Conclusions 'F, olk Music Journal,2 (1972), 220-40, andt he developmento f thatw ork,w hichw illi ncludea briefa nalysis of the connectionsb etweenS harp'sw orka ndt hato f A. L. Lloyd,' May C ecil Sharp be praised?',H istory Workshop J ournal( forthcoming).