Produced by David Widger, Juliet Sutherland, Phil McLaury, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Text version by Al Haines. A BOOK OF OLD BALLADS Selected and with an Introduction by BEVERLEY NICHOLS [Illustration: title page art] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The thanks and acknowledgments of the publishers are due to the following: to Messrs. B. Feldman & Co., 125 Shaftesbury Avenue, W.C. 2, for "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"; to Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Messrs. Methuen & Co. for "Mandalay" from _Barrack Room Ballads_; and to the Executors of the late Oscar Wilde for "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." "The Earl of Mar's Daughter", "The Wife of Usher's Well", "The Three Ravens", "Thomas the Rhymer", "Clerk Colvill", "Young Beichen", "May Collin", and "Hynd Horn" have been reprinted from _English and Scottish Ballads_, edited by Mr. G. L. Kittredge and the late Mr. F. J. Child, and published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. The remainder of the ballads in this book, with the exception of "John Brown's Body", are from _Percy's Reliques_, Volumes I and II. CONTENTS FOREWORD MANDALAY THE FROLICKSOME DUKE THE KNIGHT AND SHEPHERD'S DAUGHTER KING ESTMERE KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY BARBARA ALLEN'S CRUELTY FAIR ROSAMOND ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE THE BOY AND THE MANTLE _The source of these ballads will be found in the Appendix at the end of this book._ LIST OF COLOUR PLATES KING ESTMERE BARBARA ALLEN'S CRUELTY FAIR ROSAMOND THE BOY AND THE MANTLE FOREWORD By Beverley Nichols These poems are the very essence of the British spirit. They are, to literature, what the bloom of the heather is to the Scot, and the smell of the sea to the Englishman. All that is beautiful in the old word "patriotism" ... a word which, of late, has been twisted to such ignoble purposes ... is latent in these gay and full-blooded measures. But it is not only for these reasons that they are so valuable to the modern spirit. It is rather for their tonic qualities that they should be prescribed in 1934. The post-war vintage of poetry is the thinnest and the most watery that England has ever produced. But here, in these ballads, are great draughts of poetry which have lost none of their sparkle and none of their bouquet. It is worth while asking ourselves why this should be--why these poems should "keep", apparently for ever, when the average modern poem turns sour overnight. And though all generalizations are dangerous I believe there is one which explains our problem, a very simple one.... namely, that the eyes of the old ballad-singers were turned outwards, while the eyes of the modern lyric-writer are turned inwards.