A proper study of the ballads would go a long way towards remedying this defect. Thomas Percy, whose _Reliques_ must ever be the main source of our information on all questions connected with ballads, has pointed out that all the great events of the country have, sooner or later, found their way into the country's song-book. But it is not only the resounding names that are celebrated. In the ballads we hear the echoes of the street, the rude laughter and the pointed jests. Sometimes these ring so plainly that they need no explanation. At other times, we have to go to Percy or to some of his successors to realize the true significance of the song. For example, the famous ballad "John Anderson my Jo" seems, at first sight, to be innocent of any polemical intention. But it was written during the Reformation when, as Percy dryly observes, "the Muses were deeply engaged in religious controversy." The zeal of the Scottish reformers was at its height, and this zeal found vent in many a pasquil discharged at Popery. It caused them, indeed, in their frenzy, to compose songs which were grossly licentious, and to sing these songs in rasping voices to the tunes of some of the most popular hymns in the Latin Service. "John Anderson my Jo" was such a ballad composed for such an occasion. And Percy, who was more qualified than any other man to read between the lines, has pointed out that the first stanza contains a satirical allusion to the luxury of the popish clergy, while the second, which makes an apparently light reference to "seven bairns", is actually concerned with the seven sacraments, five of which were the spurious offspring of Mother Church. Thus it was in a thousand cases. The ballads, even the lightest and most blossoming of them, were deep-rooted in the soil of English history. How different from anything that we possess to-day! Great causes do not lead men to song, nowadays they lead them to write letters to the newspapers. A national thanksgiving cannot call forth a single rhyme or a single bar of music. Who can remember a solitary verse of thanksgiving, from any of our poets, in commemoration of any of the victories of the Great War? Who can recall even a fragment of verse in praise of the long-deferred coming of Peace? Very deeply significant is it that our only method of commemorating Armistice Day was by a two minutes silence. No song. No music. Nothing. The best thing we could do, we felt, was to keep quiet. MANDALAY [Illustration: Mandalay headpiece]