In the form in which they are preserved, a few of our ballads are older than the seventeenth or the latter part of the sixteenth century, though in their origin many of them are much older. Manuscript versions of "Robin Hood and the Monk" and "Robin Hood and the Potter" exist, which are referred to the last years of the fifteenth century. The "Lytel Geste of Robyn Hode" was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1489. The "Not-Brown Maid" was printed in "Arnold's Chronicle" in 1502. "The Hunting of the Cheviot"--the elder version of "Chevy Chase"--was mentioned by Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesie" in 1850.[8] The ballad is a narrative song, naive, impersonal, spontaneous, objective. The singer is lost in the song, the teller in the tale. That is its essence, but sometimes the story is told by the lyrical, sometimes by the dramatic method. In "Helen of Kirkconnell" it is the bereaved lover who is himself the speaker: in "Waly Waly," the forsaken maid. These are monologues; for a purely dialogue ballad it will be sufficient to mention the power and impressive piece in the "Reliques" entitled "Edward." Herder translated this into German; it is very old, with Danish, Swedish, and Finnish analogues. It is a story of parricide, and is narrated in a series of questions by the mother and answers by the son. The commonest form, however, was a mixture of epic and dramatic, or direct relation with dialogue. A frequent feature is the abruptness of the opening and the translations. The ballad-maker observes unconsciously Aristotle's rule for the epic poet, to begin _in medias res_. Johnson noticed this in the instance of "Johnny Armstrong," but a stronger example is found in "The Banks of Yarrow:" "Late at e'en, drinking the wine, And ere they paid the lawing, They set a combat them between, To fight it in the dawing." With this, an indirect, allusive way of telling the story, which Goethe mentions in his prefatory note to "Des Saengers Fluch," as a constant note of the "Volkslied." The old ballad-maker does not vouchsafe explanations about persons and motives; often he gives the history, not expressly nor fully, but by hints and glimpses, leaving the rest to conjecture; throwing up its salient points into a strong, lurid light against a background of shadows. The knight rides out a-hunting, and by and by his riderless horse comes home, and that is all: "Toom[9] hame cam the saddle But never cam he." Or the knight himself comes home and lies down to die, reluctantly confessing, under his mother's questioning, that he dined with his true-love and is poisoned.[10] And again that is all. Or "--In behint yon auld fail[11] dyke, I wot there lies a new-slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair. "His hound is to the hunting game, His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady's ta'en another mate, So we may mak our dinner sweet."