With the arrival of instruments of a more advanced character and capable of more varied expression, the progress of the art would naturally proceed with greater rapidity, and on lines displaying greater variety. England, in those days, was avid of pleasure. It is little to be wondered at. We speak of the people, not of the nobles, whose wealth enabled them to combat the ordinary existing conditions. Their day depended, in a very special sense, on the sun, in a manner surprising to those of us living in the twentieth century. It began with the rising, and ended with the setting. Artificial light, except of the most primitive description, was a luxury entirely out of their reach. If we, in modern times, remembering its fickle climate, wonder at the popularity of the month of May, and the adulation it received at the hands of the early poets, a little consideration will soon supply the cause. The long, weary months of winter, with its darkness and cold, had been endured; the bitter winds of March and April were over, and the long days and tempered breezes came to the people with a relief, the intensity of which is difficult to realise, with all the means of comfort that modern civilisation has placed at our disposal. The ballad, as distinguished from the song, is peculiarly typical of the Northern races, and was, up to the time of Queen Elizabeth, a favourite feature of English music. As its name implies,[6] it was danced as well as sang; later on the dance was dispensed with. Its antiquity is unquestionable, but it is, as is so often the case, impossible to assign any definite date to it. The early part of the eleventh century certainly knew it in England, as the following stanza proves.[7] It tells of a visit paid to the city by King Canute:-- "Mery sungen the muneches binnen Ely. Tha Cnut ching reu therby: Roweth, cnites, noer the land, An here we thes muneches saeng." This may be translated for the modern reader as follows:-- "Merry sang the monks of Ely, As King Canute rowed by. Row knights, near the land And hear we these monks sing." The music is, unfortunately, lost. In Roman times a popular feature of the processions organised in honour of some newly-arrived conquering soldier was a band of dancers who, while gyrating in graceful movement, sang poems, reciting his heroic deeds. The praise of heroes was, from the earliest, the dominant feature of the ballad, and, although far removed, as it must be from anything resembling even medi[ae]val methods, the Greek and Roman form of it is most probably the real source from which it is derived.