Almost parallel with and closely resembling the development of the Epic is that of the _Ballad_. Like the primitive Epic in anonymity and impersonality, the Ballad was much shorter, had rime and stanzas, and dealt, as a rule, with incidents of less importance. Not so formal or pretentious as the Epic, it was easily memorized even by the peasant, and handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Favorite subjects were the legends of Robin Hood, the misfortunes of nobles, and the incidents of Border warfare. Mixed in many of them was a tendency toward superstition, a survival of the belief in ghosts, magicians, and talking animals. Numerous examples gathered by antiquaries may be found in the edition of old English Ballads in this series; among the better known are _The Wife of Usher's Well_ and _Chevy Chase_. Later poets naturally adapted the Ballad form to their own uses, and so we have the artificial Ballad, illustrated by Cowper's _The History of John_ _Gilpin_, Longfellow's _The Wreck of the Hesperus_, and Swinburne's _May Janet_. In these poems many of the trite expressions so peculiar to the primitive Ballad are retained; but, like the artificial Epic, the work is no longer communal, but individual, in origin and bears the stamp of one mind animated by an artistic purpose. In discussing the Epic and the Ballad one is on fairly safe ground, but between these types one finds a vast amount of poetry, evidently narrative, which suggests perplexing problems. Much of it may be made to come under what we term loosely the _Metrical Romance_. This title is often narrowed by scholars to apply strictly to a poetical _genre_, arising in the Middle Ages and brought into England by the Norman-French, which deals in a rambling way with the marvellous adventures of wandering knights or heroes. Its plot, in which love and combat are conspicuous features, is enveloped in a kind of glamour, an atmosphere of unreality. It drew its material from many diverse sources: from the legends of Troy and the stories of classical and Oriental antiquity; from the tales of the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne and his paladins; from the Celtic accounts of King Arthur and the Table Round. Since its characters, sometimes not without anachronism, embodied the chivalric ideals of courtesy and loyalty to ladies, hatred of paganism, and general conduct according to a prescribed but unwritten code, its appeal was made for the most part to the courtier and the aristocrat,--though it must be added that many of the robuster Charlemagne romances acquired currency with the humbler classes and were sung in the cottage of the peasant. The fact that the greater number of these Metrical Romances were mere redactions, taken from foreign models, makes them seem deficient in English interest. Still, several of the best were of native composition, an excellent example being the well-known _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_.