Moreover, our English ballad collectors never went to the right sources. There were to be had black and white letter broadsides, more or less scarce, and they set their booksellers to work to gather for them the drifting sheets, and fondly thought that they were collecting the ballad poetry of England. They were collecting make-shifts, the wretched stuff which had ousted the old ballad poetry. It occurred to none of them to go to the people. What would have been the result had Motherwell, Kinloch, Buchan, and Herd set to work in the same fashion? There is to be found in the British Museum a volume of Scottish Broadside Ballads printed at Aberdeen, and Glasgow, and Edinburgh. What do these sheet ballads contain? As great rubbish as do the English broadsides? Herd, Motherwell, and Buchan had more sense than our Ritson, Phillips, and Evans; they sat at the feet of the shepherds, listened beside the wheels of the old spinners, sat at the tavern table and over the peat fires with the peasants, and collected orally. Percy went to his MS. folio, Ritson to his booksellers, and passed over the great living wellspring of traditional poetry. Now it is too late. The utmost that can be gleaned is fragments. But enough does remain either in MS. or in black letter broadside, or in allusion and quotation by our early dramatists, to show that we in England had a mass of ballad poetry, one in kind and merit with the Scottish. The first collection of scattered ballads and songs in a garland was made in the reign of James I., by Thomas Delony and Richard Johnson, and from that time forward these little assemblages of fugitive pieces were issued from the press. They rarely contain much that is good; they are stuffed with recent compositions. Everyone knew the traditional ballads, and it was not thought worth while reprinting them. A new ballad had to be entered at Stationers’ Hall, and composer as well as publisher reaped a profit from the sale, as a novelty. The old tunes remained after that the words to which they had been wedded were forgotten; and it may be said that in the majority of cases the music is all that does remain to us of the old ballad song of England. This is the sort of balderdash that was substituted by a degraded taste for the swinging musical poetry of the minstrel epoch-- “In searching ancient chronicles It was my chance to finde A story worth the writing out In my conceit and mind,” etc. or:-- “Of two constant lovers, as I understand, Were born near Appleby, in Westmoreland; The lad’s name Anthony, Constance the lass; To sea they both went, and great dangers did pass.” or:-- “I reade in ancient times of yore, That men of worthy calling Built almeshouses and spittles store, Which now are all downfalling,” etc. Compare the following with such beginnings as these:--