This brings me to the matter of text. To make a ‘scientific’ anthology of the Ballads was out of the question. In so far as scientific treatment could be brought to them the work had been done, for many generations to come, if not finally, by the late Professor Child[1] in his monumental edition, to which at every turn I have been indebted for guidance back to the originals. Child’s method was to get hold of every ballad in every extant version, good, bad, or indifferent, and to print these versions side by side, with a foreword on the ballad’s history, packed with every illustration that could be contributed out of his immense knowledge of the folk-poetry of every race and country. His work, as I say, left no room for follower or imitator; but fortunately it lies almost as wide of my purpose as of my learning. My reader did not require _Sir Patrick Spens_ or _May Colvin_ in a dozen or twenty versions: he wanted one ballad, one _Sir Patrick Spens_, one _May Colvin_, and that the best. How could I give him the best in my power? There is only one way. It was Scott’s way, and the way of William Allingham, who has been at pains to define it in the preface to his _Ballad Book_ (Macmillan):-- The various oral versions of a popular ballad obtainable throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland, are perhaps, even at this late day,[2] practically innumerable--one as ‘authentic’ as another. What then to do?... The right course has appeared to be this, to make oneself acquainted with all attainable versions of a ballad. Then (granting a ‘turn’ for such things, to begin; without which all were labour in vain) the editor may be supposed to get as much insight as may be into the origin and character of the ballad in question; he sees or surmises more or less as to the earliest version or versions, as to blunders, corruptions, alterations of every sort (national, local, personal) on the part of the reciters; he then comes to investigate the doings of former editors, adopting thankfully what he finds good, correcting at points whereupon he has attained better information, rejecting (when for the worse) acknowledged or obvious interpolations or changes. He has to give it in _one_ form--the best according to his judgement and feeling--in firm black and white, for critics, and for readers cultivated and simple.