400
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. XL MAY is, wos.
sympathy which even now is not too common.
These songs have survived from times which are in
many ways very unlike our own. Murder was
thought little of, and cattle-lifting rather heroic
than even a venial offence. They are often frag-
mentary, and have from time to time undergone
from their reciters changes parallel to those which
when applied to ancient buildings go by the name
of restoration. There is a notion widely spread,
but certainly a delusion, that many of these old
ballads had no personal author, but grew among a
people quite ignorant of letters. Now in the first
place a man may be a poet without having ac-
quired the art of reading, but there is a far more
potent objection. How can any literary work in-
volving thought be self-produced ? To us it seems
a contradiction in terms, and therefore unworthy
of discussion, but the fact is undoubted that words,
phrases, and ideas have often been transferred from
one ballad to another. For instance, in * The Douglas
Tragedy ' we find
Lord William was buried in St. Marie's kirk,
Lady Marg'ret in Marie's quire ; Out o' the lady's grave grew a bonny red rose,
And out o' the knight's a brier.
The same idea occurs in some versions of 'Barbara Allan,' as well as elsewhere. How many of these fine old songs we have lost we cannot tell. It is probable that far more have perished than have come down to us. Had a collector with the energy and historical knowledge of Sir Walter Scott been born a hundred years before his time we might have possessed a body of poetry now as unattain- able as the book of Jasher, which was probably itself a collection of the war-songs of the tribes of Israel. The loss we have suffered is not entirely owing to the processes of slow decay and corruption. We know that Coverdale and Whitgif t hated ballads. They might well have been beforehand with Gilbert Glossin, who in ' The Antiquary ' is recorded to have said, "The devil take all ballads, and ballad- makers, and ballad singers." The Methodists also in the eighteenth and earlier years of the nineteenth century set their faces against all verse which was neither devotional nor, as they thought, instructive, founding their objection on a passage in St. James (v. 13). 'Buckinghamshire' treats of a county whose history has been neglected. Lipscomb's heavy quartos were a credit to their author, but he lived at a time when record offices and private charter chests were guarded from inspection with the rigidity of a magician's cave. The author, too, though painstaking and zealous, was unimaginative and had but a narrow conception of the duties of a topographer. We find therefore in these few pages much that we might hunt for in vain in the litera- ture hitherto devoted to the history of the shire. The writer, moreover, shows that he knows the value of historical evidence and the valuelessness of mere guesswork. His remarks on Whiteleaf cross show this. He will not accept any of the wild theories which have been spun to account for its existence. The remarks, too, on the lace-making industry which still flourishes in Buckinghamshire show a mastery of a far different subject. The paper on the late Lord Acton indicates remarkable knowledge of writings which are for the most part scattered in the pages of periodicals. The list given at the head of the article is, we believe, by no means complete, but it will be of service to historical students. Some passages quoted from Lord Acton
are very instructive one especially wherein he
contrasts the relative value of edicts and statutes
as compared with the living thoughts of men. We
trust that Acton's writings, so far as they are cap-
able of identification, will be given to the public in
a collected form. Mr. Armstrong's ' Charles V.'
meets with the appreciation it deserves. The
author is especially commended for his fairness on
those subjects wherein religious controversies must
be dealt with. Mr. Armstrong, his reviewer assures
us, has avoided these pitfalls " with a care and tact
that savours of genius." The reviewer accepts,
seemingly without question, some statements as to
the emperor's disgusting habits regarding food and
drink. We do not question that he was a wine-
bibber and a glutton, and think it highly probable
that he shortened his life by excesses, but for phy-
siological reasons we cannot accept statements
which bear on their face marks of wild exaggera-
tion. No one outside the pages of Rabelais could
have accomplished feats so astounding. ' The Super-
natural in Nineteenth-Century Fiction ' shows wide
reading. The supernaturalists, as we may call
them, have never been a school or sect. Hawthorne,
Poe, Lord Lytton, and Mrs. Oliphant stand alone,
and have very little in common. Their theo-
ries, if indeed such things can be attributed to
them, were frequently antagonistic. The papers on
' The Unpublished Chapters of Fynes Moryson's
Itinerary,' on ' Early Flemish Artists,' and ' Human
Flight ' are all worth attention.
DIED on 29 April, at Bath, Thomas Helsby, of
Helsby, co. Chester, barrister-at-law of Lincoln's
Inn, editor of Ormerod's ' History of Cheshire,' a
zealous topographical and genealogical worker, and
a former contributor to ' N. & Q.'
to
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