A Bundle of Ballads

A Bundle of Ballads

Recitation with dramatic energy by men whose business it was to travel from one great house to another and delight the people by the way, was usual among us from the first. The scop invented and the glee-man recited heroic legends and other tales to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. These were followed by the minstrels and other tellers of tales written for the people. They frequented fairs and merrymakings, spreading the knowledge not only of tales in prose or ballad form, but of appeals also to public sympathy from social reformers. As late as the year 1822, Allan Cunningham, in publishing a collection of "Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry," spoke from his own recollection of itinerant story-tellers who were welcomed in the houses of the peasantry and earned a living by their craft. The earliest story-telling was in recitative. When the old alliteration passed on into rhyme, and the crowd or rustic fiddle took the place of the old "gleebeam" for accentuation of the measure and the meaning of the song, we come to the ballad-singer as Philip Sidney knew him. Sidney said, in his "Defence of Poesy," that he never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that he found not his heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet, he said, "it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?" Many an old ballad, instinct with natural feeling, has been more or less corrupted, by bad ear or memory, among the people upon whose lips it has lived. It is to be considered, however, that the old broader pronunciation of some letters developed some syllables and the swiftness of speech slurred over others, which will account for many an apparent halt in the music of what was actually, on the lips of the ballad-singer, a good metrical line. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 2831
Author: Morley, Henry
Release Date: Sep 1, 2001
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Morley, Henry, 1822-1894