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When Sir Edward Stanley led the war-smiths of Lancashire and Cheshire to Flodden Field, the men of Wigan are mentioned as going with the rest. And among those "fellows fearce and freshe for feight," of whom the quaint old alliterative ballad describes the array:
Stepping in she sat down and gave Moor another surprise, as from her slender throat there came a voice whose power and pathos made a tragedy of the simple ballad she was singing. "Why did you choose that plaintive thing, all about love, despair, and death? It quite breaks one's heart to hear it," said Prue, pausing in a mental estimate of her morning's shopping.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, singing his German Parsival, broke off some description of a famished city to remember that in his own house at home the very mice lacked food, and what old ballad singer was it who claimed to have fought by day in the very battle he sang by night?
'If thou be hurt with hart it brings thee to thy bier, as the auld ballad hath it, and the adage is true, as we oursel's have seen." Nicholas, however, heeded not the caution, but, drawing his wood-knife, and disencumbering himself of his cloak, he plunged into the stream, and with one or two strokes reached the bank.
"Out of this acquaintance," says Sir Walter, "consequences arose, which altered almost all the Scottish ballad-maker's future prospects of life. In early youth I had been an eager student of ballad poetry, and the tree is still in my recollection, beneath which I lay and first entered upon the enchanting perusal of Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry.
Bonnets and hats, at five or seven guineas apiece, swelled the account. Parasols and fans were of fabulous price, as it seemed to Lesbia; and the shoes and stockings to match her various gowns occurred again and again between the more important items, like the refrain of an old ballad.
The large, white, graceful hand of the doctor sweeping the strings, the clear ringing shout of the tenor and the chiming, bird-like voice of the girl lent to the absurd words of this ballad a singular dignity. They made all other persons and events of the day of no account.
That is what makes musical criticism difficult. January 24, 1918. Edgar Saltus "O no, we never mention him, His name is never heard!" Old Ballad. Edgar Saltus To write about Edgar Saltus should be vieux jeu.
It would be enough for him that the bird was bonnie, and singing; and his very sorrow would lead him to analyse and describe as little as possible a thing which so painfully contrasted with his own feelings; whether the thorn was flowery or not, would not have mattered to him, unless he had some distinct association with the thorn-flowers, in which case he would have brought out the image full and separate, and not merely thrown it in as a make-weight to "thorn" and this is the great reason why epithets are, nine times out of ten, mistakes in song and ballad poetry; he never would have thought of "departed" before he thought of "joys."
Now I cannot end this jolly tale better than in the words of the ballad which came out of the happening and which has been sung in the villages and countryside ever since: "And thus having end of this merry wedding, The bride lookt like a queen; And so they returned to the merry greenwood Amongst the leaves so green."
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