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When Goethe said that Uhland was primarily a balladist, he was right, for the ballad presupposes just that permeation of the object by the emotion that satisfies the unquestionable lyric gift possessed by Uhland, without in any way destroying the essentially narrative objectivity of his style. Uhland's greatest fame rests, then, on his ballads.
Novelist and balladist, appears to have worked as a silk-weaver in Norwich, but was in London by 1586, and in the course of the next 10 years is known to have written about 50 ballads, some of which involved him in trouble, and caused him to lie perdue for a time. It is only recently that his more important work as a novelist, in which he ranks with Greene and Nash, has received attention.
The ancient balladist thus quaintly describes the festivity on these memorable occasions: "The owld White Harse wants zettin to rights, and the squire hev promised good cheer, Zo we'll gee un a scrape to kip un in zhape, and a'll last for many a year. A was made a lang, lang time ago, wi a good dale o' labor and pains.
Who would ever dream that the question of the balladist, himself an able dreamer concerning classic things, "Where are the Cities of Old Time," could ever find its answer in a simple guide-book telling us where Carthage is, where Troy and all the lost cities of antiquity! Then the details of amusements in this wonderful country who could gather aught of these from the Italian poet?
We see that as a balladist Schiller got his inspiration mainly from two sources: the traditions of Greek antiquity and the traditions of chivalrous romance. He dwelt habitually in the idealisms of the past, and his controlling purpose was to make these idealisms live again in stirring poetic pictures.
Its magnificent choruses are sung by men, and Germany is the home of the Mannergesang; among the opera's songs are echoes of the Volkslied ditties which seem to have been caught up in the German nurseries or plucked off the lips of the itinerant German balladist; its emotional music is heartfelt, warm, ingenuous, and in form and spirit free from the artificiality of Italian opera as it was in Mozart's day and as it continued to be for a long time thereafter.
Bands of cockney darkeys came down it, tuning their voices to our native ragtime. Or a balladist, man or woman, took the centre, and sang towards our compassionate windows. Or a musical husband and wife placed their portable melodeon on the opposite sidewalk, and trained their vocal and instrumental attack upon the same weak defences.
Fowey harbor, sheltered by high hills richly clothed with green, is the "haven under the hill" of which the balladist sings, and near its quaint old pier, almost covered with houses, is Fowey Church, recently effectually restored. The Cornish peninsula upon approaching its termination divides into two, with the semicircular sweep of Mount's Bay between them.
Had the protest against Knickerbocker arrogance languished at this pass, history would be the poorer, but Cora Shelby found it impossible to stop with this show of independence. Her ambition was whetted for an exercise of actual power, and the outcome was the famous battle of Beverwyck, whose story still lacks its balladist.
Those days are gone, but the glow, the passion, the very rage of achievement, which possessed one's work, are not to be forgotten. The work took Yates's fancy mightily, and he had the good sense and generosity to let me know it. The Bentley Balladist wrote years ago: "Excuse me, gents, but to poetic ponies, One ounce of praise is worth ten tons of corn."
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