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After supper came singing of songs, saying of ballads, and telling of tales. I know with what in- credulity many highlanders will read of a merry-making in their own country at which no horn went round, no punch-bowl was filled and emptied without stint! But the clearer the brain, the better justice is done to the more etherial wine of fthe soul.
After the reading, music; a bit of his own composition, "Old Aegina's Rock," or "Cockle-hat and Staff"; his cousin's Scotch ballads or Christy Minstrel songs; and if you can sing a new ditty, fresh from London, now is your chance.
They sat in the Pit at the Oxford that night, and there was a South African sketch on with two of the chronic-est jossers you ever see, gassing away in khâki behind earthworks of sacks stuffed with straw, and standing up to chuck sentimental and patriotic ballads off their chests, while the Enemy, who had kept up an intermittent rifle-practice at the wing, left off presumably to listen.
From the King's Quair and the poems of Henryson, Dunbar, and Gawain Douglas, select passages that show first-hand intimacy with nature. Compare these with lines from any poet whose knowledge of nature seems to you to be acquired from books. Ballads. Ward. I., passim, contains among others three excellent ballads, Sir Patrick Spens, The Twa Corbies, Robin Hood Rescuing the Widow's Three Sons.
Often the ballads are a mere presentation of a scene, with neither plot nor moral; once in a while, too, Uhland shows a humorous touch. But various as are his themes and treatments, the treatment is always nicely adapted to the theme. It is difficult to imagine a better suiting of form and content than in The Singer's Curse.
In the shop-windows and on the bookstalls of Contra-Remonstrant tradesmen, now becoming more and more defiant as the last allies of Holland, the States of Utrecht, were gradually losing courage, were seen the freshest ballads and caricatures against the Advocate.
But immediately on my arrival in this country I undertook to finish a poem which I had begun, entitled 'Christabel, for a second volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads. I tried to perform my promise, but the deep unutterable disgust which I had suffered in the translation of the accursed Wallenstein, seemed to have stricken me with barrenness; for I tried and tried, and nothing would come of it.
But how one’s sensibility on any particular point diminishes with time; at present I enter the old town perfectly indifferent as to what the people may be thinking on the subject of the songs and ballads.
He had lately been laid up again was it by the "fear" or something else? by a complaint which destroyed his strength, impaired his understanding and threatened his life, as he wrote to a friend: he was taking mercury for a cure. But he had his translations from Ab Gwilym and his romantic ballads, and he believed in them.
Evans's collection of Ballads, of which a writer in the Quarterly Review some years ago expressed his suspicion that they were from the pen of Mickle. It has been found on inquiry, that the suggestion of this judicious critic is fully confirmed.
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