and Puritan sermons. The woodcuts were sometimes rude and clumsy in the extreme, more often incongruous than appropriate; but not unfrequently possessed merit in execution as well as in conception. A few had earlier done duty as book-illustrations, until they were somewhat worn, when they were purchased cheaply, mutilated to suit a temporary requirement, and thereafter employed as part of the balladprinter's common stock, to fill up any blank, and lend attractiveness to a dull ditty. Despite all these drawbacks, and we perhaps make too liberal acknowledgment of what lie open to censure, there are, to a fit audience, few subjects so interesting and so valuable as these old ballads. Only rarely were the authors genuine poets, it is true. Poverty, as well as deficient education, made them the hirelings and hacks of the prosperous ballad-publishers, whose number and industry prove clearly how great were the popularity and profit of this branch of literary commerce. But the very poverty of the writers had made them acquainted with the lower walks of life in city or in country. Their ignorance was no barrier to their acceptation among the crowd. Touches of genuine humour, genuine pathos, are not rare. Only the dainty and discontented reader can possibly find these ballads valueless. In party-strife the bias of the writer showed itself in ballads, no doubt, and the historical narration is in consequence distorted. But what part of contemporary history is not so; although of literary pretensions far higher? Who for one moment can trust the most solemn statements of Bishop Burnet, alike credulous, spiteful, conceited, and prejudiced? Who, after examining for himself, can attach weight to the personal narrative of the boastful cannonpointer and cushion-thumper of Derry, whose very name has become in modern days synonymous with that of Münchhausen, reiterated when incredible falsehoods are uttered, as "Walker!" Of a few years earlier date, who now can believe the asseverations of James Heath, whom Carlyle stigmatizes as "Carrion Heath," the vilifier of not-immaculate but stalwart and sufficient Oliver Cromwell? The inaccuracies of Clarendon have been insisted on ad nauseam; the bitterness of polemical writings, such as Milton's against Salmasius, outrage all forbearance. While prelates, chancellors, Latinsecretaries, poets, Low-Church clergy, and pamphleteers, are thus prone to exaggeration and mis-statement, need we express wonder or indignation at finding a similar fault in writers of street-ballads, sold to the populace for a penny? But though we do not claim for them the credit of unfailing accuracy, or build on them our faith in politics, we greatly err if we see not in them an importance as indications of popular belief. True or false, these ballads were accepted, reprinted, and believed. It is this fact which makes them so invaluable to the student of human nature and of English history. We believe not in witchcraft: but the purchase of ballads pretending to describe the horrible tortures inflicted by and on persons who were accused of being witches, is surely worth consideration. So every phase of our English society is illustrated, if we have the wit to find them out, in sundry old black-letter prints. For high life and culture we must go to books, costly when published, and now exceedingly rare. For middle-class and poverty, no records equal those we find in the street-ballads. Grave scholars like John Selden (the collector of ballads known later as the "Pepysian," they having passed to Samuel Pepys, who added to the store,) gave good proof by his own habits of the value he attached to broadside ditties, "Penny-merriments" and booklet "Garlands." Old Anthony Wood, gossip and annotator, dotted down marginalia on the day he purchased such, and sometimes they were useful notes, elucidative, necessary when first issued to contemporaries. Of Dr. Richard Rawlinson1 we know little, but admire the volume of rare ballads that he saved for us in after-times. Narcissus Luttrell valued such, and gathered heaps assiduously. Still earlier than all, and with more danger to himself, George Thomason had clutched at every broadside issued during the Civil Wars, and hid it for the Days of Restoration which he foresaw with prophetical insight and unfaltering faith. These were men who loved old ballads, and if we modern imitators wish to emulate them the path is open. Even he was accused of Bagfordian acquisitiveness, by Gough (British Topography), who himself was accused by Steevens of pilfering. Cotton's case is well known. He took care to secure a signed and sealed pardon, from Charles I., for having embezzled documents. 2 We have not mentioned the honoured name of Francis Douce; but he is not forgotten. His few works have the true scholarly excellence: Holbein's Dance of Death, and the Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1806. Not only scholars, statesmen, and collegiate gossips prized the simple lyrics of the poor. Lovely woman also smiled upon the pages, and lent her voice to the old touching melodies that still come to the heart. About the year 1653, the time when Oliver outraged the laws, and made short work of the insufferable Parliament which had "sat too long," we find a record in the letters sent to William Temple, afterwards her husband, by Dorothy Osborne, "the Beauty of Bedfordshire." She tells him of her favourite walk, at Chicksands, which was "in the Common that lay hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads." It was at the same date when Izaak Walton with his friends loved to listen to the songs of the milkmaid and her mother, that kept alive his memory of Kit Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh. One of our pages, 759, gives a suggestive woodcut, of the date 1641, showing the costume and action of such a maiden, though less comely than Maudlin of the meadows.1 § 4. Satirical Ballads. As to the sanctities of private life, the ballads were, at times, we may admit, somewhat intrusive and uncharitable. Writers who sought popularity did not scruple at handling or throwing mire. A kindred Society (which all our own members ought at once to join), the New Shakspere, is reprinting the Anatomy of Abuses, by narrow-minded old Philip Stubbes, who hated dramatists and musicians, especially denouncing the "songs, filthy ballads, and scurvy rhymes" of minstrels. This was in 1583, but within three years afterwards a youth was 1 She knew all the best songs, evidently, for she offered to sing "Come, Shepherds, deck your heads," or "As at noon Dulcina rested," or "Philida flouts me." There are some folk in our days, less pure than was Maudlin, who would affect to be shocked at that charming " Dulcina," which was attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh. We gave both parts of the song in Westminster Drollery (ii. 59, and p. lii. of its Appendix). Elliot Stock's reprint in fac-simile of The Compleat Angler, 1653, brings us close to Izaak Walton. We seem to have carried his newly-issued book to some sedgy rivulet, or our favourite Soar at Loughborough, and there remembered to forget having this morning heard that Cromwell has expelled the Parliament. If it come to mind, it helps to sweeten the sport and enhance the solitude. wending his way to. London, who knew and loved the ballads thus denounced, and quoted scraps of them, or alluded to their tunes, in those plays with which he was so to "take Eliza and our James." Gentle Willy himself, like his own Bohemian Mopsa, did "love a ballad in print." A suggestive incident, no unparalleled case we may feel sure, is related thus: "In 1537 a man of the name of John Hogon was arrested for amusing the people in various places with a political ballad: he had offended against the proclamation of 1533, which was issued to suppress fond books, ballads, rhimes, and other lewd treatises in the English tongue.'2 Ten years afterwards it was deemed necessary to pass an Act of Parliament in order, among other things, to put a stop to the circulation of printed ballads, plays, rhimes, songs, and other fantasies; so that the multiplication of them by the press was then considered an evil requiring the intervention of the legislature, although only a single broadside of about that date has been handed down to us. "Ballads seem to have multiplied after Edward VI. came to the throne, and two or three of these have been preserved, and are in close custody in the cabinets of the curious: no new proclamation was issued, nor statute passed, on the subject while Edward continued to reign; but in less than a month after MARY became Queen, she published an edict against 'books, ballads, rhymes, and treatises, which she complained had been set out by printers and stationers, of an evil zeal for lucre, and covetous of vile gain.' There is little doubt, from the few pieces remaining, that it was in a considerable degree effectual for the end in view. "No such restraint was deemed necessary when Elizabeth succeeded her sister, and the consequence was an increase of ballads, and ballad singers."-J. P. Collier's Book of Roxburghe Ballads, p. xiv. 1 We are ourselves preparing for The New Shakspere Society, a paper Shakespeare's knowledge and use of old ballads." 2 "The only words of Hogon's song preserved are these : The hunt is up, the hunt is vp, &c. The Masters of Arts and Doctours of dyvynyte Have brought this realme out of good unyte. The nobyll men have take this to stay, My Lord of Norffolk, Lord of Surrey, And my Lord of Shrewsbyrry: The Duke of Suffolk myght have made Inglond mery.' 999 One of these noblemen, we may be sure, caused the ballad-singer's death. BAGFORD. In the absence of newspapers, the ballad-writer became the accredited journalist of public events. The true popularizer of his opinions on living celebrities (including monstrous births, notorious criminals, and foreign foes, more or less beaten,) was naturally the street-singer. Wherever idle people congregated under a pretence of business, in marketplaces and at fountains, there would the wandering Orpheus come with his "wood notes wild": very wild and still more wooden. He told the varied stories of human life, much as we find them in these Bagford Ballads. Unsuccessful wooings, lamentable dying speeches, providential warnings, or punishments of wickedness and rescue from destruction, formed his chief stock-in-trade. But his voice lent point to sarcastic "characters" that were recognized as being portraits by jealous neighbours in town or country. One fragment of such defamatory ballads, belonging to the class of personal libels more than political satires, is preserved in a grave ecclesiastical register. It lifts the curtain for us, that had hidden for three hundred years the heart-burnings of mortified women. It helps us to a peep, moreover, at the grinning loiterers in Oxford market-place; not to mention the comments of the clergy. Here it is, now first published: Extract from Archdeacon's Registry:22nd May, 1584. "Islipp. Anne Wrigglesworth of Islip cited, negat 'that ever she made any ryme, but she said a certeyne ryme and for goodwill she told the same to Goodwife Willyams and her daughter, and to the Goodwife Cadman and her daughter, becaus she thought it was made to there discreditt, and she hard it as she came to the markett to Oxford abowte Christmes last of one Robert Nevell who did singe it by the way and the ryme is this viz Yf I had as faire a face as John Willms his daughter Elzabeth hasse, Then wold I were a taudrie2 lace as Goodman 1 Ballad-narratives of recent occurrences were frequently duplicated by similar accounts from rival publishers. Instances of this may be seen by comparing the Chelmsford Murder, 1663, of our p. 736, with the Appendix, p. 994; the case of Custard-eating Shuff, 1684, on pp. 864 and 862; also three versions of "Russell's Farewell," 1683, pp. 230, and note, and 1002. 2 Taudrie neck-laces: often written "tawdrie": the word being a corruption of "Saint Audrey," from the bedizenments in attire sold at St. Audrey's Fair: |