No more need we write of Ballad-singers, in commendation or dispraise. Our store is inexhaustible for illustration. Have we not already written too much? At least, we cannot end our task, and leave our volumes to the study of fresh readers, without recording here our warmest thanks for ever-cheerful, ever-skilful help, to all the printers of these pages, in the house of Messrs. Stephen Austin and his Sons, at Hertford. OF old, "St. Austin be thy speed!" Now, in our journey, and sore need, Kindest and best of printers, take (What Evans calls) "goot wort" for't: Long be't before the Stygian Lake You cross, from pleasant Hertford. Long may your henchmen round you stand, To print Black Letter Ballads. In friendship, and in admiration also, let our final word be an expression of the gratitude due from every lover of old ballads, and member of this Society, to him who has done more than all others in raising to its true place in national regard the English Popular Music of the Olden Time; the man who is now labouring to give us, with a completeness never hitherto attempted, a History of Music, whereof the scholarly first volume travels "from the earliest records to the fall of the Roman Empire." May he live to tell of Medieval and of Modern times, of changing fashions but of melodies so high and pure that no decay can touch or silence them. May he win fresh laurels for himself, while enriching the literature of his country. We could not wish to write a better last word than the honoured name of WILLIAM CHAPPELL. MOLASH VICARAge, Kent, J. W. E. BAGFORD. Readers will find on a separate page, 1024, a list of authors known, or on reasonable ground believed, to have written the ballads we reprint. A notice of each one is given in the several Introductions. It seemed quite as well to thus disperse what he had to tell of them, in a class or individually, instead of reserving it to the General Introduction, where he wished to say more on the singers. We have for some time been engaged on a study of the chronology of the wood engravings, that were first used for book-illustrations, and afterward descended (maimed and infirm) to the ballad-publishers. It promises to yield important results. In the places where they appear, or in the Appendix, we have briefly marked the history of some among the woodcuts which adorn our pages, copied from the original broadsides. Engraved by Mr. W. H. Hooper, they speak for themselves, and need no praise. The later ones, belonging to Volume Third, are of especial merit, drawn accurately by Mrs. Agnes Furnivall, of the true size, as is also her picture of "William and Mary's Coronation" (on p. 613). The ballad cut, however, had been Deacon's reduced copy from one in a different collection. So was the cut of "Dangerfield in the Pillory" (p. 706), which proves to have been an adaptation, in smaller size, of a previously-issued portraiture of Titus Oates himself, in the same position. Generally speaking, ballad-publishers descended to every meanness and dishonesty to circulate their wares. When is the history of Ballad-printing to be written, without suppression or disguise? We have found pages of criticism on Old Ballads, devoid of quotational commas, palmed off as original, by an LL.D., who had stolen them bodily from an author previously deceased, whose other writings were acknowledged to have been cited. This is not a question of inaccuracy, but of deliberate literary fraud. He too is gone, and we are told de mortuis nil nisi bonum. When their Shades met, if they went not in different directions, there must have been discomfort for the one who arrived later. Dido, the betrayed Queen of Carthage, avoided the false Eneas, when he descended to the Realms of Awe: thus might even so genial a spirit as Sir Walter Scott's, under such provocation : Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, The Bagford List. Shallow." Where's the roll; where's the roll; where's the roll?-Let me see, let me see. So, so, so, so; yea, marry, Sir."-2nd Part, King Henry IV., iii. 2. F the BAGFORD LIST OF BALLADS sold by William Thackeray, an account was given on our page 146. We believe the date of the broadsheet must have been the end of March, or early in April, 1685. No. 170 is a ballad describing the emotion of Two Travellers who have returned to England immediately after James the Second came to the throne, in February. Thus the List could not have been printed earlier than March 168. There are absolutely none of the other political ballads of that year, and the Duke of Monmouth's unsuccessful Rebellion in July flooded the country with such ware. Therefore, we hold that the total absence of these proves the date of issue of the List; with its large spaces, left to be filled in by hand-writing, when fresh novelties were ready. We not only feel bound to give without compression this very important List of 301 Ballads, probably all of them in blackletter, and kept in stock at the date we venture confidently to assign; but, also, to reprint entirely the remainder of the broadsheet, which gives a "List of small Books," distinguishing those which are "Godly" from those which are "Merry"; additionally, those "Double Books," in size and price, commingled of sacred and profane, which were addressed to persons who were supposed to keep their little library from the rapid destruction that befell fugitive broadsheets or small penny books. Added to these, finally, the group of "Histories," evidently of still greater bulk and price, probably sold for threepence, or sixpence. These claimed the attention of any genuine booklover, who sought costly wares and extended romances. |