[节选]A Collection of Ballads

On the other side, we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a

tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear

in the variants of the ballad.  The lady is there spoken of

generally as Mary Hamilton, but also as Mary Myle, Lady Maisry, as

daughter of the Duke of York (Stuart), as Marie Mild, and so forth.

Though she bids sailors carry the tale of her doom, she is not

abroad, but in Edinburgh town.  Nothing can be less probable than

that a Scots popular ballad-maker in 1719, telling the tale of a

yesterday's tragedy in Russia, should throw the time back by a

hundred and fifty years, should change the scene to Scotland (the

heart of the sorrow would be Mary's exile), and, above all, should

compose a ballad in a style long obsolete.  This is not the method

of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as

HARDYKNUTE show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or

skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.



We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard MARY

HAMILTON as an old example of popular perversion of history in

ballad, not as "one of the very latest," and also "one of the very

best" of Scottish popular ballads.



ROB ROY shows the same power of perversion.  It was not Rob Roy but

his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and

James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian

spy once more), who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly.  Indeed a

kind of added epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet

was aware of the facts, and wished to correct his predecessor.



Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history.  They

are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin,

composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused

among and altered by popular reciters.  In England they soon won

their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled

and moralized by the hack editors.



No ballad has a stranger history than THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD

BATEMAN, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray.

Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the

essence.  Bateman, a captive of "this Turk," is  beloved by the

Turk's daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by

her released.  The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman:  he

has just married a local bride, but "orders another marriage," and

sends home his bride "in a coach and three."  This incident is

stereotyped in the ballads and occurs in an example in the Romaic.

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