[节选]A Collection of Ballads

Now Lord Bateman is YOUNG BEKIE in the Scotch ballads, who becomes

YOUNG BEICHAN, YOUNG BICHEM, and so forth, and has adventures

identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in

the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious.  As

Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket,

Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury.  Every one has

heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London.  (Robert of

Gloucester's LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF THOMAS BECKET, Percy Society.

See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and MOTHERWELL'S

MINSTRELSY, p. xv., 1827.)  The legend of the dissolved marriage is

from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example

in the state of CANTEFABLE, alternate prose and verse, like

AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE.  Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the

twelfth century.



Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad.  The examples

selected are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the

spirit of the Border raids which they record.  A few notes are

added in an appendix.  The text is chosen from among the many

variants in Child's learned but still unfinished collection, and an

effort has been made to choose the copies which contain most poetry

with most signs of uncontaminated originality.  In a few cases Sir

Walter Scott's versions, though confessedly "made up," are

preferred.  Perhaps the editor may be allowed to say that he does

not merely plough with Professor Child's heifer, but has made a

study of ballads from his boyhood.



This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic

American critics, from "the common blame of a plagiary."  Indeed,

as Professor Child has not yet published his general theory of the

Ballad, the editor does not know whether he agrees with the ideas

here set forth.



So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child's

regretted death.  He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast

collection of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads,

with all accessible variants, a work of great labour and research,

and a distinguished honour to American scholarship.  We are not

told, however, that he had written a general study of the topic,

with his conclusions as to the evolution and diffusion of the

Ballads:  as to the influences which directed the selection of

certain themes of MARCHEN for poetic treatment, and the processes

by which identical ballads were distributed throughout Europe.  No

one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at least, whose

knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that of

Professor Child.  It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may

complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it

unfinished.