The rise of the ballad in the eighteenth century . ong that was on the lips of the people. 2 It is in this sense that we find Horace V/alpcles lettersfull of ballads written about political and social Percy explained the difference between the two classesof ballads in his Essay on the iincient Minstrels, but un-fortunately did not hear the distinction in mind when healtered some of the ballads, and in these changes has super-imposed the redundancies and formalities of his century uponthe simplicity of the earlier centuries. Knowing, then, the characteristics of trueballads, why
The rise of the ballad in the eighteenth century . ong that was on the lips of the people. 2 It is in this sense that we find Horace V/alpcles lettersfull of ballads written about political and social Percy explained the difference between the two classesof ballads in his Essay on the iincient Minstrels, but un-fortunately did not hear the distinction in mind when healtered some of the ballads, and in these changes has super-imposed the redundancies and formalities of his century uponthe simplicity of the earlier centuries. Knowing, then, the characteristics of trueballads, why do we find this revival of interest in theeighteenth century, and why, conversely, had interest diedout in the sixteenth and seventeenth? Sy again referringto the list of sources from which Professor Child obtainedthe material for his wonderful collection, we find that the —ooco— 1. Hart in Publications of the Modern Language Association,vol. lY. p. 155f. 2. The Letters of Horace V/alpole. Edited by Mrs. PagetToynbee. 16 vols. Oxford, 1904. -. Harleian and Percy mamiscripts, and the collection inYork Minster Library, were the only ones of any importancefrom 1550 to 1708. From 1708 to 1803, at which latterdate Scott collected the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,there were forty collections of ballads besides twenty-one hooks of garlands and stall-copies. The time in theeighteenth century when these miscellanies and manuscriptswere published v/as largely in the second half of thecentury. One volume of English and Scotch songs, has theprobable date of 1730; Wit and Mirth, or Pills to PurgeMelancholy, ran through four editions from 1699 to 1720;a collection of Old Ballads, 3 vols. 1723. 1725; AllanRamsays The Evergreen, 1724, and The Tea-Table Miscellany,3 vols., 1729. 1733, 1740, 1750, 1763; Thomsons OrpheusCaledonius, 1725, 1733; and the separate ballads ofWaters, and Edom of Gordon, printed in Glasgow in 1755,are all the volumes which preceed. Bishop Percys
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