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A Collection of Ballads-Part1_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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literary and courtly shape. But CENDRILLON or CHAPERON ROUGE in

the mouth of a French peasant, is apt to be the old traditional



version, uncontaminated by the refinements of Perrault, despite

Perrault's immense success and circulation. Thus tradition



preserves pre-literary forms, even though, on occasion, it may

borrow from literature. Peasant poets have been authors of



ballads, without being, for all that, professionalminstrels. Many

such poems survive in our balladliterature.



The material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical" target="_blank" title="a.历史(上)的">historical.

The former class is based on one of the primeval invented



situations, one of the elements of the MARCHEN in prose. Such

tales or myths occur in the stories of savages, in the legends of



peasants, are interwoven later with the plot in Epic or Romance,

and may also inspireballads. Popular superstitions, the witch,



metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them

survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part.



The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding

fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived



from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted,

sometimes out of all knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on



Darnley's murder and the youth of James VI.

In the romantic class, we may take TAMLANE. Here the idea of



fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal

young men as lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by



clinging to them through all transformations. A classical example

is the seizure of Thetis by Peleus, and Child quotes a modern



Cretan example. The dipping in milk and water, I may add, has

precedent in ancient Egypt (in THE TWO BROTHERS), and in modern



Senegambia. The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, paid to Hell, is

illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. (1) Now, in



literary forms and romance, as in OGIER LE DANOIS, persons are

carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the literary



romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need

to borrow a familiar fact from literaryromance. On the whole



subject the curious may consult "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves,

Fauns, and Fairies," by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle,



himself, according to tradition, a victim of the fairies.

Thus, in TAMLANE, the whole DONNEE is popular. But the current



version, that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by

incongruous modernisms. Burns's version, from tradition, already



localizes the events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and

Yarrow. But Burns's version does not make the Earl of Murray



father of the hero, nor the Earl of March father of the heroine.

Roxburgh is the hero's father in Burns's variant, which is more



plausible, and the modern verses do not occur. This ballad

apparently owes nothing to literaryromance.



In MARY HAMILTON we have a notableinstance of the Historical

Ballad. No Marie of Mary Stuart's suffered death for child murder.



She had no Marie Hamilton, no Marie Carmichael among her four

Maries, though a lady of the latter name was at her court. But



early in the reign a Frenchwoman of the queen's was hanged, with

her paramour, an apothecary, for slaying her infant. Knox mentions



the fact, which is also recorded in letters from the English

ambassador, uncited by Mr. Child. Knox adds that there were



ballads against the Maries. Now, in March 1719, a Mary Hamilton,

of Scots descent, a maid of honour of Catherine of Russia, was



hanged for child murder (CHILD, vi. 383). It has therefore been

supposed, first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long ago, later by



Professor Child, and then by Mr. Courthope, that our ballad is of

1719, or later, and deals with the Russian, not the Scotch,



tragedy.

To this we may reply (1) that we have no example of such a throwing



back of a contemporary event, in ballads. (2) There is a version

(CHILD, viii. 507) in which Mary Hamilton's paramour is a



"pottinger," or apothecary, as in the real old Scotch affair. (3)

The number of variants of a ballad is likely to be proportionate to



its antiquity and wide distribution. Now only SIR PATRICK SPENS

has so many widely different variants as MARY HAMILTON. These



could hardly have been evolved between 1719 and 1790, when Burns

quotes the poem as an old ballad. (4) We have no example of a poem



so much in the old ballad manner, for perhaps a hundred and fifty

years before 1719. The style first degraded and then expired:



compare ROB ROY and KILLIECRANKIE, in this collection, also the

ballads of LOUDOUN HILL, THE BATTLE OF PHILIPHAUGH, and others much



earlier than 1719. New styles of popular poetry on contemporary

events as SHERRIFFMUIR and TRANENT BRAE had arisen. (5) The



extreme historic inaccuracy of MARY HAMILTON is paralleled by that

of all the ballads on real events. The mention of the Pottinger is






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