CHAPTER III. ROMANTIC BALLADS AND SONGS. "What resounds, In fable or romance, of Uther's son Paradise Lost, Book I. THE poems included under this title are based on events which, if not wholly ideal, are at least incapable of being certainly identified with any known historical transactions. This limitation of the term Romantic does not claim to be an adequate definition of it for all purposes; but it expresses a prominent characteristic of Romance, and it would be difficult to find an equally suitable term. This definition, it will be observed, does not exclude some of the poems on which remarks have been made in the previous chapters. All the legendary ballads, for example, must, as a rule, be considered romantic, in this sense of the term; and many of the social ballads and songs are evidently founded on unreal or uncertain relationships. But in explanation of this it has been already observed, in the Introduction, that a perfectly logical classification of literary works is impossible; and the reason is evident. The characteristic, on the ground of which a number of works are included in one class, will often be found to be possessed by a number of other works which, on the ground of a different characteristic, are relegated to a separate group. Moreover, although the classification of romantic ballads and songs as a distinct group crosses the other divisions of legendary and social lyrics; yet, as our object is to discover the influence of the ballads and songs on the Scottish character, it is in the light of their most prominent characteristics that that influence is to be traced. We may, therefore, consider the same poems as legendary, as social, as romantic; and the effect upon character which is traced to them will be different in all these different points of view. Accordingly, in the present chapter, the ballads and songs are considered simply as romances. There are, however, many poems which appropriately go by the name of romantic, inasmuch as their romantic nature is more prominent than any other characteristic ; and different groups of these, clustering around different ideal heroes or events, are referred to so many cycles of romance. In English ballad literature two of such cycles claim a considerable number of poems-the cycle of Arthurian romance, and that which centres on Robin Hood; but neither of these is represented by a corresponding group in the ballad poetry of Scotland. With regard to the former, if it be possible to discover its original birthland, the south of Scotland, with those counties of northern England which are more Scotch than English in the outline of their scenery, may present perhaps a stronger claim than any other place. At least this theory, started originally by Sir Walter Scott,1 and subsequently supported by Allan Cunningham,2 finds an elaborate defence in the most recent contribution to the subject of Arthurian localities. But even if this claim be well founded, the heroic story has wandered far into other literatures, and scarcely a fragmentary segment of the whole cycle has been deposited in the ballad minstrelsy of Scotland. Robin Hood, again, is emphatically "the English ballad-singer's joy," even though, under critical analysis, he should evaporate into the atmosphere of Teutonic mythology, leaving only the slight solid residuum of Odin or Woden. For, whatever may be the origin of his name, the hero of this romance is clothed in a distinctively English costume by the ballad-singers of England; and the absence of any corresponding group of ballads in Scotland is one of the strongest collateral proofs of the true historical origin of the romance. The hero, indeed, is not unknown in Scottish literature. He is referred to by Gavin Douglas, in The Palace of 1 Introduction to Sir Tristrem. See especially pp. xxxiv.-xxxix. and Ixv. lxvi. 2 "Songs of Scotland," vol. i. pp. 61–63. 3 Mr. Glennie's "Essay on Arthurian Localities,” prefixed to Part iii. of the Prose Romance of Merlin, published by the Early English Text Society in 1869. 4 See Simrock's "Deutsche Mythologie," pp. 249 and 319. Compare Child's "English and Scottish Ballads," vol. v., Introd. p. xxvi. K Honour,1 along with Fin MacCowl and other legendary heroes; an isolated exploit or two of his has strayed into the Scottish ballads; 2 while "Robert Hude and Lytill Johne" took a place, alongside of the Abbot of Unreason, in the interludes and other satirical representations by which at first the Reformation was advanced, and afterwards the Puritanism of Scottish piety was scandalised. But the true Scottish counterpart of the southern hero is not the Robin Hood of Scottish literature, but the legendary Wallace. Both became, in popular imagination and in the literature which popular imagination creates, ideal representatives of the popular struggle against Norman oppression; and the difference in the portraiture of the two heroes must be ascribed to the difference of the forms in which that oppression came to be most keenly felt north and south of the Tweed respectively. The cruel forest laws of Norman England were unknown in the north; and the Normans first made themselves felt for evil in Scotland when Edward I. began the long-sustained attempt to bring it into feudal subjection to the English crown. If the ballads of Scotland had kept up in the Scottish mind an enthusiasm for different great cycles of 1 Stanza CVI. 2 Child's "English and Scottish Ballads,” vol. v. p. 187. 3 Irving's "History of Scottish Poetry," pp. 445-450. 4 See Burton's "History of Scotland,” vol. ii. pp. 156, 157. It is not impossible, therefore, to combine the theory of the mythological origin of the Robin Hood legend with all that is essential to Thierry's theory of its historical origin ("History of the Norman Conquest," vol. ii. pp. 223-232, Hazlitt's translation) The reader of Ivanhoe need scarcely be reminded that Scott takes the same view as Thierry. romance, we might have been able to trace a different influence to the ballads which form each of the different cycles; but, as it is, we have simply to contemplate the effect on the Scottish character of that romance which infuses a peculiar spirit into many of our ballads. What is it, then, that essentially constitutes an incident, a life, a character, which is described as romantic, because partaking of this spirit? Any phenomenon in human nature is said to be romantic, when it is not a spiritless obedience to external rule, but the outflowing of a spirit from within. A romantic life, therefore, does not present the uniformity of one that is destitute of romance, for the spirit of a man is more varied in its impulses than an external law in its operations. It is on this account that a man who moves unswervingly in a rut which has long been worn by the wheels of custom, and whose life is but the monotonous repetition of similar tasks from day to day, is spoken of as unromantic; whereas we attribute more or less romance to a character in proportion to the eccentricity of the movements in which it reveals the changeful centre of its action-the variable moods of the human soul. This is the sense which must be attached to romance, when it is traced to its source in human nature; and it is in this sense that the critics have distinguished the Romanticists of literature from the French or classical school. It is evidently, therefore, in this sense also that we must seek to discover the romance of the Scottish character, of which the romantic ballads are at once an outgrowth and a support. |