CURRENT LITERATURE.
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Edited by Francis James Child. Parts I. and II. (Houghton and Co., Boston ; Henry Stevens, London.)—Mr. Child has been long known as a laborious student of our ballad literature. The subject is so vast in extent that we are not surprised to learn that the editor has devoted many years to its pursuit. From all quarters he has received the most generous assistance, and for the work now before us, which promises to be the most important yet given to the world, he is very largely indebted to manuscript authorities. Of these a sufficient account is given, and in every instance Mr. Child is careful to supply informa- tion which may be almost pronounced exhaustive. When the collection is more advanced, we shall hope to write of it more fully. At present it will suffice to state that in the plan of the work Grundtvig's "Old Popular Ballads of Denmark" has been closely followed, and Mr. Child states that he has enjoyed the advantage of the Professor's criticism and advice. For by far the most important portion of his materials he is indebted to Scotland, where ballad poetry has ever found a genial soil, and the aim of the editor is to print every valuable copy of every known ballad, while in the introductions the variations of each copy are exactly stated. This is not all. The larger number of our English and Scottish ballads are familiar in some form or other to the Northern nations of Europe, while of many the traditions may be traced still further. Thus, for instance, the ballad of "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is well known in the South, the framework of the story being the same in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Magyar. "The woman delivers herself from death by some artifice, and retaliates upon the man the destruction he had intended for her." A reputation as extended belongs to "Clerk .Colvill," a story which seems to be known everywhere, and is widely spread throughout. France and Spain. In Northern lands, to judge from the number of versions, its popularity is unbounded. Of this ballad there are twelve Icelandic versions, twenty-six Danish, eighteen Norwegian, and eight Swedish. "Earl Brand," too, which first saw the light in this country in the late Robert Bell's "Ancient Poems of the Peasantry of Eegland," ranks with a class of ballads which, so far at least as one incident is concerned, belongs to no special nationality. "The beautiful fancy," Mr. Child writes, "of plants springing from the graves of star-crossed lovers, and signifying by the intertwining of stems or leaves, or in other analogous ways, that an earthly passion has not been extinguished by death, presents itself, as is well known, very frequently in popular poetry. Though the graves be made far apart—even on opposite sides of the church, or one to the south and one to the north outside the church—however separated, the vines or trees seek one another out and mingle their branches or their foliage." Of other ballads the locality is more limited, the versions of "The Cruel Brother," for example, which, according to Aytonn, is perhaps the most popular of all the Scottish ballads, being chiefly although not entirely, confined to the North. Incest, nrirder, and a kind of fiend-like cruelty, especially attributed to stepmothers, are more characteristic of the bulk of the old ballads than the charm of poetic fancy ; but even in the most painful of
these stories, the brutality is often lost in pathos. We may add that publishers, as well as editor, deserve credit for the beautiful form in which this collection has been brought out. A thousand copies only of each part are printed in America, and of these 250 are sent to the English market.
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