Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Selected and Edited for Study Under the Supervision of William Allan Neilson, Professor of English, Harvard University
The present volume is designed to meet the needs of a less advanced class of students than is provided for in the comprehensive collections of the late Professor Child or in the edition by Kittredge and Sargent in the Cambridge Poets series. Those great sources of material and illustration have been drawn upon, as was inevitable, with great freedom; and this selection is to be regarded as an introduction which, it is hoped, may allure students to a more exhaustive study of the subject. With this end in view, the attempt has been made to lay solid foundations for the understanding and appreciation of ballad poetry by making the selection representative, by refraining from any tampering with the texts, either in spelling or in readings, and by supplying abundant references to works in which the study of ballads may be further pursued.
Miss Witham's Introduction seeks to give in concise form the gist of the most recent scholarship concerning the characteristics and the origin of ballads. Here she is naturally chiefly indebted to Professor Gummere, especially in his book on the Popular Ballad, and to Professor Kittredge in the introduction to his volume in the Cambridge Poets series. The notes show similarly a free use of the introductions by Professor Child in his great final collection; and by specific references the reader is constantly reminded of the mass of variants to be found there, a knowledge of which is so essential to a right conception of ballad poetry.
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