Volume 3 — [E-Text Edition of Volume III - Part 1 of 2, Slice 2 of 3 - BACONTHORPE to BANKRUPTCY] (continued 10)

Religions.—Owing to the numerous conversions to Islam which followed the Turkish conquest, the Mahommedan population of the Peninsula is largely in excess of the purely Turkish element. More than half the Albanian nation and 35% of the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the creed of the conquering race. Among the Bulgars and Greeks the conversions were less numerous. The Bulgarian Mahommedans, or Pomaks, who inhabit the valleys of Rhodope and certain districts in northern Bulgaria, are numerically insignificant; the Greek followers of Islam are almost confined to Crete. The whole Moslem population of the Peninsula is about 3,300,000. The great bulk of the Christian population belongs to the Orthodox Church, of which the oecumenical patriarch at Constantinople is the nominal head, having precedence over all other ecclesiastical dignitaries. The Bulgarian, Servian, Montenegrin and Greek churches are, however, in reality autocephalous. The Bulgarian church enjoys an exceptional position, inasmuch as its spiritual chief, the exarch, who resides at Constantinople, controls the Bulgarian prelates in European Turkey as well as those in the kingdom of Bulgaria. On the other hand, the Greek prelates in Bulgaria are subject to the patriarch. Religious and political questions are intimately connected in eastern Europe. The heads of the various religious communities are the only representatives of the Christian population recognized by the Turkish government; they possess a seat in the local administrative councils and supervise the Christian schools. The efforts of the several branches of the Orthodox Church to obtain a separate organization in the Turkish dominions are to be attributed exclusively to political motives, as no difference of dogma divides them. The Serbo-Croats of Dalmatia, and Croatia-Slavonia, some of the Gheg tribes in Albania, about 21% of the Bosnians, a still smaller number of Bulgarians in the kingdom and in Macedonia and a few Greeks in the islands belong to the Roman Catholic Church. A certain number of Bulgars at Kukush in Macedonia and elsewhere form a "uniate" church, which accepts the authority and dogma of Rome, but preserves the Orthodox rite and discipline. The Armenians are divided between the Gregorian and Uniate-Armenian churches, each under a patriarch. The other Christian confessions are numerically inconsiderable. The Gagaüzi in Eastern Bulgaria, a Turanian and Turkish-speaking race, profess Christianity.

Languages.—Until comparatively recent times Turkish and Greek were the only languages systematically taught or officially recognized in the Balkan lands subject to Turkish rule. The first, the speech of the conquering race, was the official language; the second, owing to the intellectual and literary superiority of the Greeks, their educational zeal and the privileges acquired by their church, became the language of the upper classes among the Christians. The Slavonic masses, however, both Servian and Bulgarian, preserved their language, which saved these nationalities from extinction. The Servian dialect extending into regions which escaped the Turkish yoke, enjoyed certain advantages denied to the Bulgarian: in free Montenegro the first Slavonic printing-press was founded in 1493; at Ragusa, a century later, Servian literature attained a high degree of excellence. Bulgarian, for nearly four centuries, ceased to be a written language except in a few monasteries; a literary revival, which began about the middle of the 18th century, was the first symptom of returning national consciousness. The Servian, Bulgarian and Rumanian languages have borrowed largely from the Turkish in their vocabularies, but not in their structural forms, and have adopted many words from the Greek. Modern Greek has also a large number of Turkish words which are rejected in the artificial literary language. The revival of the various Balkan nationalities was in every case accompanied or preceded by a literary movement; in Servian literature, under the influence of Obradovich and Vuk Karajich, the popular idiom, notwithstanding the opposition of the priesthood, superseded the ecclesiastical Russian-Slavonic; in Bulgaria the eastern dialect, that of the Sredna Gora, prevailed. Among the Greeks, whose literature never suffered a complete eclipse, a similar effort to restore the classical tongue resulted in a kind of compromise; the conventional literary language, which is neither ancient nor modern, differs widely from the vernacular. Albanian, the only surviving remnant of the ancient Thraco-Illyrian speech, affords an interesting study to philologists. It undoubtedly belongs to the Indo-European family, but its earlier forms cannot, unfortunately, be ascertained owing to the absence of literary monuments. Certain remarkable analogies between Albanian and the other languages of the Peninsula, especially Bulgarian and Rumanian, have been supposed to point to the influence exercised by the primitive speech upon the idioms of the immigrant races.

History.—The great Slavonic immigration, which changed the ethnographic face of the Peninsula, began in the 3rd century A.D. and continued at intervals throughout the following four centuries. At the beginning of this movement the Byzantine empire was in actual or nominal possession of all the regions south of the Danube; the greater part of the native Thraco-Illyrian population of the interior had been romanized and spoke Latin. The Thracians, the progenitors of the Vlachs, took refuge in the mountainous districts and for some centuries disappeared from history: originally an agricultural people, they became nomad shepherds. In Albania the aboriginal Illyrian element, which preserved its ancient language, maintained itself in the mountains and eventually forced back the immigrant race. The Greeks, who occupied the maritime and southern regions, were driven to the sea-coast, the islands and the fortified towns. Slavonic place-names, still existing in every portion of the Peninsula, bear witness to the multitude of the invaders and the permanency of their settlements. In the 6th century the Slavs penetrated to the Morea, where a Slavonic dialect was spoken down to the middle of the 15th century. In the 7th the Serbo-Croats invaded the north-western regions (Croatia, Servia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and northern Albania); they expelled or assimilated the Illyrian population, now represented in Dalmatia by the slavonized Morlachs or Mavro-Vlachs, and appropriated the old Roman colonies on the Adriatic coast. At the end of the 7th century the Bulgars, a Turanian race, crossed the Danube and subjected the Slavonic inhabitants of Moesia and Thrace, but were soon assimilated by the conquered population, which had already become partly civilized. Under their tsar Krum (802-815) the Bulgars invaded the districts of Adrianople and central Macedonia; under Simeon (893-927), who fixed his capital at Preslav, their empire extended from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. In 971 "the first Bulgarian empire" was overthrown by the emperor John Zimisces, but Bulgarian power was soon revived under the Shishman dynasty at Ochrida. In 1014 Tsar Samuel of Ochrida, who had conquered the greater part of the Peninsula, was defeated at Belasitza by the Greek emperor Basil II., and the "western Bulgarian empire" came to an end. In the 10th century the Vlachs reappear as an independent power in Southern Macedonia and the Pindus district, which were known as Great Walachia (Μεγάλη Βλαχία). The Serbs, who owing to the dissensions of their zhupans or chiefs, had hitherto failed to take a prominent part in the history of the Peninsula, attained unity under Stephen Nemanya (1169-1195), the founder of the Nemanyich dynasty. A new Bulgarian power, known as the "second" or "Bulgaro-Vlach empire," was founded at Trnovo in 1186 under the brothers Ivan and Peter Asên, who led a revolt of Vlachs and Bulgars against the Greeks. In 1204 Constantinople was captured by the Latins of the Fourth Crusade, and Baldwin of Flanders was crowned emperor; the Venetians acquired several maritime towns and islands, and Frankish feudal dynasties were established in Salonica, Athens, Achaea and elsewhere. Greek rule, however, survived in the despotate of Epirus under princes of the imperial house of the Angeli. The Latin tenure of Constantinople lasted only 57 years; the imperial city was recaptured in 1261 by Michael VIII. Palaeologus, but most of the feudal Latin states continued to exist till the Turkish conquest; the Venetians retained their possessions for several centuries later and waged continual wars with the Turks. In 1230 Theodore of Epirus, who had conquered Albania, Great Walachia and Macedonia, was overthrown at Klokotnitza by Ivan Asên II., the greatest of Bulgarian monarchs (1218-1241), who defeated Baldwin at Adrianople and extended his sway over most of the Peninsula. The Bulgarian power declined after his death and was extinguished at the battle of Velbûzhd (1330) by the Servians under Stephen Urosh III. A short period of Servian predominance followed under Stephen Dushan (1331-1355) whose realm included Albania, Macedonia, Epirus, Thessaly and northern Greece. The Servian incursion was followed by a great Albanian emigration to the southern regions of the Peninsula. After Dushan's death his empire disappeared, and Servia fell a prey to anarchy. For a short time the Bosnians, under their king Stephen Tvrtko (1353-1391), became the principal power in the west of the Peninsula. The disorganization and internecine feuds of the various states prepared the way for the Ottoman invasion. In 1356 the Turks seized Gallipoli; in 1361 the sultan Murad I. established his capital at Adrianople; in 1389 the fate of the Slavonic states was decided by the rout of the Servians and their allies at Kossovo. The last remnant of Bulgarian national existence disappeared with the fall of Trnovo in 1393, and Great Walachia was conquered in the same year. Under Mahommed II. (1451-1481) the Turks completed the conquest of the Peninsula. The despotate of Epirus succumbed in 1449, the duchy of Athens in 1456; in 1453 Constantinople was taken and the decrepit Byzantine empire perished; the greater part of Bosnia submitted in 1463; the heroic resistance of the Albanians under Scanderbeg collapsed with the fall of Croia (1466), and Venetian supremacy in Upper Albania ended with the capture of Scutari (1478). Only the mountain stronghold of Montenegro and the Italian city-states on the Adriatic coast escaped subjection. In the 16th century under Solyman the Magnificent (1520-1566) the Ottoman power attained its greatest height; after the unsuccessful siege of Vienna (1683) it began to decline. The period of decadence was marked in the latter half of the 18th century by the formation of practically independent pashaliks or fiefs, such as those of Scutari under Mahommed of Bushat, Iannina under Ali of Tepelen, and Viden under Pasvan-oglu. The detachment of the outlying portions of the empire followed. Owing to the uncompromising character of the Mahommedan religion and the contemptuous attitude of the dominant race, the subject nationalities underwent no process of assimilation during the four centuries of Turkish rule; they retained not only their language but their religion, manners and peculiar characteristics, and when the power of the central authority waned they still possessed the germs of a national existence. The independence of Greece was acknowledged in 1829, that of Servia (as a tributary principality) in 1830. No territorial changes within the Peninsula followed the Crimean War; but the continuance of the weakened authority of the Porte tended indirectly to the independent development of the various nationalities. The Ionian Islands were ceded by Great Britain to Greece in 1864. The great break-up came in 1878. The abortive treaty of San Stefano, concluded in that year, reduced the Turkish possessions in the Peninsula to Albania, Epirus, Thessaly and a portion of southern Thrace. A large Bulgarian principality was created extending from the Danube to the Aegean and from the Black Sea to the river Drin in Albania; it received a considerable coast-line on the Aegean and abutted on the Gulf of Salonica under the walls of that town. At the same time the frontiers of Servia and Montenegro were enlarged so as to become almost contiguous, and Montenegro received the ports of Antivari and Dulcigno on the Adriatic. From a strategical point of view the Bulgaria of the San Stefano treaty threatened Salonica, Adrianople and Constantinople itself; and the great powers, anticipating that the new state would become a Russian dependency, refused their sanction to its provisions. The treaty of Berlin followed, which limited the principality to the country between the Danube and the Balkans, created the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia south of the Balkans, and left the remainder of the proposed Bulgarian state under Turkish rule. The Montenegrin frontier laid down at San Stefano was considerably curtailed, Dulcigno, the district north-east of the Tara, and other territories being restored to Turkey; in addition to Nish, Servia received the districts of Pirot and Vranya on the east instead of the Ibar valley on the west; the Dobrudja, somewhat enlarged, was ceded to Rumania, which surrendered southern Bessarabia to Russia. Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austrian administration; under a subsequent convention with Turkey, Austria sent troops into the sanjak of Novibazar. The complete independence of the principalities of Servia, Rumania and Montenegro was recognized. The claims of Greece, ignored at San Stefano, were admitted at Berlin; an extension of frontier, including Epirus as well as Thessaly, was finally sanctioned by the powers in 1880, but owing to the tenacious resistance of Turkey only Thessaly and the district of Arta were acquired by Greece in 1881. Rumania was proclaimed a kingdom in that year, Servia in 1882. In 1880, after a naval demonstration by the powers, Dulcigno was surrendered to Montenegro in compensation for the districts of Plava and Gusinye restored to Turkey. In 1886 the informal union of Eastern Rumelia with Bulgaria was sanctioned by Europe, the districts of Tumrush (Rhodope) and Krjali being given back to the sultan. In 1897 Crete was withdrawn from Turkish administration, and the Greco-Turkish War of that year was followed by the cession to Turkey of a few strategical points on the Thessalian frontier. In 1908 Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed to the Dual Monarchy, and Bulgaria (including Eastern Rumelia) was proclaimed an independent kingdom.

The growth and development of the Balkan nations have, to A Balkan confederation. a great extent, been retarded by the international jealousies arising from the Eastern Question. The possibility of the young states entering into a combination which would enable them to offer a united resistance to foreign interference while simultaneously effecting a compromise in regard to their national aims, has at various times occupied the attention of Balkan politicians. Among the earliest advocates of this idea was Ristich, the Servian statesman. During the reaction against Russia which followed the war of 1877 informal discussions were conducted with this object, and it was even suggested that a reformed or constitutional Turkey might find a place in the confederation. The movement was favourably regarded by King Charles of Rumania and Prince Alexander of Bulgaria. But the revolt of Eastern Rumelia, followed by the Servo-Bulgarian War and the coercion of Greece by the powers, embittered the rivalry of the various races, and the project was laid aside. It was revived in a somewhat modified form in 1891 by Tricoupis, who suggested an offensive alliance of the Balkan states, directed against Turkey and aiming at a partition of the Sultan's possessions in Europe. The scheme, which found favour in Servia, was frustrated by the opposition of Stamboloff, who denounced it to the Porte. In 1897 a Bulgarian proposal for joint pacific action with a view to obtaining reforms in Macedonia was rejected by Greece.

Authorities.—Special bibliographies are appended to the separate articles which deal with the various political divisions of the Peninsula. For a general description of the whole region, its inhabitants, political problems, &c., see "Odysseus," Turkey in Europe (London, 1900), a work of exceptional interest and value. See also The Balkan Question, ed. L. Villari (London, 1905); W. Miller, Travels and Politics in the Near East (London, 1898); L. Lamouche, La Péninsule balkanique (Paris, 1899); H. C. Thomson, The Outgoing Turk (London, 1897); T. Joanne, États du Danube et des Balkans (Paris, 1895); R. Millet, Souvenirs des Balkans (Paris, 1891); V. Cambon, Autour des Balkans (Paris, 1890); P. J. Hamard, Par delà l'Adriatique et les Balkans (Paris, 1890); E. de Laveleye, La Péninsule des Balkans (Brussels, 1886). For geology see F. Toula, "Materialien zu einer Geologic der Balkan-halbinsel," Jahr. k.-k. geol. Reichsanst. (Vienna, vol. xxxiii. 1883), pp. 61-114; A. Bittnel. M. Neumayr, &c., Denks. k. Akad. Wiss. Wien, math.-nat. Cl., vol. xl. (1880); A. Philippson, Der Peloponnes (Berlin, 1892); J. Cvijić, "Die Tektonik der Balkanhalbinsel," C. R. IX. Cong. géol. inter. Vienne, pp. 347-370 (1904). For the condition of the Peninsula before the Treaty of Berlin, see E. Rüffer, Die Balkanhalbinsel und ihre Volker (Bautzen, 1869); Mackenzie and Irby, Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey (London, 1866); and A. Boué, La Turquie d'Europe (Paris, 1840). W. Miller, The Balkans (London, 1896), sketches the history of Bulgaria, Montenegro, Rumania and Servia. See also Sir E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, esp. vol. iv. (London, 1875-1891); J. D. Bourchier, "A Balkan Confederation," in the Fortnightly Review (London, September 1891); the Austrian and Russian staff maps, and the ethnographical maps of Kiepert and Peucker.

(J. D. B.)

BALKASH, or Balkhash (called by the Kirghiz Ak-denghiz or Ala-denghiz and by the Chinese Si-hai), a lake of Asiatic Russia, in the Kirghiz steppes, between the governments of Semipalatinsk and Semiryechensk, in 45° to 47° N. and 73° 30′ to 79° E., about 600 m. to the east of Lake Aral. It is fourth in size of the lakes in Eurasia, having an area of 7115 sq. m., and lies at an altitude of 900 ft. It has the shape of a broad crescent, about 430 m. long from W.S.W. to E.N.E., having its concave side turned southwards; its width varies from 36 to 53 m. Its north-western shore is bordered by a dreary plateau, known as the Famine Steppe (Bek-pak-dala). The south-east shore, on the contrary, is low, and bears traces of having extended formerly as far as the Sasyk-kul and the Ala-kul. The Kirghiz in 1903 declared that its surface had been rising steadily during the preceding ten years, though prior to that it was dropping. The chief feeder of the lake is the Ili, which rises in the Khantengri group of the Tian-shan Mountains. The Karatal, the Aksu and the Lepsa also enter from the south-east, and the Ayaguz from the north-east. The first three rivers make their way with difficulty through the sands and reeds, which at a quite recent time were covered by the lake. Although it has no outlet, its waters are relatively fresh. It freezes generally from November to April. Its greatest depth, 35 ft., is along the north-west shore. The fauna of the lake and of its tributaries—explored by Nikolsky—is more akin to the fauna of the rivers of the Tarim basin than to that of the Aral; it also does not contain the common frog. It seems, therefore, probable that Lake Balkash stood formerly in communication through lakes Ebi-nor and Ayar (Telli-nor) with the lake that formerly filled the Lukchun depression (in 89½° E. long, and 42½° N. lat.), but researches show that a connexion with Lake Aral—at least in recent times—was improbable. The lake has been investigated by L. S. Berg (see Petermanns Mitteilungen, 1903).

BALKH, a city of Afghanistan, about 100 m. E. of Andkhui and some 46 m. S. of the Oxus. The city, which is identical with the ancient Bactra or Zainaspa, is now for the most part a mass of ruins, situated on the right bank of the Balkh river, 1200 ft. above the sea. It comprises about 500 houses of Afghan settlers, a colony of Jews and a small bazaar, set in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres of débris. Entering by the west (or Akcha) gate, one passes under three arches, which are probably the remnants of a former Jama Masjid. The outer walls (mostly in utter disrepair) are about 6½ to 7 m. in perimeter, and on the south-eastern borders are set high on a mound or rampart, indicating a Mongol origin. The fort and citadel to the north-east are built well above the town on a barren mound and are walled and moated. There is, however, little left but the remains of a few pillars. The Masjid Sabz, with its green-tiled dome, is said to be the tomb of a Khwaja, Abul Narsi Parsar. Nothing but the arched entrance remains of the Madrasa, which is traditionally not very old. The earlier Buddhist constructions have proved more durable than the Mahommedan buildings. The Top-i-Rustam is 50 yds. in diameter at the base and 30 yds. at the top, circular and about 50 ft. high. Four circular vaults are sunk in the interior and four passages have been pierced below from the outside, which probably lead to them. The base of the building is constructed of sun-dried bricks about 2 ft. square and 4 or 5 in. thick. The Takht-i-Rustam is wedge-shaped in plan, with uneven sides. It is apparently built of pisé mud (i.e. mud mixed with straw and puddled). It is possible that in these ruins we may recognize the Nan Vihara of the Chinese traveller Hsüan Tsang. There are the remains of many other topes (or stupas) in the neighbourhood. The mounds of ruins on the road to Mazar-i-Sharif probably represent the site of a city yet older than those on which stands the modern Balkh. The town is garrisoned by a few hundred kasidars, the regular troops of Afghan Turkestan being cantoned at Takhtapul, near Mazar-i-Sharif. The gardens to the north-east contain a caravanserai, which is fairly well kept and comfortable. It forms one side of a courtyard, which is shaded by a group of magnificent chenar trees.

The antiquity and greatness of the place are recognized by the native populations, who speak of it as the Mother of Cities. Its foundation is mythically ascribed to Kaiomurs, the Persian Romulus; and it is at least certain that, at a very early date, it was the rival of Ecbatana, Nineveh and Babylon. For a long time the city and country was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion, the founder of which is said to have died within the walls. From the Memoirs of Hsüan Tsang, we learn that, at the time of his visit in the 7th century, there were in the city, or its vicinity, about a hundred Buddhist convents, with 3000 devotees, and that there was a large number of stupas, and other religious monuments. The most remarkable was the Nau Behar, Nava Bihara or New Convent, which possessed a very costly statue of Buddha. A curious notice of this building is found in the Arabian geographer Yaqut. Ibn-Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the 10th century, describes Balkh as built of clay, with ramparts and six gates, and extending half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque. Idrisi, in the 12th century, speaks of its possessing a variety of educational establishments, and carrying on an active trade. There were several important commercial routes from the city, stretching as far east as India and China. In 1220 Jenghiz Khan sacked Balkh, butchered its inhabitants and levelled all the buildings capable of defence,—treatment to which it was again subjected in the 14th century by Timur. Notwithstanding this, however, Marco Polo can still, in the following century, describe it as "a noble city and a great." Balkh formed the government of Aurangzeb in his youth. In 1736 it was conquered by Nadir Shah. Under the Durani monarchy it fell into the hands of the Afghans; it was conquered by Shah Murad of Kunduz in 1820, and for some time was subject to the khan of Bokhara. In 1850 Mahommed Akram Khan, Barakzai, captured Balkh, and from that time it remained under Afghan rule.

See Hsüan Tsang, tr. by Julien, vol. i. pp. 29-32; Burnes's Travels in Bokhara (1831-1833); Ferrier's Travels; Vambery's Bokhara (1873); Report of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884-1885.

(T. H. H.*)

BALL, SIR ALEXANDER JOHN, Bart. (1759-1809), British rear-admiral and governor of Malta, came of a Gloucestershire family. He entered the navy, and in 1778 was promoted lieutenant. Three years later began a close association with Rodney, and, two days after his chief's crowning victory of April 12, 1782, Ball was promoted commander, and in 1783 he became captain. At this time he spent a year in France with the double purpose of learning the language and living economically. Nelson, then a captain, was at this time by no means favourably impressed by his future friend and comrade, and spoke of him as a "great coxcomb." It was not until 1790 that Ball received a command. From that year, however, he was continuously employed. In 1798, assistance rendered by him to Nelson's ship in heavy weather caused the latter to forget his former animosity, and from that time the two were close friends. Under Nelson's command Ball took part in the battle of the Nile, and his ship, the "Alexander," was the particular opponent of Brueys' flagship, "L'Orient," which blew up. Two months later he was ordered to the blockade of Malta, which was kept up without a break for the next two years. Ball committed the blockade to his first lieutenant, and himself led the marines and local militia, which made the siege on the land side. His care for his men laid the foundations of his popularity with the Maltese which continued till his death. After the fall of Malta, Ball practically retired from the service, in spite of Nelson's urgent entreaty that he should continue afloat, and from 1801 (when he was made a baronet) to 1809 he was governor of Malta, where he endeared himself to the people by his regard for their interests, and his opposition to the policy of treating the island as a conquered dependency. His friendship with Lord Nelson, whose letters prove his high regard for him, was only broken by death. Ball died on the 20th of October 1809 and was buried in Malta. Sir Alexander Ball was kind to Coleridge and is highly praised by him in The Friend, "The Third Landing Place." There are numerous mentions of Ball in Nelson's Despatches, in Sir H. Nicolas' edition.

BALL, JOHN (d. 1381), an English priest who took a prominent part in the peasant revolt in 1381. Little is known of his early years, but he lived probably at York and afterwards at Colchester. He gained considerable fame as a preacher by expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, but especially by his insistence on the principle of social equality. These utterances brought him into collision with the archbishop of Canterbury, and on three occasions he was committed to prison. He appears also to have been excommunicated, and in 1366 all persons were forbidden to hear him preach. His opinions, however, were not moderated, nor his popularity diminished by these measures, and his words had a considerable effect in stirring up the rising which broke out in June 1381. Ball was then in prison at Maidstone; but he was quickly released by the Kentish rebels, to whom he preached at Blackheath from the text, "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then a gentleman?" He urged his hearers to kill the principal lords of the kingdom and the lawyers; and he was afterwards among those who rushed into the Tower of London to seize Simon of Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. When the rebels dispersed Ball fled to the midland counties, but was taken prisoner at Coventry and executed in the presence of Richard II. on the 15th of July 1381. Ball, who was called by Froissart "the mad priest of Kent," seems to have possessed the gift of rhyme. He undoubtedly voiced the feelings of the lower orders of society at that time.

See Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, edited by H. T. Riley (London, 1863-1864); Henry Knighton, Chronicon, edited by J. R. Lumby (London, 1889-1895); Jean Froissart, Chroniques, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869-1897); C. E. Maurice, Lives of English Popular Leaders in the Middle Ages (London, 1875); C. Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford, 1906).

BALL, JOHN (1585-1640), English puritan divine, was born at Cassington, Oxfordshire, in October 1585. After taking his B.A. degree from St Mary's Hall, Oxford, in 1608, he went into Cheshire to act as tutor to the children of Lady Cholmondeley. He adopted Puritan views, and after being ordained without subscription, was appointed to the small curacy of Whitmore in Staffordshire. He was soon deprived by John Bridgeman, the high church bishop of Chester, who put him to much suffering. He became a schoolmaster and earned a wide and high reputation for his scholarship and piety. He died on the 20th of October 1640. The most popular of his numerous works was A Short Catechisme, containing all the Principal Grounds of Religion (14 editions before 1632). His Treatise of Faith (1632), and Friendly Trial of the Grounds tending to Separation (1640), the latter of which defines his position with regard to the church, are also valuable.

BALL, JOHN (1818-1889), Irish politician, naturalist and Alpine traveller, eldest son of an Irish judge, Nicholas Ball, was born at Dublin on the 20th of August 1818. He was educated at the Roman Catholic College at Oscott near Birmingham, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. He showed in early years a taste for natural science, particularly botany; and after leaving Cambridge he travelled in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, studying his favourite pursuits, and contributing papers on botany and the Swiss glaciers to scientific periodicals. In 1846 he was made an assistant poor-law commissioner, but resigned in 1847, and in 1848 stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for Sligo. In 1849 he was appointed second poor-law commissioner, but resigned in 1852 and successfully contested the county of Carlow in the Liberal interest. In the House of Commons he attracted Lord Palmerston's attention by his abilities, and in 1885 was made under-secretary for the colonies, a post which he held for two years. At the colonial office he had great influence in furthering the cause of natural science, particularly in connexion with equipment of the Palliser expedition in Canada, and with Sir W. Hooker's efforts to obtain a systematic knowledge of the colonial floras. In 1858 he stood for Limerick, but was beaten, and he then gave up politics and devoted himself to natural history. He was first president of the Alpine Club (founded 1857), and it is for his work as an Alpinist that he is chiefly remembered, his well-known Alpine Guide (London, 1863-1868) being the result of innumerable climbs and journeys and of careful observation recorded in a clear and often entertaining style. He also travelled in Morocco (1871) and South America (1882), and recorded his observations in books which were recognized as having a scientific value. He died in London on the 21st of October 1889.

BALL, THOMAS (1819- ), American sculptor, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 3rd of June 1819. He was the son of a house-and-sign-painter, and after starting, self-taught, as a portrait painter he turned his attention in 1851 to sculpture, his earliest work being a bust of Jenny Lind. At thirty-five he went to Florence for study; there, with an interval of work in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857-1865, he remained for more than thirty years, being one of the artistic colony which included the Brownings and Hiram Powers. He returned to America in 1897, and lived in Montclair, New Jersey, with a studio in New York City. His work includes many early cabinet busts of musicians (he was an accomplished musician himself, and was the first in America to sing "Elijah"), and later the equestrian statue of Washington in the Boston public gardens, probably his best work; Josiah Quincy in City Hall Square, Boston; Charles Sumner in the public gardens of Boston; Daniel Webster in Central Park, New York City; the Lincoln Emancipation group at Washington; Edwin Forrest as "Coriolanus," in the Actors' Home, Philadelphia, and the Washington monument in Methuen, Massachusetts. His work has had a marked influence on monumental art in the United States and especially in New England. In 1891 he published an autobiographical volume, My Three Score Years and Ten.

BALL (in Mid. Eng. bal; the word is probably cognate with "bale," Teutonic in origin, cf. also Lat. follis, and Gr. πάλλα), any rounded body, particularly one with a smooth surface, whether used for games, as a missile, or applied to such rounded bodies as the protuberance at the root of the thumb or the big toe, to an enarthrosis, or "ball socket" joint, such as that of the hip or shoulder, and the like. A ball, as the essential feature in nearly every form of game requiring physical exertion, must date from the very earliest times. A rolling object appeals not only to a human baby but to a kitten and a puppy. Some form of game with a ball is found portrayed on Egyptian monuments, and is played among the least advanced of savage tribes at the present day. In Homer, Nausicaa was playing at ball with her maidens when Odysseus first saw her in the land of the Phaeacians (Od. vi. 100). And Halios and Laodamas performed before Alcinous and Odysseus with ball play, accompanied with dancing (Od. viii. 370). The Hebrews, the least athletic of races, have no mention of the ball in their scriptures. Among the Greeks games with balls (σφαῖραι) were regarded as a useful subsidiary to the more violent athletic exercises, as a means of keeping the body supple, and rendering it graceful, but were generally left to boys and girls. Similarly at Rome they were looked upon as an adjunct to the bath, and were graduated to the age and health of the bathers, and usually a place (sphaeristerium) was set apart for them in the baths (thermae). Of regular rules for the playing of ball games, little trace remains, if there were any such. The names in Greek for various forms, which have come down to us in such works as the Ὀνομαστικόν of Pollux of Naucratis, imply little or nothing of such; thus, ἀπόρραξις only means the putting of the ball on the ground with the open hand, οὐρανία, the flinging of the ball in the air to be caught by two or more players; φαινίνδα would seem to be a game of catch played by two or more, where feinting is used as a test of quickness and skill. Pollux (i. x. 104) mentions a game called ἐπίσκυρος, which has often been looked on as the origin of football. It seems to have been played by two sides, arranged in lines; how far there was any form of "goal" seems uncertain. Among the Romans there appear to have been three types or sizes of ball, the pila, or small ball, used in catching games, the paganica, a heavy ball stuffed with feathers, and the follis, a leather ball filled with air, the largest of the three. This was struck from player to player, who wore a kind of gauntlet on the arm. There was a game known as trigon, played by three players standing in the form of a triangle, and played with the follis, and also one known as harpastum, which seems to imply a "scrimmage" among several players for the ball.^[1] These games are known to us through the Romans, though the names are Greek. The various modern games played with a ball or balls and subject to rules are treated under their various names, such as polo, cricket, football, &c.

From Fr. bal, baller, to dance (late Lat. ballare, and hence connected with "ballad," "ballet") comes "ball," meaning a dance, and especially a social gathering of people for the purpose of dancing.

BALLADE, the technical name of a complicated and fixed form of verse, arranged on a precise system, and having nothing in common with the word ballad, except its derivation from the same Low Latin verb, ballare, to dance. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was spelt balade. In its regular conditions a ballade consists of three stanzas and an envoi; there is a refrain which is repeated at the close of each stanza and of the envoi. The entire poem should contain but three or four rhymes, as the case may be, and these must be reproduced with exactitude in each section. These rules were laid down by Henri de Croi, whose L'Art et science de rhétorique was first printed in 1493, and he added that if the refrain consists of eight syllables, the ballade must be written in huitains (eight-line stanzas), if of ten syllables in dizains (ten-line), and so on. The form can best be studied in an example, and we quote, as absolutely faultless in execution, the famous "Ballade aux Enfants Perdus," composed by Théodore de Banville in 1861:—

This is the type of the ballade in its most elaborate and highly-finished form, which it cannot be said to have reached until the 14th century. It arose from the canzone de ballo of the Italians, but it is in Provençal literature that the ballade first takes a modern form. It was in France, however, and not until the reign of Charles V., that the ballade as we understand it began to flourish; instantly it became popular, and in a few years the out-put of these poems was incalculable. Machault, Froissart, Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pisan were among the poets who cultivated the ballade most abundantly. Later, those of Alain Chartier and Henri Baude were famous, while the form was chosen by François Villon for some of the most admirable and extraordinary poems which the middle ages have handed down to us. Somewhat later, Clément Marot composed ballades of great precision of form, and the fashion culminated in the 17th century with those of Madame Deshoulières, Sarrazin, Voiture and La Fontaine. Attacked by Molière, and by Boileau, who wrote

the ballade went entirely out of fashion for two hundred years, when it was resuscitated in the middle of the 19th century by Théodore de Banville, who published in 1873 a volume of Trente-six ballades joyeuses, which has found many imitators. The ballade, a typically French form, has been extensively employed in no other language, except in English. In the 15th and 16th centuries many ballades were written, with more or less close attention to the French rules, by the leading English poets, and in particular by Chaucer, by Gower (whose surviving ballades, however, are all in French) and by Lydgate. An example from Chaucer will show that the type of strophe and rhyme arrangement was in medieval English:—

The absence of an envoi will be noticed in Chaucer's, as in most of the medieval English ballades. This points to a relation with the earliest French form, in its imperfect condition, rather than with that which afterwards became accepted. But a ballade without an envoi lacks that section whose function is to tie together the rest, and complete the whole as a work of art. After the 16th century original ballades were no more written in English until the latter part of the 19th, when they were re-introduced, almost simultaneously, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse and W. E. Henley; but D. G. Rossetti's popular translation of Villon's "Ballade of Fair Ladies" may almost be considered an original poem, especially as it entirely disregards the metrical rules of the ballades. Mr. Dobson's "The Prodigals" (1876) was one of the earliest examples of a correct English specimen. In 1880 Mr Lang published a volume of Ballades in Blue China, which found innumerable imitators. The modern English ballades have been, as a rule, closely modelled on the lines laid down in the 15th century by Henri de Croi. With the exception of the sonnet, the ballade is the noblest of the artificial forms of verse cultivated in English literature. It lends itself equally well to pathos and to mockery, and in the hands of a competent poet produces an effect which is rich in melody without seeming fantastic or artificial.

(E. G.)

BALLADS. The word "ballad" is derived from the O. Fr. baller, to dance, and originally meant a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. Later, the word, in the form of ballade (q.v.), became the technical term for a particular form of old-fashioned French poetry, remarkable for its involved and recurring rhymes. "Laisse moi aux Jeux Floraux de Toulouse toutes ces vieux poésies Françoises comme ballades," says Joachim du Bellay in 1550; and Philaminte, the lady pedant of Molière's Femmes Savantes, observes—

In England the term has usually been applied to any simple tale told in simple verse, though attempts have been made to confine it to the subject of this article, namely, the literary form of popular songs, the folk-tunes associated with them being treated in the article Song. By popular songs we understand what the Germans call Volkslieder, that is, songs with words composed by members of the people, for the people, handed down by oral tradition, and in style, taste and even incident, common to the people in all European countries. The beauty of these purely popular ballads, their directness and freshness, has made them admired even by the artificial critics of the most artificial periods in literature. Thus Sir Philip Sydney confesses that the ballad of Chevy Chase, when chanted by "a blind crowder," stirred his blood like the sound of trumpet. Addison devoted two articles in the Spectator to a critique of the same poem. Montaigne praised the naïveté of the village carols; and Malherbe preferred a rustic chansonnette to all the poems of Ronsard. These, however, are rare instances of the taste for popular poetry, and though the Danish ballads were collected and printed in the middle of the 16th century, and some Scottish collections date from the beginning of the 18th, it was not till the publication of Allan Ramsay's Evergreen and Tea Table Miscellany, and of Bishop Percy's Reliques (1765), that a serious effort was made to recover Scottish and English folk-songs from the recitation of the old people who still knew them by heart. At the time when Percy was editing the Reliques, Madame de Chénier, the mother of the celebrated French poet of that name, composed an essay on the ballads of her native land, modern Greece; and later, Herder and Grimm and Goethe, in Germany, did for the songs of their country what Scott did for those of Liddesdale and the Forest. It was fortunate, perhaps, for poetry, though unlucky for the scientific study of the ballads, that they were mainly regarded from the literary point of view. The influence of their artless melody and straightforward diction may be felt in the lyrics of Goethe and of Coleridge, of Wordsworth, of Heine and of André Chénier. Chénier, in the most affected age even of French poetry, translated some of the Romaic ballads; one, as it chanced, being almost identical with that which Shakespeare borrowed from some English reciter, and put into the mouth of the mad Ophelia. The beauty of the ballads and the interest they excited led to numerous forgeries and modern interpolations, which it is seldom difficult to detect with certainty. Editors could not resist the temptation to interpolate, to restore, and to improve the fragments that came in their way. The marquis de la Villemarqué, who first drew attention to the ballads of Brittany, is not wholly free from this fault. Thus a very general scepticism was awakened, and when questions came to be asked as to the date and authorship of the Scottish traditional ballads, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Dr Chambers attributed most of them to the accomplished Lady Wardlaw, who lived in the middle of the 18th century.

The vexed and dull controversy as to the origin of Scottish folk-songs was due to ignorance of the comparative method, and of the ballad literature of Europe in general. The result of the discussion was to leave a vague impression that the Scottish ballads were perhaps as old as the time of Dunbar, and were the production of a class of professional minstrels. These minstrels are a stumbling-block in the way of the student of the growth of ballads. The domestic annals of Scotland show that her kings used to keep court-bards, and also that strollers, jongleurs, as they were called, went about singing at the doors of farm-houses and in the streets of towns. Here were two sets of minstrels who had apparently left no poetry; and, on the other side, there was a number of ballads that claimed no author. It was the easiest and most satisfactory inference that the courtly minstrels made the verses, which the wandering crowders imitated or corrupted. But this theory fails to account, among other things, for the universal sameness of tone, of incident, of legend, of primitive poetical formulae, which the Scottish ballad possesses, in common with the ballads of Greece, of France, of Provence, of Portugal, of Denmark and of Italy. The object, therefore, of this article is to prove that what has long been acknowledged of nursery tales, of what the Germans call Märchen, namely, that they are the immemorial inheritance at least of all European peoples, is true also of some ballads. Their present form, of course, is relatively recent: in centuries of oral recitation the language altered automatically, but the stock situations and ideas of many romantic ballads are of dateless age and world-wide diffusion. The main incidents and plots of the fairy tales of Celts and Germans and Slavonic and Indian peoples, their unknown antiquity and mysterious origin, are universally recognized. No one any longer attributes them to this or that author, or to this or that date. The attempt to find date or author for a genuine popular song is as futile as a similar search in the case of a Märchen. It is to be asked, then, whether what is confessedly true of folk-tales,—of such stories as the Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella,—is true also of folk-songs. Are they, or have they been, as universally sung as the fairy tales have been narrated? Do they, too, bear traces of the survival of primitive creeds and primitive forms of consciousness and of imagination? Are they, like Märchen, for the most part, little influenced by the higher religions, Christian or polytheistic? Do they turn, as Märchen do, on the same incidents, repeat the same stories, employ the same machinery of talking birds and beasts? Lastly, are any specimens of ballad literature capable of being traced back to extreme antiquity? It appears that all these questions may be answered in the affirmative; that the great age and universal diffusion of the ballad may be proved; and that its birth, from the lips and heart of the people, may be contrasted with the origin of an artistic poetry in the demand of an aristocracy for a separate epic literature destined to be its own possession, and to be the first development of a poetry of personality,—a record of individual passions and emotions. After bringing forward examples of the identity of features in European ballad poetry, we shall proceed to show that the earlier genre of ballads with refrain sprang from the same primitive custom of dance, accompanied by improvised song, which still exists in Greece and Russia, and even in valleys of the Pyrenees.

There can scarcely be a better guide in the examination of the notes or marks of popular poetry than the instructions which M. Ampère gave to the committee appointed in 1852-1853 to search for the remains of ballads in France. M. Ampère bade the collectors look for the following characteristics:—"The use of assonance in place of rhyme, the brusque character of the recital, the textual repetition, as in Homer, of the speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers,—as three and seven,—and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life as being made of gold and silver." M. Ampère might have added that French ballads would probably employ a "bird chorus," the use of talking-birds as messengers; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world (see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to brusqueness of recital, and the use of assonance instead of rhyme, as well as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition. In the matter of recurring numbers, we have the eternal—

who appear in old French ballads, as well as the "Three Sailors," whose adventures are related in the Lithuanian and Provençal originals of Thackeray's Little Billee. Then there is "the league, the league, the league, but barely three," of Scottish ballads; and the τριὰ πουλακιά, three golden birds, which sing the prelude to Greek folk-songs, and so on. A more curious note of primitive poetry is the lavish and reckless use of gold and silver. H. F. Tozer, in his account of ballads in the Highlands of Turkey, remarks on this fact, and attributes it to Eastern influences. But the horses' shoes of silver, the knives of fine gold, the talking "birds with gold on their wings," as in Aristophanes, are common to all folk-song. Everything almost is gold in the Kalewala (q.v.), a so-called epic formed by putting into juxtaposition all the popular songs of Finland. Gold is used as freely in the ballads, real or spurious, which M. Verkovitch has had collected in the wilds of Mount Rhodope. The Captain in the French song is as lavish in his treatment of his runaway bride,—

and the rustic in a song from Poitou talks of his faucille d'or, just as a variant of Hugh of Lincoln introduces gold chairs and tables. Again, when the lover, in a ballad common to France and to Scotland, cuts the winding-sheet from about his living bride—"il tira ses ciseaux d'or fin." If the horses of the Klephts in Romaic ballads are gold shod, the steed in Willie's Lady is no less splendidly accoutred,—

Readers of Homer, and of the Chanson de Roland, must have observed the same primitive luxury of gold in these early epics, in Homer reflecting perhaps the radiance of the actual "golden Mycenae."

Next as to talking-birds. These are not so common as in Märchen, but still are very general, and cause no surprise to their human listeners. The omniscient popinjay, who "up and spoke" in the Border minstrelsy, is of the same family of birds as those that, according to Talvj, pervade Servian song; as the τριὰ πουλακιά which introduce the story in the Romaic ballads; as the wise birds whose speech is still understood by exceptionally gifted Zulus; as the wicked dove that whispers temptation in the sweet French folk-song; as the "bird that came out of a bush, on water for to dine," in the Water o' Wearies Well.

In the matter of identity of plot and incident in the ballads of various lands, it is to be regretted that no such comparative tables exist as Von Hahn tried, not very exhaustively, to make of the "story-roots" of Märchen. Such tables might be compiled from the learned notes and introductions of Prof. Child to his English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1898). A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home "a braw new bride," and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel's collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne on a bier to meet her lover. This occurs not only in Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and briar, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all passers-by see them, and say in the Provençal,—

Another example of a very widespread theme brings us to the ideas of the state of the dead revealed in folk-songs. The Night Journey, in M. Fauriel's Romaic collection, tells how a dead brother, wakened from his sleep of death by the longing of love, bore his living sister on his saddle-bow, in one night, from Bagdad to Constantinople. In Scotland this is the story of Proud Lady Margaret; in Germany it is the song which Bürger converted into Lenore; in Denmark it is Aagé und Elsé; in Brittany the dead foster-brother carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (Barzaz Breiz). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre-Christian. In Provençal and Danish folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken the departed mother,—

She reappears in her old home, and henceforth, "when dogs howl in the night, the step-mother trembles, and is kind to the children." To this identity of superstition we may add the less tangible fact of identity of tone. The ballads of Klephtic exploits in Greece match the Border songs of Dick of the Cow and Kinmont Willie. The same simple delight of living animates the short Greek Scolia and their counterparts in France. Everywhere in these happier climes, as in southern Italy, there are snatches of popular verse that make but one song of rose trees, and apple blossom, and the nightingale that sings for maidens loverless,—

says the gay French refrain.

It would not be difficult to multiply instances of resemblance between the different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to support the position that some of them are popular and primitive in the same sense as Märchen. They are composed by peoples of an early stage who find, in a natural improvisation, a natural utterance of modulated and rhythmic speech, the appropriate relief of their emotions, in moments of high-wrought feeling or on solemn occasions. "Poesie" (as Puttenham well says in his Art of English Poesie, 1589) "is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and Latines, and used of the savage and uncivill, who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole world, and discovered large countries, and wild people strange and savage, affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the very Canniball do sing and also say their highest and holiest matters in certain riming versicles." In the same way Aristotle, discoursing of the origin of poetry, says (Poet. c. iv.), ἐγέννησαν τὴν ποίησιν ἐκ τῶν αὐτοσχεδιασμάτων M. de la Villemarqué in Brittany, M. Pitré in Italy, Herr Ulrich in Greece, have described the process of improvisation, how it grows out of the custom of dancing in large bands and accompanying the figure of the dance with song. "If the people," says M. Pitré, "find out who is the composer of a canzone, they will not sing it." Now in those lands where a blithe peasant life still exists with its dances, like the kolos of Russia, we find ballads identical in many respects with those which have died out of oral tradition in these islands. It is natural to conclude that originally some of the British ballads too were first improvised, and circulated in rustic dances. We learn from M. Bujeaud and M. de Puymaigre in France, that all ballads there have their air or tune, and that every dance has its own words, for if a new dance comes in, perhaps a fashionable one from Paris, words are fitted to it. Is there any trace of such an operatic, lyrical, dancing peasantry in austere Scotland? We find it in Gawin Douglas's account of—

Now, ring-sangs are ballads, dancing songs; and Young Tamlane, for instance, was doubtless once danced to, as we know it possessed an appropriate air. Again, Fabyan, the chronicler (quoted by Ritson) says that the song of triumph over Edward II., "was after many days sung in dances, to the carols of the maidens and minstrels of Scotland." We might quote the Complaynt of Scotland to the same effect. "The shepherds, and their wyvis sang mony other melodi sangs, ... than efter this sueit celestial harmony, tha began to dance in ane ring." It is natural to conjecture that, if we find identical ballads in Scotland, and in Greece and Italy, and traces of identical customs—customs crushed by the Reformation, by Puritanism, by modern so-called civilization,—the ballads sprang out of the institution of dances, as they still do in warmer and pleasanter climates. It may be supposed that legends on which the ballads are composed, being found as they are from the White Sea to Cape Matapan, are part of the stock of primitive folk-lore. Thus we have an immemorial antiquity for the legends, and for the lyrical choruses in which their musical rendering was improvised. We are still at a loss to discover the possibly mythological germs of the legends; but, at all events, some ballads may be claimed as distinctly popular, and, so to speak, impersonal in matter and in origin. It would be easy to show that survivals out of this stage of inartistic lyric poetry linger in the early epic poetry of Homer and in the French épopées, and that the Greek drama sprang from the sacred choruses of village vintagers. In the great early epics, as in popular ballads, there is the same directness and simplicity, the same use of recurring epithets, the "green grass," the "salt sea," the "shadowy hills," the same repetition of speeches and something of the same barbaric profusion in the use of gold and silver. But these resemblances must not lead us into the mistake of supposing Homer to be a collection of ballads, or that he can be properly translated into ballad metre. The Iliad and the Odyssey are the highest form of an artistic epic, not composed by piecing together ballads, but developed by a long series of noble ἀοιδοί, for the benefit of the great houses which entertain them, out of the method and materials of popular song.

We have here spoken mainly of romantic ballads, which retain in the refrain a vestige of the custom of singing and dancing; of a period when "dance, song and poetry itself began with a communal consent" (Gummere, The Beginnings of Poetry, p. 93, 1901). The custom by which a singer in a dancing-circle chants a few words, the dancers chiming in with the refrain, is found by M. Junod among the tribes of Delagoa Bay (Junod, Chantes et contes des Ba Ronga, 1897). Other instances are the Australian song-dances (Siebert, in Howitt's Native Tribes of South-East Australia, Appendix 1904; and Dennett, Folk-Lore of the Fiort). We must not infer that even among the aborigines of Australia song is entirely "communal." Known men, inspired, they say, in dreams, or by the All Father, devise new forms of song with dance, which are carried all over the country; and Mr Howitt gives a few examples of individual lyric. The history of the much exaggerated opinion that a whole people, as a people, composed its own ballads is traced by Prof. Gummere in The Beginnings of Poetry, pp. 116-163. Some British ballads retain traces of the early dance-song, and most are so far "communal" in that, as they stand, they have been modified and interpolated by many reciters in various ages, and finally (in The Border Minstrelsy) by Sir Walter Scott, and by hands much weaker than his (see The Young Tamlane). There are cases in which the matter of a ballad has been derived by a popular singer from medieval literary romance (as in the Arthurian ballads), while the author of the romance again usually borrowed, like Homer in the Odyssey, from popular Märchen of dateless antiquity. It would be an error to suppose that most romantic folk-songs are vulgarizations of literary romance—a view to which Mr Courthope, in his History of English Poetry, and Mr Henderson in The Border Minstrelsy (1902), incline—and the opposite error would be to hold that this process of borrowing from and vulgarization of literary medieval romance never occurred. A good illustration of the true state of the case will be found in Child's introduction to the ballad of Young Beichan.

Gaston Paris, a great authority, holds that early popular poetry is "improvised and contemporary with its facts" (Histoire poétique de Charlemagne). If this dictum be applied to such ballads as "The Bonny Earl o' Murray," "Kinmont Willie," "Jamie Telfer" and "Jock o' the Side," it must appear that the contemporary poets often knew little of the events and knew that little wrong. We gather the true facts from contemporary letters and despatches. In the ballads the facts are confused and distorted to such a degree that we must suppose them to have been composed in a later generation on the basis of erroneous oral tradition; or, as in the case of The Queen's Marie, to have been later defaced by the fantastic interpolations of reciters. To prove this it is only necessary to compare the historical Border ballads (especially those of 1595-1600) with Bain's Border Papers (1894-1896). Even down to 1750, the ballads on Rob Roy's sons are more or less mythopoeic. It seems probable that the existing form of most of our border ballads is not earlier than the generation of 1603-1633, after the union of the crowns. Even when the ballads have been taken from recitation, the reciter has sometimes been inspired by a "stall copy," or printed broadsheet.

Authorities.—The indispensable book for the student of ballads is Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, published in 1897-1898 (Boston, U.S.A.). Professor Child unfortunately died without summing up his ideas in a separate essay, and they must be sought in his introductions, which have never been analysed. He did not give much attention to such materials for the study of ancient poetry as exist copiously in anthropological treatises. In knowledge of the ballads of all European peoples he was unrivalled, and his bibliography of collections of ballads contains some four hundred titles, (Child, vol. v., pp. 455-468). The most copious ballad makers have been the Scots and English, the German, Slavic, Danish, French and Italian peoples; for the Gaelic there is but one entry, Campbell of Islay's Lea har na Feinne (London, 1872). The general bibliography occupies over sixty pages, and to this the reader must be referred, while Prof. Gummere's book, The Beginnings of Poetry, is an adequate introduction to the literature, mainly continental, of the ballad question, which has received but scanty attention in England. For the relation of ballad to epic there is no better guide than Comparetti's The Kalewala, of which there is an English translation. For purely literary purposes the best collection of ballads is Scott's Border Minstrelsy in any complete edition. The best critical modern edition is that of Mr T. F. Henderson; his theory of ballad origins is not that which may be gathered from Professor Child's introductions.

(A. L.)

BALLANCE, JOHN (1839-1893), New Zealand statesman, eldest son of Samuel Ballance, farmer, of Glenavy, Antrim, Ulster, was born on the 27th of March 1839. He was educated at a national school, and, on leaving, was apprenticed to an ironmonger at Belfast. He became a clerk in a wholesale ironmonger's house in Birmingham, and migrated to New Zealand, intending to start in business there as a small jeweller. After settling at Wanganui, however, he took an opportunity, soon offered, of founding a newspaper, the Wanganui Herald, of which he became editor and remained chief owner for the rest of his life. During the fighting with the Maori chief Titokowaru, in 1867, Ballance was concerned in the raising of a troop of volunteer horse, in which he received a commission. Of this he was deprived owing to the appearance in his newspaper of articles criticizing the management of the campaign. He had, however, behaved well in the field, and, in spite of his dismissal, was awarded the New Zealand war medal. He entered the colony's parliament in 1875 and, with one interval (1881-1884), sat there till his death. Ballance was a member of three ministries, that of Sir George Grey (1877-1879); that of Sir Robert Stout (1884-1887); and that of which he himself was premier (1891-1893). His alliance with Grey ended with a notorious and very painful quarrel. In the Stout government his portfolios were those of lands and native affairs; but it was at the treasury that his prudent and successful finance made the chief mark. As native minister his policy was pacific and humane, and in his last years he contrived to adjust equitably certain long-standing difficulties relating to reserved lands on the west coast of the North Island. He was resolutely opposed to the sale of crown lands for cash, and advocated with effect their disposal by perpetual lease. His system of state-aided "village settlements," by which small farms were allotted to peasants holding by lease from the crown, and money lent them to make a beginning of building and cultivation, has been on the whole successful. To Ballance, also, was due the law reducing the life-tenure of legislative councillors to one of seven years. He was actively concerned in the advocacy of woman suffrage. But his best known achievement was the imposition, in 1891, of the progressive land-tax and progressive income-tax still levied in the colony. As premier he brought together the strong experimental and progressive party which long held office in New Zealand. In office he showed debating power, constructive skill and tact in managing men; but in 1893, at the height of his success and popularity, he died at Wellington of an intestinal disease after a severe surgical operation. Quiet and unassuming in manner, Ballance, who was a well-read man, always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle; yet his loss to New Zealand political life was great. A statue was erected to his memory in front of Parliament House, Wellington.

(W. P. R.)

BALLANCHE, PIERRE SIMON (1776-1847), French philosopher of the theocratic school, was born at Lyons. Naturally delicate and highly-strung, he was profoundly stirred by the horrors of the siege of Lyons. His sensitiveness received a second blow in an unsuccessful love affair, which, however, he bore with fortitude. He devoted himself to an examination of the nature of society and his work brought him into connexion with the literary circle of Châteaubriand and Madame Récamier. His great work is the Palingénésie, which is divided into three parts, L'orphée, La formule, La ville des expiations. The first deals with the prehistoric period of the world, before the rise of religion; the second was to be an endeavour to deduce a universal law from known historical facts; the third to sketch the ultimate state of perfection to which humanity is moving. Of these the first alone was completed, but fragments of the other parts exist. Perhaps the most valuable part, of the work is the general introduction. His last work, Vision d'Hébal, intended as part of the Ville des expiations, describes the chief of a Scottish clan, who, gifted with second sight, gives semi-prophetic utterances as to the course of world-history. In 1841 Ballanche was elected a member of the French Academy. He died in 1847. A collected edition of his works in nine volumes was begun in 1830. Four only appeared. In 1833 a second edition in six volumes was published. As a man, Ballanche was warm-hearted and enthusiastic, but he was endowed with a too-vivid imagination and his strange thoughts are expressed in equally bizarre language. To give a connected account of his views is difficult; their full development should be studied in relation with his life-history, the stages of which are curiously parallel to his theory of the progress of man, the fall, the trial, the perfection.

As has been said, he belonged to the theocratic school, who, in opposition to the rationalism of the preceding age, emphasized the principle of authority, placing revelation above individual reason, order above freedom and progress. But Ballanche made a sincere endeavour to unite in one system what was valuable in the opposed modes of thinking. He held with the theocratists that individualism was an impracticable view; man, according to him, exists only in and through society. He agreed further with them that the origin of society was to be explained, not by human desire and efforts, but by a direct revelation from God. Lastly, with De Bonald, he reduced the problem of the origin of society to that of the origin of language, and held that language was a divine gift. But at this point he parts company with the theocratists, and in this very revelation of language finds a germ of progress. Originally, in the primitive state of man, speech and thought are identical; but gradually the two separate; language is no longer only spoken, it is also written and finally is printed. Thus the primitive unity is broken up; the original social order which co-existed with, and was dependent on it, breaks up also. New institutions spring up, upon which thought acts, and in and through which it even draws nearer to a final unity, a palingenesis. The volition of primitive man was one with that of God but it becomes broken up into separate volitions which oppose themselves to the divine will, and through the oppositions and trials of this world work onward to a second and completer harmony. Humanity, therefore, passes through three stages, the fall from perfection, the period of trial and the final re-birth or return to perfection. In the dim records of mythical times may be traced the obscure outlines of primitive society and of its fall. Actual history exhibits the conflict of two great principles, which may be said to be realized in the patricians and plebeians of Rome. Such a distinction of caste is regarded by Ballanche as the original state of historical society; and history, as a whole, he considers to have followed the same course as that taken by the Roman plebs in its attempts to attain equality with the patriciate. On the events through which the human race is to achieve its destiny Ballanche gives few intelligible hints. The sudden flash which disclosed to the eyes of Hébal the whole epic of humanity cannot be reproduced in language trammelled by time and space. Scattered throughout the works of Ballanche are many valuable ideas on the connexion of events which makes possible a philosophy of history; but his own theory does not seem likely to find more favour than it has already received. Besides the Palingénésie, Ballanche wrote a poem on the siege at Lyons (unpublished); Du sentiment considéré dans la littérature et dans les arts (1801); Antigone, a prose poem (1814); Essai sur les institutions sociales (1818), intended as a prelude to his great work; Le Vieillard et le jeune homme, a philosophical dialogue (1819); L'Homme sans nom, a novel (1820).

See Ampère, Ballanche (Paris, 1848); Ste Beuve, Portraits contemporains, vol. ii.; Damiron, Philosophie de XIX^e siècle; Eugène Blum, "Essai sur Ballanche" (in Critique Philos., 30th June 1887); Gaston Frainnet, Essai sur la philos de P. S. Ballanche (Paris, 1903, containing unpublished letters, portraits and full bibliography); C. Huit, La Vie et les œuvres de Ballanche (1904). An admirable analysis of the works composing the Palingénésie is given by Barchou, Revue des deux mondes (1831), t. 2. pp. 410-456.

BALLANTINE, WILLIAM (1812-1887), English serjeant-at-law, was born in London on the 3rd of January 1812, being the son of a London police-magistrate. He was educated at St Paul's school, and called to the bar in 1834. He began in early life a varied acquaintance with dramatic and literary society, and his experience, combined with his own pushing character and acute intellect, helped to obtain for him very soon a large practice, particularly in criminal cases. He became known as a formidable cross-examiner, his great rival being Serjeant Parry (1816-1880). The three great cases of his career were his successful prosecution of the murderer Franz Müller in 1864, his skilful defence of the Tichborne claimant in 1871 and his defence of the gaekwar of Baroda in 1875, his fee in this last case being one of the largest ever known. Ballantine became a serjeant-at-law in 1856. He died at Margate on the 9th of January 1887, having previously published more than one volume of reminiscences. Serjeant Ballantine's private life was decidedly Bohemian; and though he earned large sums, he died very poor.

BALLANTYNE, ROBERT MICHAEL (1825-1894), Scottish writer of fiction, was born at Edinburgh on the 24th of April 1825, and came of the same family as the famous printers and publishers. When sixteen years of age he went to Canada and was for six years in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. He returned to Scotland in 1847, and next year published his first book, Hudson's Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of excellent stories of adventure for the young with which his name is popularly associated. The Young Fur-Traders (1856), The Coral Island (1857), The World of Ice (1859), Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land (1857), The Dog Crusoe (1860), The Lighthouse (1865), Deep Down (1868), The Pirate City (1874), Erling the Bold (1869), The Settler and the Savage (1877), and other books, to the number of upwards of a hundred, followed in regular succession, his rule being in every case to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described. His stories had the merit of being thoroughly healthy in tone and possessed considerable graphic force. Ballantyne was also no mean artist, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy. He lived in later years at Harrow, and died on the 8th of February 1894, at Rome, where he had gone to attempt to shake off the results of overwork. He wrote a volume of Personal Reminiscences of Book-making (1893).

BALLARAT [Ballaarat] and BALLARAT EAST, a city and a town of Grenville county, Victoria, Australia, 74 m. by rail W.N.W. of Melbourne. The city and Ballarat East, separated only by the Yarrowee Creek, are distinct municipalities. Pop. of Ballarat (1901) 25,448, of Ballarat East, 18,262. Ballarat is the second city and the chief gold-mining centre of the state. The alluvial gold-fields were the richest ever opened up, but as these deposits have become exhausted the quartz reefs at deep levels have been exploited, and several mines are worked at depths exceeding 2000 ft. The city is the seat of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops. It has a number of admirable public buildings, while, among several parks and recreation grounds, mention must be made of the fine botanical garden, 750 acres in extent, where, in Lake Wendouree, pisciculture is carried on with great success. The school of mines is the most important in Australia and is affiliated to the university of Melbourne. Ballarat is an important railway centre and its industries include woollen-milling, brewing, iron-founding, flour-milling and distilling. Owing to its elevation of 1438 ft. it has an exceptionally cool and healthy climate. Although the district is principally devoted to mining it is well adapted for sheep-farming, and some of the finest wool in the world is produced near Ballarat. The existence of the towns is due to the heavy immigration which followed upon the discovery of the gold-fields in 1851. In 1854, in their resistance of an arbitrary tax, the miners came into armed conflict with the authorities; but a commission was appointed to investigate their grievances; and a charter was granted to the town in 1855. In 1870 Ballarat was raised to the rank of a city.

BALLAST (O. Swed. barlast, perhaps from bar, bare or mere, and last, load), heavy material, such as gravel, stone or metal, placed in the hold of a ship in order to immerse her sufficiently to give adequate stability. In botany "ballast-plants" are so-called because they have been introduced into countries in which they are not indigenous through their seeds being carried in such ballast. A ship "in ballast" is one which carries no paying cargo. In modern vessels the place of ballast is taken by water-tanks which are filled more or less as required to trim the ship. The term is also applied to materials like gravel, broken slag, burnt clay, &c., used to form the bed in which the sleepers or ties of a railway track are laid, and also to the sand which a balloonist takes up with him, in order that, by throwing portions of it out of the car from time to time, he may lighten his balloon when he desires to rise to a higher level.

BALLATER (Gaelic for "the town on a sloping hill"), a village in the parish of Glenmuick, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 670 ft. above the sea, on the left bank of the Dee, here crossed by a fine bridge, 43¼ m. by rail W. by S. of Aberdeen. It is the terminus of the Deeside railway and the station for Balmoral, 9 m. to the W. Founded in 1770 to provide accommodation for the visitors to the mineral wells of Pannanich, 1½ m. to the E., it has since become a popular summer resort. It contains the Albert Memorial Hall and the barracks for the sovereign's bodyguard, used when the king is in residence at Balmoral. Red granite is the chief building material of the houses. Ballatrich farm, where Byron spent part of his boyhood, lies some 4 m. to the E. Ballater has a mean temperature of 44.6° F., and an average annual rainfall of 33.4 in.

BALLENSTEDT, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, on the river Getel, 20 m. E. of Quedlinburg by rail. Pop. (1900) 5423. It is pleasantly situated under the north-eastern declivity of the Harz mountains. The inhabitants are mostly engaged in agriculture and there is practically no other industry. The palace of the dukes of Anhalt, standing on an eminence, contains a library and collections of various kinds, including a good picture gallery. It is approached by a fine avenue of trees and is surrounded by a well-wooded park. In the Schlosskirche the grave of Albert the Bear, margrave of Brandenburg (1100-1170) has been discovered.

BALLET, a performance in which dancing, music and pantomime are involved. Originally derived from the (Sicilian) Gr. βαλλίζειν, to dance, the word has passed through the Med. Lat. ballare (with ballator as synonymous with saltator) to the Ital. ballare and ballata, to the Fr. ballet, to the O. Eng. word ballette, and to ballad. In O. Fr., according to Rousseau, ballet signifies "to dance, to sing, to rejoice"; and thus it incorporates three distinct modern words, "ballet, ball and ballad." Through the gradual changes in the amusements of different ages, the meaning of the first two words has at length become limited to dancing, and the third is now confined to singing. But, although ballads are no longer the vocal accompaniments to dances round the maypole, old ballads are still sung to dance tunes. The present acceptation of the word ballet is—a theatrical representation in which a story is told only by gesture, accompanied by music, which should be characterized by stronger emphasis than would be employed with the voice. The dancing should be connected with the story but is more commonly incidental. The French word was found to be so comprehensive as to require further definition, and thus the above-described would be distinguished as the ballet d'action or pantomime ballet, while a single scene, such as that of a village festival with its dances, would now be termed a divertissement.

The ballet d'action, to which the changed meaning of the word is to be ascribed, and therewith the introduction of modern ballet, has been generally attributed to the 15th century. Novelty of entertainment was then sought for in the splendid courts of Italy, in order to celebrate events which were thought great in their time, such as the marriages of princes, or the triumphs of their arms. Invention was on the rack for novelty, and the skill of the machinist was taxed to the utmost. It has been supposed that the art of the old Roman pantomimi was then revived, to add to the attractions of court-dances. Under the Roman empire the pantomimi had represented either a mythological story, or perhaps a scene from a Greek tragedy, by mute gestures, while a chorus, placed in the background, sang cantica to narrate the fable, or to describe the action of the scene. The question is whether mute pantomimic action, which is the essence of modern ballet, was carried through those court entertainments, in which kings, queens, princes and princesses, took parts with the courtiers; or whether it is of later growth, and derived from professional dances upon the stage. The former is the general opinion, but the court entertainments of Italy and France were masques or masks which included declamation and song, like those of Ben Jonson with Inigo Jones for the court of James I.

The earliest modern ballet on record was that given by Bergonzio di Botta at Tortona to celebrate the marriage of the duke of Milan in 1489. The ballet, like other forms of dancing, was developed and perfected in France; it is closely associated with the history of the opera; but in England it came much later than the opera, for it was not introduced until the 18th century, and in the first Italian operas given in London there was no ballet. During the regency of Lord Middlesex a ballet-master was appointed and a corps of dancers formed. The ballet has had three distinct stages in its development. For a long time it was to be found only at the court, when princely entertainments were given to celebrate great occasions. At that time ladies of the highest rank performed in the ballet and spent much time in practising and perfecting themselves for it. Catherine de'Medici introduced these entertainments into France and spent large sums of money on devising performances to distract her son's attention from the affairs of the state. Baltasarini, otherwise known as Beaujoyeulx, was the composer of a famous entertainment given by Catherine in 1581 called the "Ballet Comique de la Reyne." This marks an era in the history of the opera and ballet, for we find here for the first time dance and music arranged for the display of coherent dramatic ideas. Henry IV., Louis XIII. and XIV. were all lovers of the ballet and performed various characters in them, and Richelieu used the ballet as an instrument for the expression of political purposes. Lully was the first to make an art of the composition of ballet music and he was the first to insist on the admission of women as ballet dancers, feminine characters having hitherto been assumed by men dressed as women. When Louis XIV. became too fat to dance, the ballet at court became unpopular and thus was ended the first stage of its development. It was then adopted in the colleges at prize distributions and other occasions, when the ballets of Lully and Quinault were commonly performed. The third period in the history of the ballet was marked by its appearance on the stage, where it has remained ever since. It should be added that up till the third period dramatic poems had accompanied the ballet and the dramatic meaning was helped out with speech and song; but with the advent of the third period speech disappeared and the purely pantomime performance, or ballet d'action, was instituted.

The father of ballet dancing as we know it at the present day was Jean Georges Noverre (q.v.). The ballet d'action was really invented by him; in fact, the ballet has never advanced beyond the stage to which he brought it; it has rather gone back. The essence of Noverre's theory was that mere display was not enough to ensure interest and life for the ballet; and some years ago Sir Augustus Harris expressed a similar opinion when he was asked wherein lay the reason of the decadence of the modern ballet. Noverre brought to a high degree of perfection the art of presenting a story by means of pantomime, and he never allowed dancing which was not the direct expression of a particular attitude of mind. Apart from Noverre, the greatest ballet-master was undoubtedly Gaetano Apolline Balthazare Vestris (q.v.), who modestly called himself le dieu de la danse, and was, indeed, the finest male dancer that Europe ever produced. Gluck composed Iphigénie en Aulide in conjunction with Vestris. In 1750 the two greatest dancers of the day performed together in Paris in a ballet-opera called Léandre et Héro; the dancers were Vestris and Madame Camargo (q.v.), who introduced short skirts in the ballet.

The word "balette" was first used in the English language by Dryden in 1667, and the first descriptive ballet seen in London was The Tavern Bilkers, which was played at Drury Lane in 1702. Since then the ballet in England has been purely exotic and has merely followed on the lines of French developments. The palmy days of the ballet in England were in the first half of the 19th century, when a royal revenue was spent on the maintenance of this fashionable attraction. Some famous dancers of this period were Carlotta Grisi, Mdlle Taglioni (who is said to have turned the heads of an entire generation), Fanny Elssler, Mdlle Cerito, Miss P. Horton, Miss Lucile Grahn and Mdlle Carolina Rosati. In later years Kate Vaughan was a remarkably graceful dancer of a new type in England, and, in Sir Augustus Harris's opinion, she did much to elevate the modern art. She was the first to make skirt-dancing popular, although that achievement will not be regarded as an unmixed benefit by every student of the art. Skirt-dancing, in itself a beautiful exhibition, is a departure from true dancing in the sense that the steps are of little importance in it; and we have seen its development extend to a mere exhibition of whirling draperies under many-coloured lime-lights. The best known of Miss Vaughan's disciples and imitators (each of whom has contributed something to the art on her own account) were Miss Sylvia Grey and Miss Letty Lind. Of the older and classical school of ballet-dancing Adeline Genée became in London the finest exponent. But ballet-dancing, affected by a tendency in modern entertainment to make less and less demands on the intelligence and intellectual appreciation of the public, and more and more demands on the eye—the sense most easily affected—has gradually developed into a spectacle, the chief interest of which is quite independent of dancing. Thousands of pounds are spent on dressing a small army of women who do little but march about the stage and group themselves in accordance with some design of colour and mass; and no more is asked of the intelligence than to believe that a ballet dressed, for example, in military uniform is a compliment to or glorification of the army. Only a few out of hundreds of members of the corps de ballet are really dancers and they perform against a background of colour afforded by the majority. It seems unlikely that we shall see any revival of the best period and styles of dancing until a higher standard of grace and manners becomes fashionable in society. With the constantly increasing abolition of ceremony, courtliness of manner is bound to diminish; and only in an atmosphere of ceremony, courtesy and chivalry can the dance maintain itself in perfection.

Literature.—One of the most complete books on the ballet is by the Jesuit, Claude François Menestrier, Des ballets anciens et modernes, 12mo (1682). He was the inventor of a ballet for Louis XIV. in 1658; and in his book he analyses about fifty of the early Italian and French ballets. See also Noverre, Lettres sur la danse (1760; new ed. 1804); Castel-Blaze, La Danse et les ballets (1832), and Les Origines de l'opéra (1869).

BALL-FLOWER, an architectural ornament in the form of a ball inserted in the cup of a flower, which came into use in the latter part of the 13th, and was in great vogue in the early part of the 14th century. It is generally placed in rows at equal distances in the hollow of a moulding, frequently by the sides of mullions. The earliest known is said to be in the west part of Salisbury cathedral, where it is mixed with the tooth ornament. It seems to have been used more and more frequently, till at Gloucester cathedral, in the south side, it is in profusion.

BALLIA, a town and district of British India, in the Benares division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the left bank of the Ganges, below the confluence of the lesser Sarju. It is really an aggregation of rural villages. Pop. (1901) 15,278.

The district of Ballia, constituted in 1879, occupies an angle at the junction of the Gogra with the Ganges, being bordered by two districts of Behar. It contains an area of 1245 sq. m. Owing to the great pressure on the soil from the density of the population, to the reluctance to part with land characteristic of small proprietors, to the generally great productiveness of land and to the very light assessment of government revenue, land in Ballia, for agricultural purposes merely, has a market value higher than in almost any other district. It commonly brings in Rs. 200 per bigha, or £20 per acre, and sometimes double that figure. In 1901 the population was 987,768, showing a decrease of 5% in the decade. The principal crops are rice, barley, other food-grains, pulse, sugar-cane and opium. There are practically no manufactures, except that of sugar. Trade is carried on largely by way of the two bordering rivers.

BALLINA, a seaport and market-town of county Mayo, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division, on the left bank of the river Moy, with a station on the Killala branch of the Midland Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4505. Across the river, and therefore in county Sligo, is the suburb of Ardnaree, connected with Ballina by two bridges. In Ardnaree is the Roman Catholic cathedral (diocese of Killala), with an east window of Munich glass, and the ruins of an Augustinian abbey (1427) adjoining. There is a Roman Catholic diocesan college and the Protestant parish church is also in Ardnaree. A convent was erected in 1867. In trade and population Ballina is the first town in the county. The salmon-fishery and fish-curing are important branches of its trade; and it has also breweries and flour-mills and manufactures snuff and coarse linen. On the 25th of August 1798, Ballina was entered by the French under General Humbert, marching from their landing-place at Killala. In the neighbourhood there is the interesting cromlech of the four Maels, which, if actually erected over the criminals whose name it bears, is proved by the early annals of Ireland to belong to the 7th century A.D. Their story relates that these men, foster-brothers of Cellach, bishop of Kilmore-Moy, murdered him at the instigation of Guaire Aidhne, king of Connaught, but were themselves executed at Ardnare (Ard-na-riaghadh, the hill of the executions) by the bishop's brother. The Moy is a notable salmon river for rod-fishing and its tributaries and the neighbouring lakes contain trout.