Note 385 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY

Even in the material itself there is a shading from highly artistic down to communal. Thomas Rymer undoubtedly comes from a romance. The Boy and the Mantle has the flippancy of its origin in the fabliau; Jeanroy, Origines, p. 155, declares such a touch of the cynical to warrant one in taking the ballad out of that class which he calls popular. King Orfeo is a distorted tale from the classics. Plain kin-tragedies, however, like Babylon, Edward, The Twa Brothers, are simple enough for one to leave them to communal origins, and not go source-hunting. Even where the motive seems international, details may be home-made; how much of Hero and Leander is left in that Westphalian ballad, Et wasen twei Kunnigeskinner? This story of the lovers and the lighted taper is found in many folksongs. See Reifferscheid, Westfälische Volkslieder, pp. 127 ff. In the classics and modern poetry,—witness Musæos and Marlowe,—it belongs to art. Comparative mythology laid hold of it, followed it back to India, and from India to the skies,—spring-god, sea, stars, autumn storms, and the rest. But this is needless bewilderment of a plain case; we have only to deal with the way in which Westphalian peasants sing of prince and princess. In three stanzas the story is told; all the rest deals with the situation so given, and here the communal elements (see below, p. 196) come in. The point is that study of subject-matter in ballads is distinct from the study of ballad elements. These are constant in good ballads, whether the subject be borrowed, or be local history, as in Bessy Bell and Mary Gray, and the Border ballads generally. In addition to the studies of ballad migration (e.g. Sir Aldingar) by Grundtvig and by Child, see a close piece of investigation by Professor Bugge, “Harpens Kraft,” in the Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi, VII. (1891), 97 ff.