on asserts that
he had read Virgil, Ovid, and Tully, and quaintly adds, "I suppose he
hath dronken of Elycon's well."

In refreshing contrast with the artificial court poetry of the 15th and
first three quarters of the 16th century, was the folk-poetry, the
popular ballad literature which was handed down by oral tradition. The
English and Scotch ballads were narrative songs, written in a variety
of meters, but chiefly in what is known as the ballad stanza.

"In somer, when the shawes[1] be sheyne,[2]
And leves be large and longe,
Hit is full merry in feyre forest
To here the foulys song.

"To se the dere draw to the dale,
And leve the hilles hee,[3]
And shadow them in the leves grene,
Under the grene-wode tree."

[55]

It is not possible to assign a definite date to these ballads. They
lived on the lips of the people, and were seldom reduced to writing
till many years after they were first composed and sung. Meanwhile
they underwent repeated changes, so that we have numerous versions of
the same story. They belonged to no particular author, but, like all
folk-lore, were handled freely by the unknown poets, minstrels, and
ballad reciters, who modernized their language, added to them, or
corrupted them, and passed them along. Coming out of an uncertain
past, based on some dark legend of heart-break or bloodshed, they bear
no poet's name, but are _ferae naturae_, and have the flavor of wild
game. In the forms in which they are preserved few of them are older
than the 17th century, or the latter part of the 16th century, though
many, in their original shape, are, doubtless, much older. A very few
of the Robin Hood ballads go back to the 15th century, and to the same
period is assigned the charming ballad of the _Nut Brown Maid_ and the
famous border ballad of _Chevy Chase_, which describes a battle between
the retainers of the two great houses of Douglas and Percy. It was
this song of which Sir Philip Sidney wrote, "I never heard the old song
of Percy and Douglas but I found myself more moved than by a trumpet;
and yet it is sung but by some blind crouder,[4] with no rougher voice
than rude style." But the style of the ballads was not always rude.
{56} In their compressed energy of expression, in the impassioned
abrupt, yet indirect way in which they tell their tale of grief and
horror, there reside often a tragic power and art superior to any
English poetry that had been written