ancing-ring, see _The Beginnings
of Poetry_, by Professor Francis B. Gummere, especially chap. v. The
beginning of the whole subject is to be found in the universal and
innate practices of accompanying manual or bodily labour by a
rhythmic chant or song, and of festal song and dance.]

In 1783, in one of his letters, the poet Cowper says: 'The ballad is a
species of poetry, I believe, peculiar to this country.... Simplicity
and ease are its proper characteristics.' Here we have one of the
earliest attempts to define the modern meaning of a 'ballad.' Centuries
of use and misuse of the word have left us no unequivocal name for the
ballad, and we are forced to qualify it with epithets. 'Traditional'
might be deemed sufficient; but 'popular' or 'communal' is more
definite. Here we adopt the word used by Professor Child--'popular.'

What, then, do we intend to signify by the expression 'popular ballads'?
Far the most important point is to maintain an antithesis between the
poetry of the people and the consciously artistic poetry of the schools.
Wilhelm Grimm, the less didactic of the two famous brothers, said that
the ballad says nothing unnecessary or unreal, and despises external
adornment. Ferdinand Wolf, the great critic of the Homeric question,
said the ballad must be naive, objective, not sentimental, lively and
erratic in its narrative, without ornamentation, yet with much
picturesque vigour.

It is even more necessary to define sharply the line between poetry _of_
the people and poetry _for_ the people.[2] The latter may still be
written; the making of the former is a lost art. Poetry of the people is
either lyric or narrative. This difference is roughly that between song
and ballad. 'With us,' says Ritson, 'songs of sentiment, expression, or
even description, are properly termed songs, in contradistinction to
mere narrative compositions which we now denominate Ballads.' This
definition, of course, is essentially modern; we must still insist on
the fact that genuine ballads were sung: 'I sing Musgrove,'[3] says Sir
Thwack in Davenant's _The Wits_, 'and for the Chevy Chase no lark comes
near me.' Lastly, we must emphasise that the accompaniment is
predominated by the air to which the words are sung. I have heard the
modern comic song described as 'the kind in which you hear the words,'
thus differentiating it from the drawing-room song, in which the words
are (happily) as a rule less audible than the melody.