succeeding year. These, of course, would consist chiefly
of broadsides: the narrations of strange events, monstrosities, or 'true
tales' of the day.

It is true that many of the genuine popular ballads were rewritten to
suit contemporary taste. But the style of the seventeenth century
ballads cannot be compared to the noble straightforwardness and
simplicity of the ancient ballad. Let us place side by side the first
stanza of the _Hunting of the Cheviot_ and the first few verses of _Fair
Rosamond_, a very fair specimen of Deloney's work.

The popular ancient ballad wastes no time on preliminaries[7]:--

[Footnote 7: A good notion of the way in which the old ballads
plunge _in medias res_ may be obtained by reading the Index of First
Lines.]

'The Perse owt off Northombarlonde
And avowe to God mayd he,
That he wold hunte in the mowntayns
Off Chyviat within days thre,
In the magger of doughte Dogles;
And all that ever with him be.'

Now for the milk-and-water:--

'Whenas King Henry rulde this land,
The second of that name,
Besides the queene, he dearly lovde
A faire and comely dame.

Most peerlesse was her beautye founde,
Her favour and her face;
A sweeter creature in this worlde
Could never prince embrace.

Her crisped lockes like threads of golde
Appeard to each man's sight;
Her sparkling eyes, like Orient pearles,
Did cast a heavenly light.'

Ritson's taste actually led him, in comparing the above two first
verses, to prefer the latter.

Or again we might contrast _Sir Patrick Spence_--

'The King sits in Dumferling towne
Drinking the blude reid wine:
"O whar will I get a guid sailor,
To sail this ship of mine?"'

with the _Children in the Wood_:--

'Now ponder well, you parents deare,
These wordes, which I shall write;
A doleful story you shall heare,
In time brought forth to light.'

Artificial, tedious, didactic. The author of the ancient ballad seldom
points, and never draws, a moral, and has unbounded faith in the
credulity of the audience. The seventeenth century balladists
pitchforked Nature into the midden.

These compositions were printed as soon as written, or, to be exact,
they were written for the press. We now class them as broadsides, that
is, ballads printed on one side of the paper. The difference between
these and the true ballad is the difference between art and nature. The
broadside balla