written
down at a period which is early compared with the date of collection of
the Scottish ballads. In fact, it is only during the last hundred and
thirty years that the ballads of Scotland have been recovered from oral
tradition. In mountainous districts, where means of communication and
intercourse are naturally limited, tradition dies more hard than in
countries where there are no such barriers. Moreover, as Professor Child
points out, 'oral transmission by the unlettered is not to be feared
nearly so much as by minstrels, nor by minstrels nearly so much as
modern editors.' Svend Grundtvig illustrates this from his twenty-nine
versions of the Danish ballad 'Ribold and Guldborg.' In versions from
recitation, he has shown that there occur certain verses which have
never been printed, but which are found in old manuscripts; and these
recited versions also contain verses which have never been either
printed or written down in Danish, but which are to be found still in
recitation, not only in Norwegian and Swedish versions, but even in
Icelandic tradition of two hundred years' standing.

Such, then, is the history of our ballads, so far as it may be stated in
a few pages. With regard to origins, the 'nebular' theory cannot be
summarily dismissed;[13] but, after weighing the evidence and arguments,
the balance of probability would seem to lie with the supporters of the
'artistic' theory in a modified form. The ballad may say, with Topsy,
'Spec's I growed'; but _vires adquirit eundo_ is only true of the ballad
to a certain point; progress, which includes the invention of printing
and the absorption into cities of the unsophisticated rural population,
has since killed the oral circulation of the ballad. Thus it was not an
unmixed evil that in the Middle Ages, as a rule, the ballads were
neglected; for this neglect, while it rendered the discovery of their
sources almost impossible, gave the ballads for a time into the
safe-keeping of their natural possessors, the common people.
Civilisation, advancing more swiftly in some countries than in others,
has left rich stores here, and little there. Our close kinsmen of
Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, possess a ballad-literature of
which they do well to be proud; and Spain is said to have inherited even
better legacies. A study of our native ballads yields much interest,
much delight, and much regret that the gleaning is comparatively so
small. But what we still have is o