RELIQUES EST OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY: CONSISTING OF OLD HEROIC BALLADS, COLLECTED BY THOMAS PERCY, D. D., BISHOP OF DROMORE. With a Supplement of MANY CURIOUS HISTORICAL AND NARRATIVE BALLADS, REPRINTED FROM RARE COPIES. AND A COPIOUS GLOSSARY AND NOTES. PHIM 1869 And live Preface. THE reader is here presented with select remains of our ancient English Bards and Minstrels, an order of men, who were once greatly respected by our ancestors, and contributed to soften the roughness of a martial and unlettered people by their songs and by their music. The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio manuscript, in the Editor's possession, which contains near two hundred Poems, Songs, and Metrical Romances. This MS. was written about the middle of the last century; but contains compositions of all times and dates, from the ages prior to Chaucer, to the conclusion of the reign of Charles I.* This manuscript was shown to several learned and ingenious friends, who thought the contents too curious to be consigned to oblivion, and importuned the possessor to select some of them and give them to the press. As most of them are of great simplicity, and seem to have been merely written for the people, he was long in doubt, whether, in the present state of improved literature, they could be deemed worthy the attention of the public. At length the importunity of his friends prevailed, and he could refuse nothing to such judges as the Author of the Rambler and the late Mr. Shenstone. Accordingly such specimens of ancient poetry have been selected, as either show the gradation of our language, exhibit the progress of popular opinions, display the pecu * Chaucer quotes the old Romance of "Libius Disconius," and some others, which are found in this MS. It also contains several Songs relating to the Civil War in the last century, but not one that alludes to the Restoration. liar manners and customs of former ages, or throw light on our earlier classical poets. They are here distributed into volumes, each of which contains an independent series of poems, arranged chiefly according to the order of time, and showing the gradual improvements of the English language and poetry from the earliest ages down to the present. Each volume, or series, is divided into three books, to afford so many pauses, or resting places to the reader, and to assist him in distinguishing between the productions of the earlier, the middle, and the latter times. In a polished age, like the present, I am sensible that many of these reliques of antiquity will require great allowances to be made for them. Yet have they, for the most part, a pleasing simplicity, and many artless graces, which in the opinion of no mean critics* have been thought to compensate for the want of higher beauties, and if they do not dazzle the imagination, are frequently found to interest the heart. To atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems, each volume concludes with a few modern attempts in the same kind of writing: and, to take off from the tediousness of the longer narratives, they are everywhere intermingled with little elegant pieces of the lyric kind. Select ballads in the old Scottish dialect, most of them of the first rate merit, are also interspersed among those of our an *Mr. Addison, Mr. Dryden, and the witty Lord Dorset, &c. See the Spectator, No. 70. To these might be added many eminent judges now alive. The learned Selden appears also to have been fond of collecting these old things See below. (1) 3406 ed under the several reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, James I., &c. In the British Museum is preserved a large treasure of ancient English poems in MS., besides one folio volume of printed ballads. cient English Minstrels; and the artless pro- | political poems in large folio volumes, digestductions of these old rhapsodists are occasionally confronted with specimens of the composition of contemporary poets of a higher class; of those who had all the advantages of learning in the times in which they lived, and who wrote for fame and for posterity. Yet perhaps the palm will be frequently due to the old strolling Minstrels, who composed their rhymes to be sung to their harps, and who looked no further than for present applause, and present subsistence. The reader will find this class of men occasionally described in the following volumes, and some particulars relating to their history in an Essay subjoined to this preface. From all these some of the best pieces were selected; and from many private collections, as well printed as manuscript, particularly from one large folio volume which was lent by a lady. AMID Such a fund of materials, the Editor is afraid he has been sometimes led to make too great a parade of his authorities. The desire of being accurate has perhaps seduced him into too minute and trifling an exactness; and in pursuit of information he may have been drawn into many a petty and frivolous research. It was however necessary to give some account of the old copies; though often, for the sake of brevity, one or two of these only are mentioned, where yet assistance was received from several. Where anything was altered that deserved particular notice, the passage is generally distinguished by two inverted commas'. And the Editor has endeavoured to be as faithful as the imperfect state of his materials would admit. these old popular rhymes being many of them copied only from illiterate transcripts, or the imperfect recitation of itinerant ballad-sing For Ir will be proper here to give a short account of the other collections that were consulted, and to make my acknowledgments to those gentlemen who were so kind as to impart extracts from them; for, while this selection was making, a great number of ingenious friends took a share in the work and explored many large repositories in its favour. The first of these that deserved notice was the Pepysian library at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Its founder, Sam. Pepys,* Esq., Secretary of the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., had made a large collection of ancient English ballads, near two thousand in number, which he has left pasted in five volumes in folio; besides Gar-ers, have, as might be expected, been handed lands and other smaller miscellanies. This collection, he tells us, was begun by Mr. Selden; improved by the addition of many pieces elder thereto in time; and the whole continued down to the year 1700; when the form peculiar till then thereto, viz. of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures." 66 In the Ashmole Library at Oxford is a small collection of Ballads made by Anthony Wood in the year 1676, containing somewhat more than two hundred. Many ancient popular poems are also preserved in the Bodleyan Library. The archives of the Antiquarian Society at London contain a multitude of curious * A Life of our curious collector, Mr. Pepys, may be seen in the "The Continuation of Mr. Collier's Supplement to his Great Dictionary, 1715, at the end of vol. iii. folio. Art. PEP." down to us with less care than any other writings in the world. And the old copies, whether MS. or printed, were often so de fective or corrupted, that a scrupulous adherence to their wretched readings would only have exhibited unintelligible nonsense, or such poor meagre stuff as neither came from the Bard nor was worthy the press; when, by a few slight corrections or additions, a most beautiful or interesting sense hath started forth, and this so naturally and easily, that the Editor could seldom prevail on himself to indulge the vanity of making a formal claim to the improvement; but must plead guilty to the charge of concealing his own share in the amendments under some such general title as a "Modern Copy," or the like. Yet it has been his design to give sufficient intimation where any considerable liberties* Such liberties have been taken with all those pieces which have three asterisks subjoined, thus *** |