homogeneous and the separation between the lettered and unlettered
classes had not yet taken place: the true minstrel ballad of the Middle
Ages, or of that state of society which in rude and primitive
neighborhoods, like the Scottish border, prolonged mediaeval conditions
beyond the strictly mediaeval period.

In the form in which they are preserved, a few of our ballads are older
than the seventeenth or the latter part of the sixteenth century, though
in their origin many of them are much older. Manuscript versions of
"Robin Hood and the Monk" and "Robin Hood and the Potter" exist, which
are referred to the last years of the fifteenth century. The "Lytel
Geste of Robyn Hode" was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1489. The
"Not-Brown Maid" was printed in "Arnold's Chronicle" in 1502. "The
Hunting of the Cheviot"--the elder version of "Chevy Chase"--was
mentioned by Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesie" in 1850.[8] The
ballad is a narrative song, naïve, impersonal, spontaneous, objective.
The singer is lost in the song, the teller in the tale. That is its
essence, but sometimes the story is told by the lyrical, sometimes by the
dramatic method. In "Helen of Kirkconnell" it is the bereaved lover who
is himself the speaker: in "Waly Waly," the forsaken maid. These are
monologues; for a purely dialogue ballad it will be sufficient to mention
the power and impressive piece in the "Reliques" entitled "Edward."
Herder translated this into German; it is very old, with Danish, Swedish,
and Finnish analogues. It is a story of parricide, and is narrated in a
series of questions by the mother and answers by the son. The commonest
form, however, was a mixture of epic and dramatic, or direct relation
with dialogue. A frequent feature is the abruptness of the opening and
the translations. The ballad-maker observes unconsciously Aristotle's
rule for the epic poet, to begin _in medias res_. Johnson noticed this
in the instance of "Johnny Armstrong," but a stronger example is found in