Pope and his school turned for relief to the old vigorous ballads of the
people, and rescued them from oblivion. The one book to which, more than
any other, we owe the revival of interest in balladry is _Percy's
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (1765).

[Sidenote: THE MARKS OF A BALLAD]

The best of our ballads date in their present form from the fifteenth or
sixteenth century; but the originals were much older, and had been
transmitted orally for years before they were recorded on manuscript. As we
study them we note, as their first characteristic, that they spring from
the unlettered common people, that they are by unknown authors, and that
they appear in different versions because they were changed by each
minstrel to suit his own taste or that of his audience.

A second characteristic is the objective quality of the ballad, which deals
not with a poet's thought or feeling (such subjective emotions give rise to
the lyric) but with a man or a deed. See in the ballad of "Sir Patrick
Spence" (or Spens) how the unknown author goes straight to his story:

The king sits in Dumferling towne,
Drinking the blude-red wine:
"O whar will I get guid sailor
To sail this schip of mine?"

Up and spak an eldern knicht,
Sat at the king's richt kne:
"Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor
That sails upon the se."