_Waly Waly,_ the ballad merges into the lyric. It is difficult here to
draw the line of distinction. _A Lyke-Wake Dirge_ is almost purely
lyric in quality, while _The Lawlands o' Holland, Gilderoy, The Twa
Corbies, Bonny Barbara Allan,_ have each a pronounced lyric element.
From the ballad of dialogue we look forward to the drama, not only
from the ballad of pure dialogue, as _Lord Ronald,_ or _Edward,
Edward,_ or that sweet old English folk-song, too long for insertion
here, _The Not-Browne Mayd,_ but more remotely from the ballad of
mingled dialogue and narrative, as _The Gardener or Fine Flowers i'
the Valley._

The beginnings of English balladry are far out of sight. From the
date when the race first had deeds to praise and words with which to
praise them, it is all but certain that ballads were in the air. But
even the mediteval ballads are lost to us. It was the written
literature, the work of clerks, fixed upon the parchment, that
survived, while the songs of the people, passing from lip to lip down
the generations, continually reshaped themselves to the changing
times. But they were never hushed. While Chaucer, his genius fed by
Norman and Italian streams, was making the fourteenth century reecho
with that laughter which "comes never to an end" of the Canterbury
story-tellers; while Langland, even his Teutonic spirit swayed by
French example, was brooding the gloomy _Vision of Piers the
Plowman,_--gloom with a star at its centre; while those "courtly
makers," Wyatt and Surrey, were smoothing English song, which in the
hands of Skelton had become so

"Tatter'd and jagged,
Rudely raine-beaten,
Rusty and moth-eaten,"