be said to reproduce its qualities and characteristics within a
narrower compass, and on a smaller scale. It also is a piece of the
memory of the people, or a creation of the imagination of the people;
but the tradition or fact which it preserves is of local, rather
than national importance. It is indifferent to nice distinctions and
delicate gradations or shadings; its power springs from its
directness, vigour, and simplicity. It is often entirely occupied
with the narration or description of a single episode; it has no room
for dialogue, but it often secures the effect of the dialogue by its
unconventional freedom of phrase, and sometimes by the introduction
of brief and compact charge and denial, question and reply. Sometimes
the incidents upon which the ballad makers fastened, have a unity or
connection with each other which hints at a complete story. The
ballads which deal with Robin Hood are so numerous and so closely
related that they constantly suggest, not only the possibility, but
the probability of epic treatment. It is surprising that the richness
of the material, and its notable illustrative quality, did not
inspire some earlier Chaucer to combine the incidents in a sustained
narrative. But the epic poet did not appear, and the most
representative of English popular heroes remains the central figure
in a series of detached episodes and adventures, preserved in a long
line of disconnected ballads.

This apparent arrest, in the ballad stage, of a story which seemed
destined to become an epic, naturally suggests the vexed question of
the author ship of the popular ballads. They are in a very real sense
the songs of the people; they make no claim to individual authorship;
on the contrary, the inference of what may be called community
authorship is, in many instances, irresistible. They are the product
of a social condition which, so to speak, holds song of this kind in