Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
This Dover edition, first published in 1965, is anunabridged and unaltered republication of thework originally published by Houghton, Mifflin andCompany, as follows:
This edition also contains as an appendix toPart X an essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled“Professor Child and the Ballad,” reprinted intoto from Vol. XXI, No. 4, 1906 [New Series Vol.XIV, No. 4] of the Publications of the ModernLanguage Association of America.
I would acknowledge with particular gratitude the liberality of the Hon. Mrs Maxwell-Scottin allowing the examination and use of the rich store of ballads accumulatedat Abbotsford by her immortal ancestor; and also that of Lord Rosebery in sending toEdinburgh for inspection the collection of rare Scottish broadsides formed by the lateDavid Laing, and permitting me to print several articles.
The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has done me the great favor of furnishing me with copiesof traditional ballads and songs taken down by him in the West of England.
I am much indebted to the Rev. W. Forbes-Leith for his good offices, and to Mr Macmath,as I have been all along, for help of every description.
A considerable portion of this eighth number is devoted to texts from Abbotsford.Many of these were used by Sir Walter Scott in the compilation of the Minstrelsy of theScottish Border; many, again, not less important than the others, did not find a place in thatcollection. They are now printed either absolutely for the first time, or for the first timewithout variation from the form in which they were written. All of them, and others whichwere obtained in season for the Seventh Part, were transcribed with the most conscientiousand vigilant care by Mr Macmath, who has also identified the handwriting, has search