Source: Folk Music JOIIl'll01 14 (1981): 146-64.
To many people. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads has the immobility of a monument. Its sheer bulk. wealth of detail and apparently exhaustive critical apparatus do. indeed. present a formidable appearance; yet a closer inspection of the theoretical foundations of Child's edifice will reveal not only a circularity of argument but also. ironically. a distinct lack of self-confidence.' Bert Lloyd was one of the first to challenge the notion of an 'unquestioned aristocracy' of so-called 'Child ballads', which
can only refer to a limited selection of ballads. if at all. And whatever the literature dons might think. not all these nobles are in Francis ]. Child's English and Scoltish Popular Ballads, nor can all the items in that great compilation be numbered among the peers of the folk song realm. The majority of Child's selection represents but one stage of the ballad. a middle stage lying between the old form of epic song and the newer form of domestic ballad. journalistic ballad. street song and the like.'
So. when Walter Hart noted in 1906 that 'the significant fact is that for at least forty years Professor Child retained without essential change his conception of the traditional ballad as a distinct literary type' (,PCB'. p. 800). he pointed to the basis of the theoretically incestuous process which underpins the formation of what I propose to call the 'ballad consensus'.
* * *
We still do not have a full-length critical or biographical study of Child. There are sketches available.' but the US folklore industry has yet to grasp
M U S I C A N D S O C I E T Y
the nettle o f coming to terms with its founding father. Only a brief outline is possible h,ere. Child was born in Boston in 1 825, the third child of eight in a
smlmaker s famIly. He went to state schools, but was 'discovered' by the headmaster of the town's Latin School, and encouraged to prepare himself for Harvard. He entered the college when he was seventeen, his fees being paId for hIm, and he quickly excelled in classics, English and mathematics. He graduated in 1 846, and was appointed college tutor in mathematics, then
111 hIstory and political economy (,FJC', pp. xxiii-xxiv). Between 1849 and
1 8 5 1 , he travelled in Europe, returning to become Professor of Rhetoric and
Oratory. He was 'at home in the best methods and traditions of German l!nivcl:sities', a�ld was later awarded an honorary doctorate from G6ttingen ( FJC , pp. XXIV-XXV
)
. Above all, he was influenced by the ideals of Ger manic philology:The ideals of erudition and of a large humanity were not even suspected of incompatibility. The imagination was still invoked as the guide and illuminator of learning. The bond between antiquity and mediaevalism and between the Middle Ages and our own century was never lost from sight.
('FJC', p. xxv)
Kittredge felt that Child's 'greatest contribution to learning'
�nay even, in a very real sense, be regarded as the fruit of these years
111 Germany. Throughout his life he kept a picture of William and
James Grimm on the mantel over his study fire-place.
(,FJC', p. xxv)
For twenty-five years, Child's interests in literary and linguistic study had to be subordll1ated to the demands of teaching, administration and examina tions. His publications, from Four Old Plays, through the general editorship of a senes of one hundred and fifty volumes of British Poets to his own com pilation, Eng/ish and Scottish Ballads of 1 857-9, were essenti
�
lIy by-products, almost a leIsure-tIme pursuit, for it was not until 1 876 that he was appointed to the more congenial chair of English at Harvard (,FJC', pp. xxiv-xxv). In later years, Child downgraded his first ballad collection, above all to the great DanIsh ballad scholar, Svend Grundtvig, to whom he wrote thatThe collection was made as a sort of job
-
forming part of one ofthose senseless huge collections of British Poets.
(BBBM, p. 246)
And because it was important to make the book 'tolerably saleable' (BBBM,
p. 255), the necessary comparative ballad study was sacrificed to 'the progress
F R A N C I S J A M E S C H I L D A N D T H E ' B A L L A D C O N S E N S U S ' o f the series' (ESB ( 1 8 6 1 ),
I,
x). Only in 1 872 did the two scholars beginto correspond, and it was Grundtvig who wrote first (BBBM, p. 242). Their early letters underline the marginality of ballad study both to their academic careers and to their material concerns (BBBM, pp. 242 and 245). We also learn that Child's basic ideas and assumptions about balladry were well established twenty-five years before the appearance of his magnum
opus. •
Child knew what he meant by the term 'true popular ballads' (ESB ( 1 86 1 ),
I, vii), by 1 8 6 1 , though he claimed not to have decided finally until a few years later:
These volumes have been compiled from the numerous collections of Ballads printed since the beginning of the last century. They contain all but two or three of the ancient ballads of England and Scotland, and nearly all those ballads which, in either country, have been gathe�ed from oral tradition, -whether ancient or not. ..
(ESB ( 1 86 1 ), I, VII)
Yet when we probe this apparently unimpeachable criterion, we find that Child is quick to qualify, especially with regard to the broadside ballad:
No words could express the dulness and inutility of a collection which should embrace all the Roxburghe and Pepys broadsides.
(ESB ( 1 86 1 ), I, viii)
If such slurring fails to convince us, we must trust Child's subjective value-judgments:
Widely different from the true popular ballads, the spontaneous products of nature, are the works of the professional ballad-maker, which make up the bulk of Garlands and Broadsides. These, though sometimes not without grace, more frequently not lacking in humour, belong to artificial literature - of course to an humble department.
(ESB ( 1 86 1 ), I, vii) Such couplets -popular/professional, spontaneous/artificial, nature/art -beg the key questions. Did broadside-makers really try to make 'art', but fail; or were theirs different criteria? Was there only one literary tradition -the current custodians of which included Harvard professors - or were there several? But instead of historical evidence about the nature of majority culture in medieval Britain, Child offers his own opinion, backed up by that of other litterateurs and literature scholars; and in the end, he fudges his previous confident assertions with two catch-all riders:
M U S I C A N D S O C I E T Y
This distinction is not absolute, for several o f the ancient ballads have a sort of literary character, and many broadsides were printed from oral tradition.
(ESB ( 1 8 6 1 ), I, vii, note) Later, to Grundtvig, he confessed that he had
felt obliged to include everything the English [sic] had been accustomed to call a Ballad, at least in specimens. It is true that I might have separated the proper Volksballade from the others: and I wish that I had done so.
(BBBM, p. 262) The 'English', of course, were still the literary mediators, not the people at large.
What . focused Child's theory and practice was the appearance of Grundtvlg's Danske Folkeviser. Though he saw it 'quite late' (BBBM
p. 262), he spent the �est of his life adapting himself to Grundtvig's ideas
:
and apologlZlIlg for hIS Own earlier efforts, such as the inclusion of longer pIeces III hIS first ballad collection, because they were 'not of the nature of
ballads' (ESB ( 1857), I, xi note). In his second edition, Child set about a
radIcal restructuring:
Certain short romances which formerly stood in the First Book have been dropped . . . in order to give the collection a homoge
�
eous character.(ESB ( 1 86 1 ), I, xii) And in the 1 86 1 edition, he wrote of the 'popular ballads' that
Many of the older ones are mutilated, many more are miserably corrupted, but as long as any traces of their originals are left, they are worthy of attentIon and have received it. When a ballad is e�tant in a variety of forms, all the most important versions are gIven.
(ESB ( 1 861), I, viii) Deference apart, Child knew what an 'original' ballad looked like, and so understood when It had been 'corrupted'. More, he already had a hierarchy