cepted the kicks, curses, and deprivations of their station in abject
servility, and sang only in admiration of the heaven-appointed
aristocracy. But folksong cannot be dissociated from sociology;
and the social history of the Middle Ages proves that the common
man was aware of the injustice of aristocratic oppression, that he
revolted against it and, furthermore, that he sang against it. On
June 14, 1381, the peasant army that Wat Tyler led against
London buoyed its determination with the couplet

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?

which is congeneric to the refrains that nearly six centuries later
are being sung on picket lines. There are other modern ana-
logues that support the inference that there was considerable vocal
protest against social and economic inequalities in the folk ex-
pression of the Middle Ages. The medieval folk who, in their
desperate need for militant champions, adopted and idealized
such a dubious altruist as Robin Hood, established a tradition
that their distant posterity continue with ballads about Jesse
James, Pretty Boy Floyd, Matthew Kimes, and other criminals
whose only identity with the cause of the oppressed was their
temporarily succcessful flouting of laws the poor often found dis-
criminatory. Present-day subversive political organizations have
ancient analogues in the medieval witch cults that in all probabil-
ity were seeking objectives beyond the dissolution of the Church,
and which had songs full of potential symbolism. ¹ And John Ball's
exhortations to his followers to persist in "one-head" are only
linguistically different from the appeals of modern labor leaders
who reiterate the necessity for union.

The traditional ballads provide evidence to show that they
arose from an area of social enlightenment sufficiently well de-
veloped to have produced songs of more overt protest than those
extant; "Glasgerion," "The Golden Vanity," "Lord Delamere,"
"Botany Bay," "Van Diemen's Land," "The Cold Coast of Green-
land," and many similar pieces are pregnant with social signifi-
cance that could not conceivably have escaped the consciousness of
their singers. But except for these hints of social consciousness

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