society, to the singing and dancing throng, to a period of
communal compoeition." ² Professor Henry Beers wrote,
"It should never be forgotten that the ballad . . . was not
originally a written poem but a song and dance." ³ More
qualification characterizes the words of Professor Charles
S. Baldwin, "They [the ballads] may have been originally
dance songs with communal refrain.""Bride-stealing, a
situation often told in ballads, may in some far off day
have been half presented, half represented by a dancing
chorus and villagers, singing one detail after another and
iterating a common refrain." ⁴

To pass from American opinion to British, that excel-
lent ballad scholar, Professor W. P. Ker, writes, "The
proper form of the ballads is the same as the carole, with
narrative substance added. Anything will do for a ring
dance, either at a wake in a churchyard or in a garden.
. . . At first a love song was the favorite sort, with a
refrain of douce amie, and so on. . . . The narrative
ballad was most in favor where people were fondest of
dancing. The love-song or the nonsense verses could not
be kept up so long; something more was wanted, and this
was given by the story; also as the story was always
dramatic, more or less, with different people speaking, the
entertainment was all the better.""The old Teutonic
narrative poetry may have grown out of a very old ballad
custom, where the narrative element increased and grad-

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