Chapter XVIII: Front Matter (18)

BALKH, a city of Afghanistan, about 100 m. E. of Andkhui and some 46 m. S. of the Oxus. The city, which is identical with the ancient Bactra or Zainaspa, is now for the most part a mass of ruins, situated on the right bank of the Balkh river, 1200 ft. above the sea. It comprises about 500 houses of Afghan settlers, a colony of Jews and a small bazaar, set in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres of debris. Entering by the west (or Akcha) gate, one passes under three arches, which are probably the remnants of a former Jama Masjid. The outer walls (mostly in utter disrepair) are about 6-1/2 to 7 m. in perimeter, and on the south-eastern borders are set high on a mound or rampart, indicating a Mongol origin. The fort and citadel to the north-east are built well above the town on a barren mound and are walled and moated. There is, however, little left but the remains of a few pillars. The Masjid Sabz, with its green-tiled dome, is said to be the tomb of a Khwaja, Abul Narsi Parsar. Nothing but the arched entrance remains of the Madrasa, which is traditionally not very old. The earlier Buddhist constructions have proved more durable than the Mahommedan buildings. The Top-i-Rustam is 50 yds. in diameter at the base and 30 yds. at the top, circular and about 50 ft. high. Four circular vaults are sunk in the interior and four passages have been pierced below from the outside, which probably lead to them. The base of the building is constructed of sun-dried bricks about 2 ft. square and 4 or 5 in. thick. The Takht-i-Rustam is wedge-shaped in plan, with uneven sides. It is apparently built of pise mud (_i.e._ mud mixed with straw and puddled). It is possible that in these ruins we may recognize the Nan Vihara of the Chinese traveller Hsuan Tsang. There are the remains of many other topes (or stupas) in the neighbourhood. The mounds of ruins on the road to Mazar-i-Sharif probably represent the site of a city yet older than those on which stands the modern Balkh. The town is garrisoned by a few hundred kasidars, the regular troops of Afghan Turkestan being cantoned at Takhtapul, near Mazar-i-Sharif. The gardens to the north-east contain a caravanserai, which is fairly well kept and comfortable. It forms one side of a courtyard, which is shaded by a group of magnificent chenar trees.

The antiquity and greatness of the place are recognized by the native populations, who speak of it as the _Mother of Cities_. Its foundation is mythically ascribed to Kaiomurs, the Persian Romulus; and it is at least certain that, at a very early date, it was the rival of Ecbatana, Nineveh and Babylon. For a long time the city and country was the central seat of the Zoroastrian religion, the founder of which is said to have died within the walls. From the _Memoirs of Hsuan Tsang_, we learn that, at the time of his visit in the 7th century, there were in the city, or its vicinity, about a hundred Buddhist convents, with 3000 devotees, and that there was a large number of _stupas_, and other religious monuments. The most remarkable was the _Nau Behar_, _Nava Bihara_ or New Convent, which possessed a very costly statue of Buddha. A curious notice of this building is found in the Arabian geographer Yaqut. Ibn-Haukal, an Arabian traveller of the 10th century, describes Balkh as built of clay, with ramparts and six gates, and extending half a parasang. He also mentions a castle and a mosque. Idrisi, in the 12th century, speaks of its possessing a variety of educational establishments, and carrying on an active trade. There were several important commercial routes from the city, stretching as far east as India and China. In 1220 Jenghiz Khan sacked Balkh, butchered its inhabitants and levelled all the buildings capable of defence,--treatment to which it was again subjected in the 14th century by Timur. Notwithstanding this, however, Marco Polo can still, in the following century, describe it as "a noble city and a great." Balkh formed the government of Aurangzeb in his youth. In 1736 it was conquered by Nadir Shah. Under the Durani monarchy it fell into the hands of the Afghans; it was conquered by Shah Murad of Kunduz in 1820, and for some time was subject to the khan of Bokhara. In 1850 Mahommed Akram Khan, Barakzai, captured Balkh, and from that time it remained under Afghan rule.

See _Hsuan Tsang_, tr. by Julien, vol. i. pp. 29-32; Burnes's _Travels in Bokhara_ (1831-1833); Ferrier's _Travels_; Vambery's _Bokhara_ (1873); _Report of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission of 1884-1885_.

(T. H. H.*)

BALL, SIR ALEXANDER JOHN, BART. (1759-1809), British rear-admiral and governor of Malta, came of a Gloucestershire family. He entered the navy, and in 1778 was promoted lieutenant. Three years later began a close association with Rodney, and, two days after his chief's crowning victory of April 12, 1782, Ball was promoted commander, and in 1783 he became captain. At this time he spent a year in France with the double purpose of learning the language and living economically. Nelson, then a captain, was at this time by no means favourably impressed by his future friend and comrade, and spoke of him as a "great coxcomb." It was not until 1790 that Ball received a command. From that year, however, he was continuously employed. In 1798, assistance rendered by him to Nelson's ship in heavy weather caused the latter to forget his former animosity, and from that time the two were close friends. Under Nelson's command Ball took part in the battle of the Nile, and his ship, the "Alexander," was the particular opponent of Brueys' flagship, "L'Orient," which blew up. Two months later he was ordered to the blockade of Malta, which was kept up without a break for the next two years. Ball committed the blockade to his first lieutenant, and himself led the marines and local militia, which made the siege on the land side. His care for his men laid the foundations of his popularity with the Maltese which continued till his death. After the fall of Malta, Ball practically retired from the service, in spite of Nelson's urgent entreaty that he should continue afloat, and from 1801 (when he was made a baronet) to 1809 he was governor of Malta, where he endeared himself to the people by his regard for their interests, and his opposition to the policy of treating the island as a conquered dependency. His friendship with Lord Nelson, whose letters prove his high regard for him, was only broken by death. Ball died on the 20th of October 1809 and was buried in Malta. Sir Alexander Ball was kind to Coleridge and is highly praised by him in _The Friend_, "The Third Landing Place." There are numerous mentions of Ball in Nelson's _Despatches_, in Sir H. Nicolas' edition.

[v.03 p.0263] BALL, JOHN (d. 1381), an English priest who took a prominent part in the peasant revolt in 1381. Little is known of his early years, but he lived probably at York and afterwards at Colchester. He gained considerable fame as a preacher by expounding the doctrines of John Wycliffe, but especially by his insistence on the principle of social equality. These utterances brought him into collision with the archbishop of Canterbury, and on three occasions he was committed to prison. He appears also to have been excommunicated, and in 1366 all persons were forbidden to hear him preach. His opinions, however, were not moderated, nor his popularity diminished by these measures, and his words had a considerable effect in stirring up the rising which broke out in June 1381. Ball was then in prison at Maidstone; but he was quickly released by the Kentish rebels, to whom he preached at Blackheath from the text, "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then a gentleman?" He urged his hearers to kill the principal lords of the kingdom and the lawyers; and he was afterwards among those who rushed into the Tower of London to seize Simon of Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. When the rebels dispersed Ball fled to the midland counties, but was taken prisoner at Coventry and executed in the presence of Richard II. on the 15th of July 1381. Ball, who was called by Froissart "the mad priest of Kent," seems to have possessed the gift of rhyme. He undoubtedly voiced the feelings of the lower orders of society at that time.

See Thomas Walsingham, _Historia Anglicana_, edited by H. T. Riley (London, 1863-1864); Henry Knighton, _Chronicon_, edited by J. R. Lumby (London, 1889-1895); Jean Froissart, _Chroniques_, edited by S. Luce and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1869-1897); C. E. Maurice, _Lives of English Popular Leaders in the Middle Ages_ (London, 1875); C. Oman, _The Great Revolt of 1381_ (Oxford, 1906).

BALL, JOHN (1585-1640), English puritan divine, was born at Cassington, Oxfordshire, in October 1585. After taking his B.A. degree from St Mary's Hall, Oxford, in 1608, he went into Cheshire to act as tutor to the children of Lady Cholmondeley. He adopted Puritan views, and after being ordained without subscription, was appointed to the small curacy of Whitmore in Staffordshire. He was soon deprived by John Bridgeman, the high church bishop of Chester, who put him to much suffering. He became a schoolmaster and earned a wide and high reputation for his scholarship and piety. He died on the 20th of October 1640. The most popular of his numerous works was _A Short Catechisme, containing all the Principal Grounds of Religion_ (14 editions before 1632). His _Treatise of Faith_ (1632), and _Friendly Trial of the Grounds tending to Separation_ (1640), the latter of which defines his position with regard to the church, are also valuable.

BALL, JOHN (1818-1889), Irish politician, naturalist and Alpine traveller, eldest son of an Irish judge, Nicholas Ball, was born at Dublin on the 20th of August 1818. He was educated at the Roman Catholic College at Oscott near Birmingham, and at Christ's College, Cambridge. He showed in early years a taste for natural science, particularly botany; and after leaving Cambridge he travelled in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, studying his favourite pursuits, and contributing papers on botany and the Swiss glaciers to scientific periodicals. In 1846 he was made an assistant poor-law commissioner, but resigned in 1847, and in 1848 stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate for Sligo. In 1849 he was appointed second poor-law commissioner, but resigned in 1852 and successfully contested the county of Carlow in the Liberal interest. In the House of Commons he attracted Lord Palmerston's attention by his abilities, and in 1885 was made under-secretary for the colonies, a post which he held for two years. At the colonial office he had great influence in furthering the cause of natural science, particularly in connexion with equipment of the Palliser expedition in Canada, and with Sir W. Hooker's efforts to obtain a systematic knowledge of the colonial floras. In 1858 he stood for Limerick, but was beaten, and he then gave up politics and devoted himself to natural history. He was first president of the Alpine Club (founded 1857), and it is for his work as an Alpinist that he is chiefly remembered, his well-known _Alpine Guide_ (London, 1863-1868) being the result of innumerable climbs and journeys and of careful observation recorded in a clear and often entertaining style. He also travelled in Morocco (1871) and South America (1882), and recorded his observations in books which were recognized as having a scientific value. He died in London on the 21st of October 1889.

BALL, THOMAS (1819- ), American sculptor, was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 3rd of June 1819. He was the son of a house-and-sign-painter, and after starting, self-taught, as a portrait painter he turned his attention in 1851 to sculpture, his earliest work being a bust of Jenny Lind. At thirty-five he went to Florence for study; there, with an interval of work in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857-1865, he remained for more than thirty years, being one of the artistic colony which included the Brownings and Hiram Powers. He returned to America in 1897, and lived in Montclair, New Jersey, with a studio in New York City. His work includes many early cabinet busts of musicians (he was an accomplished musician himself, and was the first in America to sing "Elijah"), and later the equestrian statue of Washington in the Boston public gardens, probably his best work; Josiah Quincy in City Hall Square, Boston; Charles Sumner in the public gardens of Boston; Daniel Webster in Central Park, New York City; the Lincoln Emancipation group at Washington; Edwin Forrest as "Coriolanus," in the Actors' Home, Philadelphia, and the Washington monument in Methuen, Massachusetts. His work has had a marked influence on monumental art in the United States and especially in New England. In 1891 he published an autobiographical volume, _My Three Score Years and Ten_.

BALL (in Mid. Eng. _bal_; the word is probably cognate with "bale," Teutonic in origin, cf. also Lat. _follis_, and Gr. [Greek: palla]), any rounded body, particularly one with a smooth surface, whether used for games, as a missile, or applied to such rounded bodies as the protuberance at the root of the thumb or the big toe, to an enarthrosis, or "ball socket" joint, such as that of the hip or shoulder, and the like. A ball, as the essential feature in nearly every form of game requiring physical exertion, must date from the very earliest times. A rolling object appeals not only to a human baby but to a kitten and a puppy. Some form of game with a ball is found portrayed on Egyptian monuments, and is played among the least advanced of savage tribes at the present day. In Homer, Nausicaa was playing at ball with her maidens when Odysseus first saw her in the land of the Phaeacians (_Od_. vi. 100). And Halios and Laodamas performed before Alcinous and Odysseus with ball play, accompanied with dancing (_Od_. viii. 370). The Hebrews, the least athletic of races, have no mention of the ball in their scriptures. Among the Greeks games with balls ([Greek: sphairai]) were regarded as a useful subsidiary to the more violent athletic exercises, as a means of keeping the body supple, and rendering it graceful, but were generally left to boys and girls. Similarly at Rome they were looked upon as an adjunct to the bath, and were graduated to the age and health of the bathers, and usually a place (_sphaeristerium_) was set apart for them in the baths (_thermae_). Of regular rules for the playing of ball games, little trace remains, if there were any such. The names in Greek for various forms, which have come down to us in such works as the [Greek: Onomastikon] of Pollux of Naucratis, imply little or nothing of such; thus, [Greek: aporraxis] only means the putting of the ball on the ground with the open hand, [Greek: ourania], the flinging of the ball in the air to be caught by two or more players; [Greek: phaininda] would seem to be a game of catch played by two or more, where feinting is used as a test of quickness and skill. Pollux (i. x. 104) mentions a game called [Greek: episkuros], which has often been looked on as the origin of football. It seems to have been played by two sides, arranged in lines; how far there was any form of "goal" seems uncertain. Among the Romans there appear to have been three types or sizes of ball, the _pila_, or small ball, used in catching games, the _paganica_, a heavy ball stuffed with feathers, and the _follis_, a leather ball filled with air, the largest of the three. This was struck from player to player, who wore a kind of gauntlet on the arm. There was a game known as _trigon_, played by three players standing in [v.03 p.0264] the form of a triangle, and played with the _follis_, and also one known as _harpastum_, which seems to imply a "scrimmage" among several players for the ball.[1] These games are known to us through the Romans, though the names are Greek. The various modern games played with a ball or balls and subject to rules are treated under their various names, such as polo, cricket, football, &c.

From Fr. _bal_, _baller_, to dance (late Lat. _ballare_, and hence connected with "ballad," "ballet") comes "ball," meaning a dance, and especially a social gathering of people for the purpose of dancing.

[1] Martial (iv. 19. 6) calls the _harpastum_, _pulverulentum_, implying that it involves a considerable amount of exertion.

BALLADE, the technical name of a complicated and fixed form of verse, arranged on a precise system, and having nothing in common with the word _ballad_, except its derivation from the same Low Latin verb, _ballare_, to dance. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was spelt _balade_. In its regular conditions a ballade consists of three stanzas and an envoi; there is a refrain which is repeated at the close of each stanza and of the envoi. The entire poem should contain but three or four rhymes, as the case may be, and these must be reproduced with exactitude in each section. These rules were laid down by Henri de Croi, whose _L'Art et science de rhetorique_ was first printed in 1493, and he added that if the refrain consists of eight syllables, the ballade must be written in huitains (eight-line stanzas), if of ten syllables in dizains (ten-line), and so on. The form can best be studied in an example, and we quote, as absolutely faultless in execution, the famous "Ballade aux Enfants Perdus," composed by Theodore de Banville in 1861:--

"Je le sais bien que Cythere est en deuil!
Que son jardin, soufflete par l'orage,
O mes amis, n'est plus qu'un sombre ecueil
Agonisant sous le soleil sauvage.
La solitude habite son rivage.
Qu'importe! allons vers les pays fictifs!
Cherchons la plage ou nos desirs oisifs
S'abreuveront dans le sacre mystere
Fait pour un choeur d'esprits contemplatifs:
Embarquons-nous pour la belle Cythere,

"La grande mer sera notre cercueil;
Nous servirons de proie au noir naufrage,
Le feu du ciel punira notre orgueil
Et l'aiguillon nous garde son outrage.
Qu'importe! allons vers le clair paysage!
Malgre la mer jalouse et les recifs,
Venez, portons comme des fugitifs,
Loin de ce monde au souffle deletere.
Nous dont les coeurs sont des ramiers plaintifs,
Embarquons-nous pour la belle Cythere.

"Des serpents gris se trainent sur le seuil
Ou souriait Cypris, la chere image
Aux tresses d'or, la vierge au doux accueil!
Mais les Amours sur le plus haut cordage
Nous chantent l'hymne adore du voyage.
Heros caches dans ces corps maladifs,
Fuyons, partons sur nos legers esquifs,
Vers le divin bocage ou la panthere
Pleure d'amour sous les rosiers lascifs:
Embarquons-nous pour la belle Cythere.

_Envoi_.

"Rassasions d'azur nos yeux pensifs!
Oiseaux chanteurs, dans la brise expansifs,
Ne souillons pas nos ailes sur la terre.
Volons, charmes, vers les dieux primitifs!
Embarquons-nous pour la belle Cythere."

This is the type of the ballade in its most elaborate and highly-finished form, which it cannot be said to have reached until the 14th century. It arose from the _canzone de ballo_ of the Italians, but it is in Provencal literature that the ballade first takes a modern form. It was in France, however, and not until the reign of Charles V., that the ballade as we understand it began to flourish; instantly it became popular, and in a few years the out-put of these poems was incalculable. Machault, Froissart, Eustache Deschamps and Christine de Pisan were among the poets who cultivated the ballade most abundantly. Later, those of Alain Chartier and Henri Baude were famous, while the form was chosen by Francois Villon for some of the most admirable and extraordinary poems which the middle ages have handed down to us. Somewhat later, Clement Marot composed ballades of great precision of form, and the fashion culminated in the 17th century with those of Madame Deshoulieres, Sarrazin, Voiture and La Fontaine. Attacked by Moliere, and by Boileau, who wrote

"La ballade asservie a ses vieilles maximes,
Souvent doit tout son lustre au caprice des rimes,"

the ballade went entirely out of fashion for two hundred years, when it was resuscitated in the middle of the 19th century by Theodore de Banville, who published in 1873 a volume of _Trente-six ballades joyeuses_, which has found many imitators. The ballade, a typically French form, has been extensively employed in no other language, except in English. In the 15th and 16th centuries many ballades were written, with more or less close attention to the French rules, by the leading English poets, and in particular by Chaucer, by Gower (whose surviving ballades, however, are all in French) and by Lydgate. An example from Chaucer will show that the type of strophe and rhyme arrangement was in medieval English:--

"Madame, ye been of all beauty shrine
As far as circled is the mappemound;
For, as the crystal, glorious ye shine,
And like ruby been your cheekes round.
Therewith ye been so merry and so jocund
That at a revel when that I see you dance,
It is an oinement unto my wound,
Though ye to me ne do no daliance.

"For though I weep of teares full a tine [cask],
Yet may that woe my hearte not confound;
Your seemly voice, that ye so small out-twine,
Maketh my thought in joy and bliss abound.
So courteously I go, with love bound,
That to myself I say, in my penance,
Sufficeth me to love you, Rosamound,
Though ye to me ne do no daliance.

"Was never pike wallowed in galantine,
As I in love am wallowed and y-wound;
For which full oft I of myself divine
That I am true Tristram the second.
My love may not refrayed [cooled down] be nor afound [foundered];
I burn ay in an amorous pleasance.
Do what you list, I will your thrall be found,
Though ye to me ne do no daliance."

The absence of an envoi will be noticed in Chaucer's, as in most of the medieval English ballades. This points to a relation with the earliest French form, in its imperfect condition, rather than with that which afterwards became accepted. But a ballade without an envoi lacks that section whose function is to tie together the rest, and complete the whole as a work of art. After the 16th century original ballades were no more written in English until the latter part of the 19th, when they were re-introduced, almost simultaneously, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse and W. E. Henley; but D. G. Rossetti's popular translation of Villon's "Ballade of Fair Ladies" may almost be considered an original poem, especially as it entirely disregards the metrical rules of the ballades. Mr. Dobson's "The Prodigals" (1876) was one of the earliest examples of a correct English specimen. In 1880 Mr Lang published a volume of _Ballades in Blue China_, which found innumerable imitators. The modern English ballades have been, as a rule, closely modelled on the lines laid down in the 15th century by Henri de Croi. With the exception of the sonnet, the ballade is the noblest of the artificial forms of verse cultivated in English literature. It lends itself equally well to pathos and to mockery, and in the hands of a competent poet produces an effect which is rich in melody without seeming fantastic or artificial.

(E. G.)

BALLADS. The word "ballad" is derived from the O. Fr. _baller_, to dance, and originally meant a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. Later, the word, in the form of _ballade_ (_q.v._), became the technical term for a particular form of old-fashioned French poetry, remarkable for its involved and [v.03 p.0265] recurring rhymes. "Laisse moi aux Jeux Floraux de Toulouse toutes ces vieux poesies Francoises comme _ballades_," says Joachim du Bellay in 1550; and Philaminte, the lady pedant of Moliere's _Femmes Savantes_, observes--

"La ballade, a mon gout, est une chose fade,
Ce n'en est plus la mode, elle sent son vieux temps."

In England the term has usually been applied to any simple tale told in simple verse, though attempts have been made to confine it to the subject of this article, namely, the literary form of popular songs, the folk-tunes associated with them being treated in the article SONG. By popular songs we understand what the Germans call _Volkslieder_, that is, songs with words composed by members of the people, for the people, handed down by oral tradition, and in style, taste and even incident, common to the people in all European countries. The beauty of these purely popular ballads, their directness and freshness, has made them admired even by the artificial critics of the most artificial periods in literature. Thus Sir Philip Sydney confesses that the ballad of _Chevy Chase_, when chanted by "a blind crowder," stirred his blood like the sound of trumpet. Addison devoted two articles in the _Spectator_ to a critique of the same poem. Montaigne praised the _naivete_ of the village carols; and Malherbe preferred a rustic _chansonnette_ to all the poems of Ronsard. These, however, are rare instances of the taste for popular poetry, and though the Danish ballads were collected and printed in the middle of the 16th century, and some Scottish collections date from the beginning of the 18th, it was not till the publication of Allan Ramsay's _Evergreen and Tea Table Miscellany_, and of Bishop Percy's _Reliques_ (1765), that a serious effort was made to recover Scottish and English folk-songs from the recitation of the old people who still knew them by heart. At the time when Percy was editing the _Reliques_, Madame de Chenier, the mother of the celebrated French poet of that name, composed an essay on the ballads of her native land, modern Greece; and later, Herder and Grimm and Goethe, in Germany, did for the songs of their country what Scott did for those of Liddesdale and the Forest. It was fortunate, perhaps, for poetry, though unlucky for the scientific study of the ballads, that they were mainly regarded from the literary point of view. The influence of their artless melody and straightforward diction may be felt in the lyrics of Goethe and of Coleridge, of Wordsworth, of Heine and of Andre Chenier. Chenier, in the most affected age even of French poetry, translated some of the Romaic ballads; one, as it chanced, being almost identical with that which Shakespeare borrowed from some English reciter, and put into the mouth of the mad Ophelia. The beauty of the ballads and the interest they excited led to numerous forgeries and modern interpolations, which it is seldom difficult to detect with certainty. Editors could not resist the temptation to interpolate, to restore, and to improve the fragments that came in their way. The marquis de la Villemarque, who first drew attention to the ballads of Brittany, is not wholly free from this fault. Thus a very general scepticism was awakened, and when questions came to be asked as to the date and authorship of the Scottish traditional ballads, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Dr Chambers attributed most of them to the accomplished Lady Wardlaw, who lived in the middle of the 18th century.

The vexed and dull controversy as to the origin of Scottish folk-songs was due to ignorance of the comparative method, and of the ballad literature of Europe in general. The result of the discussion was to leave a vague impression that the Scottish ballads were perhaps as old as the time of Dunbar, and were the production of a class of professional minstrels. These minstrels are a stumbling-block in the way of the student of the growth of ballads. The domestic annals of Scotland show that her kings used to keep court-bards, and also that strollers, _jongleurs_, as they were called, went about singing at the doors of farm-houses and in the streets of towns. Here were two sets of minstrels who had apparently left no poetry; and, on the other side, there was a number of ballads that claimed no author. It was the easiest and most satisfactory inference that the courtly minstrels made the verses, which the wandering crowders imitated or corrupted. But this theory fails to account, among other things, for the universal sameness of tone, of incident, of legend, of primitive poetical formulae, which the Scottish ballad possesses, in common with the ballads of Greece, of France, of Provence, of Portugal, of Denmark and of Italy. The object, therefore, of this article is to prove that what has long been acknowledged of nursery tales, of what the Germans call _Maerchen_, namely, that they are the immemorial inheritance at least of all European peoples, is true also of some ballads. Their present form, of course, is relatively recent: in centuries of oral recitation the language altered automatically, but the stock situations and ideas of many romantic ballads are of dateless age and world-wide diffusion. The main incidents and plots of the fairy tales of Celts and Germans and Slavonic and Indian peoples, their unknown antiquity and mysterious origin, are universally recognized. No one any longer attributes them to this or that author, or to this or that date. The attempt to find date or author for a genuine popular song is as futile as a similar search in the case of a _Maerchen_. It is to be asked, then, whether what is confessedly true of folk-tales,--of such stories as the _Sleeping Beauty_ and _Cinderella_,--is true also of folk-songs. Are they, or have they been, as universally sung as the fairy tales have been narrated? Do they, too, bear traces of the survival of primitive creeds and primitive forms of consciousness and of imagination? Are they, like _Maerchen_, for the most part, little influenced by the higher religions, Christian or polytheistic? Do they turn, as _Maerchen_ do, on the same incidents, repeat the same stories, employ the same machinery of talking birds and beasts? Lastly, are any specimens of ballad literature capable of being traced back to extreme antiquity? It appears that all these questions may be answered in the affirmative; that the great age and universal diffusion of the ballad may be proved; and that its birth, from the lips and heart of the people, may be contrasted with the origin of an artistic poetry in the demand of an aristocracy for a separate epic literature destined to be its own possession, and to be the first development of a poetry of personality,--a record of individual passions and emotions. After bringing forward examples of the identity of features in European ballad poetry, we shall proceed to show that the earlier genre of ballads with refrain sprang from the same primitive custom of dance, accompanied by improvised song, which still exists in Greece and Russia, and even in valleys of the Pyrenees.

There can scarcely be a better guide in the examination of the _notes_ or marks of popular poetry than the instructions which M. Ampere gave to the committee appointed in 1852-1853 to search for the remains of ballads in France. M. Ampere bade the collectors look for the following characteristics:--"The use of assonance in place of rhyme, the brusque character of the recital, the textual repetition, as in Homer, of the speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers,--as three and seven,--and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life as being made of gold and silver." M. Ampere might have added that French ballads would probably employ a "bird chorus," the use of talking-birds as messengers; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world (see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to brusqueness of recital, and the use of assonance instead of rhyme, as well as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition. In the matter of recurring numbers, we have the eternal--

"Trois belles filles
L'y en a'z une plus belle que le jour,"

who appear in old French ballads, as well as the "Three Sailors," whose adventures are related in the Lithuanian and Provencal originals of Thackeray's _Little Billee_. Then there is "the league, [v.03 p.0266] the league, the league, but barely three," of Scottish ballads; and the [Greek: tria poulakia], three golden birds, which sing the prelude to Greek folk-songs, and so on. A more curious note of primitive poetry is the lavish and reckless use of gold and silver. H. F. Tozer, in his account of ballads in the _Highlands of Turkey_, remarks on this fact, and attributes it to Eastern influences. But the horses' shoes of silver, the knives of fine gold, the talking "birds with gold on their wings," as in Aristophanes, are common to all folk-song. Everything almost is gold in the _Kalewala_ (_q.v._), a so-called epic formed by putting into juxtaposition all the popular songs of Finland. Gold is used as freely in the ballads, real or spurious, which M. Verkovitch has had collected in the wilds of Mount Rhodope. The Captain in the French song is as lavish in his treatment of his runaway bride,--

"Son amant l'habille,
Tout en or et argent";

and the rustic in a song from Poitou talks of his _faucille d'or_, just as a variant of Hugh of Lincoln introduces gold chairs and tables. Again, when the lover, in a ballad common to France and to Scotland, cuts the winding-sheet from about his living bride--"il tira ses ciseaux d'or fin." If the horses of the Klephts in Romaic ballads are gold shod, the steed in _Willie's Lady_ is no less splendidly accoutred,--

"Silver shod before,
And gowden shod behind."

Readers of Homer, and of the Chanson de Roland, must have observed the same primitive luxury of gold in these early epics, in Homer reflecting perhaps the radiance of the actual "golden Mycenae."

Next as to talking-birds. These are not so common as in _Maerchen_, but still are very general, and cause no surprise to their human listeners. The omniscient popinjay, who "up and spoke" in the Border minstrelsy, is of the same family of birds as those that, according to Talvj, pervade Servian song; as the [Greek: tria poulakia] which introduce the story in the Romaic ballads; as the wise birds whose speech is still understood by exceptionally gifted Zulus; as the wicked dove that whispers temptation in the sweet French folk-song; as the "bird that came out of a bush, on water for to dine," in the _Water o' Wearies Well_.

In the matter of identity of plot and incident in the ballads of various lands, it is to be regretted that no such comparative tables exist as Von Hahn tried, not very exhaustively, to make of the "story-roots" of _Maerchen_. Such tables might be compiled from the learned notes and introductions of Prof. Child to his _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ (1898). A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home "a braw new bride," and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel's collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne on a bier to meet her lover. This occurs not only in Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and briar, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all passers-by see them, and say in the Provencal,--

"Diou ague l'amo
Des paures amourous."

Another example of a very widespread theme brings us to the ideas of the state of the dead revealed in folk-songs. _The Night Journey_, in M. Fauriel's Romaic collection, tells how a dead brother, wakened from his sleep of death by the longing of love, bore his living sister on his saddle-bow, in one night, from Bagdad to Constantinople. In Scotland this is the story of Proud Lady Margaret; in Germany it is the song which Buerger converted into Lenore; in Denmark it is Aage und Else; in Brittany the dead foster-brother carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (_Barzaz Breiz_). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre-Christian. In Provencal and Danish folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken the departed mother,--

"'Twas cold at night and the bairnies grat,
The mother below the mouls heard that."

She reappears in her old home, and henceforth, "when dogs howl in the night, the step-mother trembles, and is kind to the children." To this identity of superstition we may add the less tangible fact of identity of tone. The ballads of Klephtic exploits in Greece match the Border songs of Dick of the Cow and Kinmont Willie. The same simple delight of living animates the short Greek _Scolia_ and their counterparts in France. Everywhere in these happier climes, as in southern Italy, there are snatches of popular verse that make but one song of rose trees, and apple blossom, and the nightingale that sings for maidens loverless,--

"Il ne chante pas pour moi,
J'en ai un, Dieu merci,"

says the gay French refrain.

It would not be difficult to multiply instances of resemblance between the different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to support the position that some of them are popular and primitive in the same sense as _Maerchen_. They are composed by peoples of an early stage who find, in a natural improvisation, a natural utterance of modulated and rhythmic speech, the appropriate relief of their emotions, in moments of high-wrought feeling or on solemn occasions. "Poesie" (as Puttenham well says in his _Art of English Poesie_, 1589) "is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and Latines, and used of the savage and uncivill, who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole world, and discovered large countries, and wild people strange and savage, affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the very Canniball do sing and also say their highest and holiest matters in certain riming versicles." In the same way Aristotle, discoursing of the origin of poetry, says (_Poet_. c. iv.), [Greek: egennesan ten poiesin ek ton autoschediasmaton] M. de la Villemarque in Brittany, M. Pitre in Italy, Herr Ulrich in Greece, have described the process of improvisation, how it grows out of the custom of dancing in large bands and accompanying the figure of the dance with song. "If the people," says M. Pitre, "find out who is the composer of a _canzone_, they will not sing it." Now in those lands where a blithe peasant life still exists with its dances, like the _kolos_ of Russia, we find ballads identical in many respects with those which have died out of oral tradition in these islands. It is natural to conclude that originally some of the British ballads too were first improvised, and circulated in rustic dances. We learn from M. Bujeaud and M. de Puymaigre in France, that all ballads there have their air or tune, and that every dance has its own words, for if a new dance comes in, perhaps a fashionable one from Paris, words are fitted to it. Is there any trace of such an operatic, lyrical, dancing peasantry in austere Scotland? We find it in Gawin Douglas's account of--

"Sic as we clepe wenches and damosels,
In gersy greens, wandering by spring wells,
Of bloomed branches, and flowers white and red,
Plettand their lusty chaplets for their head,
Some sang ring-sangs, dances, ledes, and rounds."

Now, ring-sangs are ballads, dancing songs; and _Young Tamlane_, for instance, was doubtless once danced to, as we know it possessed an appropriate air. Again, Fabyan, the chronicler (quoted by Ritson) says that the song of triumph over Edward II., "was after many days sung _in dances_, to the carols of the [v.03 p.0267] maidens and minstrels of Scotland." We might quote the _Complaynt of Scotland_ to the same effect. "The shepherds, and their wyvis sang mony other melodi sangs, ... than efter this sueit celestial harmony, tha began to dance in ane ring." It is natural to conjecture that, if we find identical ballads in Scotland, and in Greece and Italy, and traces of identical customs--customs crushed by the Reformation, by Puritanism, by modern so-called civilization,--the ballads sprang out of the institution of dances, as they still do in warmer and pleasanter climates. It may be supposed that legends on which the ballads are composed, being found as they are from the White Sea to Cape Matapan, are part of the stock of primitive folk-lore. Thus we have an immemorial antiquity for the legends, and for the lyrical choruses in which their musical rendering was improvised. We are still at a loss to discover the possibly mythological germs of the legends; but, at all events, some ballads may be claimed as distinctly popular, and, so to speak, impersonal in matter and in origin. It would be easy to show that survivals out of this stage of inartistic lyric poetry linger in the early epic poetry of Homer and in the French _epopees_, and that the Greek drama sprang from the sacred choruses of village vintagers. In the great early epics, as in popular ballads, there is the same directness and simplicity, the same use of recurring epithets, the "green grass," the "salt sea," the "shadowy hills," the same repetition of speeches and something of the same barbaric profusion in the use of gold and silver. But these resemblances must not lead us into the mistake of supposing Homer to be a collection of ballads, or that he can be properly translated into ballad metre. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are the highest form of an artistic epic, not composed by piecing together ballads, but developed by a long series of noble [Greek: aoidoi], for the benefit of the great houses which entertain them, out of the method and materials of popular song.

We have here spoken mainly of romantic ballads, which retain in the refrain a vestige of the custom of singing and dancing; of a period when "dance, song and poetry itself began with a communal consent" (Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_, p. 93, 1901). The custom by which a singer in a dancing-circle chants a few words, the dancers chiming in with the refrain, is found by M. Junod among the tribes of Delagoa Bay (Junod, _Chantes et contes des Ba Ronga_, 1897). Other instances are the Australian song-dances (Siebert, in Howitt's _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, Appendix 1904; and Dennett, _Folk-Lore of the Fiort_). We must not infer that even among the aborigines of Australia song is entirely "communal." Known men, inspired, they say, in dreams, or by the All Father, devise new forms of song with dance, which are carried all over the country; and Mr Howitt gives a few examples of individual lyric. The history of the much exaggerated opinion that a whole people, as a people, composed its own ballads is traced by Prof. Gummere in _The Beginnings of Poetry_, pp. 116-163. Some British ballads retain traces of the early dance-song, and most are so far "communal" in that, as they stand, they have been modified and interpolated by many reciters in various ages, and finally (in _The Border Minstrelsy_) by Sir Walter Scott, and by hands much weaker than his (see _The Young Tamlane_). There are cases in which the matter of a ballad has been derived by a popular singer from medieval literary romance (as in the Arthurian ballads), while the author of the romance again usually borrowed, like Homer in the _Odyssey_, from popular _Maerchen_ of dateless antiquity. It would be an error to suppose that most romantic folk-songs are vulgarizations of literary romance--a view to which Mr Courthope, in his _History of English Poetry_, and Mr Henderson in _The Border Minstrelsy_ (1902), incline--and the opposite error would be to hold that this process of borrowing from and vulgarization of literary medieval romance never occurred. A good illustration of the true state of the case will be found in Child's introduction to the ballad of _Young Beichan_.

Gaston Paris, a great authority, holds that early popular poetry is "improvised and contemporary with its facts" (_Histoire poetique de Charlemagne_). If this dictum be applied to such ballads as "The Bonny Earl o' Murray," "Kinmont Willie," "Jamie Telfer" and "Jock o' the Side," it must appear that the contemporary poets often knew little of the events and knew that little wrong. We gather the true facts from contemporary letters and despatches. In the ballads the facts are confused and distorted to such a degree that we must suppose them to have been composed in a later generation on the basis of erroneous oral tradition; or, as in the case of _The Queen's Marie_, to have been later defaced by the fantastic interpolations of reciters. To prove this it is only necessary to compare the historical Border ballads (especially those of 1595-1600) with Bain's _Border Papers_ (1894-1896). Even down to 1750, the ballads on Rob Roy's sons are more or less mythopoeic. It seems probable that the existing form of most of our border ballads is not earlier than the generation of 1603-1633, after the union of the crowns. Even when the ballads have been taken from recitation, the reciter has sometimes been inspired by a "stall copy," or printed broadsheet.

AUTHORITIES.--The indispensable book for the student of ballads is Child's _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, published in 1897-1898 (Boston, U.S.A.). Professor Child unfortunately died without summing up his ideas in a separate essay, and they must be sought in his introductions, which have never been analysed. He did not give much attention to such materials for the study of ancient poetry as exist copiously in anthropological treatises. In knowledge of the ballads of all European peoples he was unrivalled, and his bibliography of collections of ballads contains some four hundred titles, (Child, vol. v., pp. 455-468). The most copious ballad makers have been the Scots and English, the German, Slavic, Danish, French and Italian peoples; for the Gaelic there is but one entry, Campbell of Islay's _Lea har na Feinne_ (London, 1872). The general bibliography occupies over sixty pages, and to this the reader must be referred, while Prof. Gummere's book, _The Beginnings of Poetry_, is an adequate introduction to the literature, mainly continental, of the ballad question, which has received but scanty attention in England. For the relation of ballad to epic there is no better guide than Comparetti's _The Kalewala_, of which there is an English translation. For purely literary purposes the best collection of ballads is Scott's _Border Minstrelsy_ in any complete edition. The best critical modern edition is that of Mr T. F. Henderson; his theory of ballad origins is not that which may be gathered from Professor Child's introductions.

(A. L.)

BALLANCE, JOHN (1839-1893), New Zealand statesman, eldest son of Samuel Ballance, farmer, of Glenavy, Antrim, Ulster, was born on the 27th of March 1839. He was educated at a national school, and, on leaving, was apprenticed to an ironmonger at Belfast. He became a clerk in a wholesale ironmonger's house in Birmingham, and migrated to New Zealand, intending to start in business there as a small jeweller. After settling at Wanganui, however, he took an opportunity, soon offered, of founding a newspaper, the _Wanganui Herald_, of which he became editor and remained chief owner for the rest of his life. During the fighting with the Maori chief Titokowaru, in 1867, Ballance was concerned in the raising of a troop of volunteer horse, in which he received a commission. Of this he was deprived owing to the appearance in his newspaper of articles criticizing the management of the campaign. He had, however, behaved well in the field, and, in spite of his dismissal, was awarded the New Zealand war medal. He entered the colony's parliament in 1875 and, with one interval (1881-1884), sat there till his death. Ballance was a member of three ministries, that of Sir George Grey (1877-1879); that of Sir Robert Stout (1884-1887); and that of which he himself was premier (1891-1893). His alliance with Grey ended with a notorious and very painful quarrel. In the Stout government his portfolios were those of lands and native affairs; but it was at the treasury that his prudent and successful finance made the chief mark. As native minister his policy was pacific and humane, and in his last years he contrived to adjust equitably certain long-standing difficulties relating to reserved lands on the west coast of the North Island. He was resolutely opposed to the sale of crown lands for cash, and advocated with effect their disposal by perpetual lease. His system of state-aided "village settlements," by which small farms were allotted to peasants holding by lease from the crown, and money lent them to make a beginning of building and cultivation, has been on the whole successful. To Ballance, also, was due the law reducing the life-tenure of legislative councillors [v.03 p.0268] to one of seven years. He was actively concerned in the advocacy of woman suffrage. But his best known achievement was the imposition, in 1891, of the progressive land-tax and progressive income-tax still levied in the colony. As premier he brought together the strong experimental and progressive party which long held office in New Zealand. In office he showed debating power, constructive skill and tact in managing men; but in 1893, at the height of his success and popularity, he died at Wellington of an intestinal disease after a severe surgical operation. Quiet and unassuming in manner, Ballance, who was a well-read man, always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle; yet his loss to New Zealand political life was great. A statue was erected to his memory in front of Parliament House, Wellington.

(W. P. R.)

BALLANCHE, PIERRE SIMON (1776-1847), French philosopher of the theocratic school, was born at Lyons. Naturally delicate and highly-strung, he was profoundly stirred by the horrors of the siege of Lyons. His sensitiveness received a second blow in an unsuccessful love affair, which, however, he bore with fortitude. He devoted himself to an examination of the nature of society and his work brought him into connexion with the literary circle of Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier. His great work is the _Palingenesie_, which is divided into three parts, _L'orphee_, _La formule_, _La ville des expiations_. The first deals with the prehistoric period of the world, before the rise of religion; the second was to be an endeavour to deduce a universal law from known historical facts; the third to sketch the ultimate state of perfection to which humanity is moving. Of these the first alone was completed, but fragments of the other parts exist. Perhaps the most valuable part, of the work is the general introduction. His last work, _Vision d'Hebal_, intended as part of the _Ville des expiations_, describes the chief of a Scottish clan, who, gifted with second sight, gives semi-prophetic utterances as to the course of world-history. In 1841 Ballanche was elected a member of the French Academy. He died in 1847. A collected edition of his works in nine volumes was begun in 1830. Four only appeared. In 1833 a second edition in six volumes was published. As a man, Ballanche was warm-hearted and enthusiastic, but he was endowed with a too-vivid imagination and his strange thoughts are expressed in equally bizarre language. To give a connected account of his views is difficult; their full development should be studied in relation with his life-history, the stages of which are curiously parallel to his theory of the progress of man, the fall, the trial, the perfection.