PREFACE. THE sources from which the Ballads have been derived are pointed out in the introductory notice prefixed to each. By reference to these notices it will be seen that not only have the well-known and popular collections of Percy, Ritson, Evans, Scott, Jamieson, Buchan, and others been resorted to, but also some reprints of the Percy Society, which are less familiar to the general reader. To their Editors we owe many thanks for much zeal and care in reproducing several poems, only to be met with hitherto in collections whose bulk concealed their beauties, or in fly sheets extant only in the libraries of a few of the learned. The numerous popular imitations of Ancient Ballad Poetry from the pens of Scott, Southey, Coleridge, Taylor, Percy, Chatterton, Leyden, Maginn, &c., mark 30 strongly the progress of national taste, and are themselves so fixed in the minds of old and young of our own times, that it has been thought desirable to enrich this volume with selections |