Meum est propositum
In taberna mori,
Et vinum appositum
Sitienti ori,

is made up of lines of four and three accents, but hardly seems like the model of the ballad measure. The French romances introduced into England by the Normans were usually in couplets. They were translated into English in stanzas of various lengths. How far the ballad measure resulted from a breaking down and simplification of the literary form of the French romances in becoming the metrical romances of England, or whether the ballad measure is a popular indigenous production, can hardly be determined. The interaction between cultivated literature and popular literature is obscure because popular literature in its earliest stages is not preserved, since as a rule it is transmitted by memory and changes as the language changes. The old English ballads as we have them do not date from earlier than the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. But ballads existed among the people and were sung either by professional or semi-professional minstrels at gatherings or in households in the time of Chaucer, for he introduces a mock-heroic ballad at which the marshal of the party scoffs. The Ryme of Sir Thopas is told by Chaucer himself, who is represented as one of the party. The Host says to him:

"Sey now somewhat sin other folk han sayd,
Tell us a tale of mirthe and that anoon.
Hoste quod I ne beth nat yvel apayd,
For other tale certes can I noon
But of a ryme I lerned long agoon."

So he runs on in ballad measure for some two hundred lines, exaggerating a ballad motif; the quest for the love of the fairie queene. He refers to the metrical romances in ballad form:

"Men speke of romances of prys,
Of Horn Child and of Ypotys
Of Bevis and Sir Guy,

Of Sir Libeux and Pleyn-damour,

But Sir Thopas he bereth the flour

Of royal chivalry."

Harry Bailey then interrupts him and begs him to relate something in prose if that is the best he can do in rhyme:

"No more of this for Goddes dignitee"
Quod oure hoste, " for thou makest me

So wery of thy verray lewdnesse,1
That also wisly God my soule blesse,
Myn eres aken of thy drasty 2 speche,
Now swiche a rym the devel I biteche,
This may well be rym dogerel," quod he.

Chaucer then relates the prose tale of Melibœus, which is certainly "drasty" enough. This episode shows that in the latter part of the fourteenth century ballads were considered unliterary and unworthy of a poet of Chaucer's powers. The difference between literary literature and popular literature is in the tone and manner, for both handle the same material. Chaucer tells the tale of Hugh of Lincoln and there are several ballads on the same story. Literary literature is conscious of its dignity as art, it respects the literary traditions, it bears the burden of a moral, it is written largely for the educated and the powerful; in the Middle Ages it was an expression of the sentiments of chivalry. Chaucer was a man of wide human sympathies, but he is a man of books. He wrote at the end of Troilus and Criseyde:

Go litel book, go litel myn tragedie,

Ther3 God, thy maker, er that he dye
So sende might to make in som comedie;
But litel book, no maken thou n'envye,

1 Lewdnesse, ignorance, unculture.
2 Drasty, worthless, empty.

8 Ther, would that.

But subgit be to alle poesye :

And kis the steppes whereas thou seest pace
Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan and Stace.1

Nothing of this kind intrudes into popular literature. The balladist is intent on his story and his audience and brings in no personal reflections.

Ballads continued to be regarded as hardly worth noticing till the early part of the nineteenth century. Sir Philip Sidney expresses his wonder that he likes the ballad of Percy and Douglas (the Battle of Otterbourne, probably) in the often quoted passage from the Defence of Poesie (1581):

'Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness, I never heard the olde song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a Trumpet: and yet it is sung but by some blinde Crouder, with no rougher voice than rude stile, which being so evill apparelled in the dust and cobwebbs of that uncivil age, what would it worke trymmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?"

Before the introduction of the art of printing, after which we may assume that the ability to read became more general, ballads were transmitted orally and were of course subject to more or less change in transmission. It was necessary that they should be pleasing to an ordinary audience, and each repetition may be regarded in a sense as

1 Stace, Statius.

an editing. There is a tendency, however, to repeat poetry exactly as it is learned even if it is not understood, and this would operate to prevent change. As the language developed, obsolete words, or at least obsolete pronunciations, would be dropped. The conflict between these two tendencies, one toward conservatism and one toward innovation, has resulted in many variants of the older ballads. No doubt, too, the reciter would drop many stanzas from time to time and insert others of his own invention to please his audience. We may readily conceive a popular entertainer, professional or semi-professional, getting up his own version of a ballad learned from some older person. Hence an old English ballad is not only popular poetry in form, but it is popular poetry in the sense that it has been molded by popular sentiment after its first composition. No author's name is attached to the old ballads. Naturally, this must be the case with a song published orally and subject to a sort of evolution in transmission.

In the sixteenth century, after the art of printing was well introduced, popular ballads were printed on a sheet of paper called a broadside and sold in many cases by the person who sang them in the streets or at fairs. This is the kind of ballad that Autolycus, the knavish peddler, has for sale in the Winter's Tale. The one he repeats is, however, more of a song than a ballad :