| dc.description | I begin with a representative quotation from volume 2 of the Papers of Francis James Child because it offers an ideal avenue into the study of the popular ballad and some of the premises of that study: "These two ballads and a fragment of a third were repeated from memory by my grandmother, who is over ninety years old. She learned them orally and has no recollection of their being printed" (II:229). Such a formulation suggests that popular ballads to be authentic and true are held in memory, are unpublished, are learned orally; they are possessions of the past and we get glimpses of that past largely through the memories of the old. It is an easy move from these assertions to suggest that the ballads belong, certainly originated, in the past, in an oral society, homogeneous and small; what we now have is but a pale reflection of their original glory; their time is past. | eng |
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