Excerpt from Old English Ballads and Folk Songs: Selected and Edited Das Volk dichtet on a rational basis. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of the first (now made generally accessible by the publication by Houghton, Mifilin, and Company of the Cambridge edition under the editorial supervision of Mrs. Helen Child Sargent and Professor Kittredge) and The Beginnings of Poetry (the Macmillan Company) of the second are books that should be owned, read, and reread by every teacher of literature. And to my friend and colleague, Dr. Walter Morris Hart, whose extensive knowledge of ballads and ballad literature en abled him to give me many helpful suggestions, I grate fully express my obligations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.