Uchan's ballads is tediously spun out to enormous and unnecessary length, and is filled with solecisms and inanities quite inconsistent with the spirit
of the true ballad. But Buchan undoubtedly
gained fresh material, however much he clothed it; and his ballads are now reprinted, as Professor Child says, for much the same reason that thieves are photographed. Scotland continued the work with two excellent students
and pioneers, George Kinloch and William Motherwell. Next, Robert Chambers published a collection of eighty ballads,
some being spurious. This was in 1829. Thirty years later Chambers came to the conclusion that
'the high-class
romantic ballads of Scotland ... are not older than the early part of the eighteenth century, and are mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind.' And this
one mind, he thinks, was probably that of Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw,
the acknowledged forger of the ballad
_Hardyknute_, which deceived so many. Chambers,
of course, was absurdly
mistaken. So the work of
collecting and editing progressed through the nineteenth century,
till it culminated
in the final edition of Professor Child's _English
and Scottish Popular Ballads_. But even this is scarcely his greatest
benefaction to the study of ballads. We must confess that had it not been for the insistence of this American scholar, the
Percy Folio Manuscript would remain a sealed
book. For six years Professor Child persecuted
Dr. Furnivall, who persecuted in turn the owners of the Folio,
even offering sums of money, for permission to print the MS. Eventually they succeeded, and not only succeeded in
giving to the world an exact reprint,[10]
but also once for all secured the precious original for the British Museum, where it now remains.[11] [Footnote 10: _Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript_, edited by J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, 4 vols.,
1867-8. Printed for the Early English Text Society and subscribers.] [Footnote 11: Additional
MS. 27, 879.] And what is this manuscript? In brief, it is an example of the commonplace books which abounded in the seventeenth century. But it is unique in con
