Mr. DESMOND MACCARTHY : ' Old Ballads'
The ballad is literally the earliest form of popular poetry. It is essentially a narrative poem of communal, not individual, authorship, handed down from generation to generation by oral tradition. The ballad ceased to be made after the fifteenth century and the invention of printing, but it offers the modern reader many examples of refreshing simplicity and of plain' stories told in swinging, simple motre.
