The later fruits of that schoolboy passion were garnered in Scott's original ballads, metrical romances, and no less romantic novels, all so picturesque with feudal lights and shadows, so pure with chivalric sentiment; but an earlier result was _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,_ a collection of folk-songs gleaned in vacation excursions from pipers and shepherds and old peasant women of the border districts, and containing, with other ballads, full forty-three previously unknown to print, among them some of our very best. Other poet collectors--Motherwell and Aytoun--followed where Scott had led, Scott having been himself preceded by Allan Ramsay, who so early as 1724 had included several old ballads, freely retouched, in his _Evergreen and Tea-Table Miscellany._ Nor were there lacking others, poets in ear and heart if not in pen, who went up and down the country-side, seeking to gather into books the old heroic lays that were already on the point of perishing from the memories of the people. Meanwhile Ritson's shrill cry for the publication of the original Percy manuscript was taken up in varying keys again and again, until in our own generation the echoes on our own side of the water grew so persistent that with no small difficulty the much-desired end was actually attained. The owners of the folio having been brought to yield their slow consent, our richest treasure of Old English song, for so perilously long a period exposed to all the hazards that beset a single manuscript, is safe in print at last and open to the inspection of us all. The late Professor Child of Harvard, our first American authority on ballad-lore, and Dr. Furnivall of London, would each yield the other the honor of this achievement for which no ballad-lover can speak too many thanks.
A list of our principal ballad collections may be found of practical convenience, as well as of literary interest. Passing by the _Miscellanies,_ Percy, as becomes one of the gallant lineage to which he set up a somewhat doubtful claim, leads the van.
Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. 1765.
Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. 1769.
Ritson's Ancient Songs and Ballads. 1792.