The English and Scottish Popular Ballads

by Francis James Child

Published between 1882 and 1898, the original ten-part study became the definitive collection of popular English and Scottish ballads. Francis James Child superceded previous and unreliable ballad editions by compiling all the extant ballads with all known variants, making them available for the first time. Features his invaluable commentary for each work.

Genres: Poetry, Music, Folklore, History, Fairy Tales, Classics, Mythology

2816 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Francis James Child (1825-1896) was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of English and Scottish ballads now known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry. In 1876 he was named Harvard's first Professor of English, a position which allowed him to focus on academic research. It was during this time that he began work on the Child Ballads.

The Child Ballads were published in five volumes between 1882 and 1898. While Child was primarily a literary scholar with little interest in the music of the ballads, his work became a major contribution to the study of English-language folk music.

Reviews

[jobiwan6]

got my set of these back in the early '70s when i was listening to Pentangle and John Renbourn. i was so obsessed at the time that i almost went to Toronto to study medieval music. what a valuable degree that would have been. this is the definative collection for anyone interested in early english ballads and folksongs.

[Meghan]

I love reading these ballads and wondering who they were written about and what life was like at the time. There are all sorts of songs in this collection; love songs, battle songs, drinking songs, songs about death. Deffnitely worth reading if only to catch a glimpse of the medeival.

[Angie Lisle]

I love the old mountain ballads, so this collection is must-have for my library.

[Kate]

This is stupendous. I only had Vol. 1-2 and still it is stupendous. I didn't finish it. I only really made it through the first 100 pages. It was so and not actually in my wheelhouse and I couldn't figure out how it was organized. I just couldn't make heads or tails of it. So it's not that it wasn't fascinating; it's more that I'm not a huge fan of ballads and I just couldn't see spending so much time on it as it required. It was fantastic though and I am glad I gave it a gander.

[Carolyn Finlay]

These books are irreplaceable.
Versions of the poems and lyrics gathered together 'the definitive reference source for all studies in (...) English literature, folklore and balladry. I came across them in the 1980s, through lyrics used by Fairport Convention on their albums - Tam Lin, Crazy Man Michael (who turns into a raven), etc ..., and later used them in my M.A.

[Inder]

Another one that I dabbled in as a teenager and in college, but want to reread now that I have world of folk music knowledge in me (or in my iPod, at any rate).