Child and his friends and helpers ransacked every
attainable collection of ballads in manuscript, and ballads in print,
as they listened to the last murmurings of ballad tradition from the
lips of old or young.
Mr. Child, says his friend and pupil, Professor Kittredge, "possessed
a kind of instinct" for distinguishing what is genuine and
traditional, or modern, or manipulated, or, if I may say so, "faked"
in a ballad.
"This instinct, trained by thirty years of study, had become
wonderfully swift in its operations, and almost infallible. A forged
or retouched piece could not escape him for a moment: he detected
the slightest jar in the ballad ring." {18a}
But all old traditional ballads are masses of "retouches," made
through centuries, by reciters, copyists, editors, and so forth.
Unluckily, Child never gave in detail his reasons for rejecting that
treasure of Sir Walter's, Auld Maitland. Child excluded the poem
sans phrase. If he did this, like Falstaff "on instinct," one can
only say that antiquarian instincts are never infallible.
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