The Ancient Ballad of the Nut Brown Maid [pp. 161-169]

The Ancient Ballad of the Nut Brown Maid.
Edward VI., and the-arlier years of
the Queenly Elizabeth. In that year,
Laneham, whlo was an eye-witness, in
describing the " princely pleasures"
which attended Elizabeth's visit at Kenilworth Castle, mentions Captain Cox as
one who has "great oversight in matters
of story," and who has at "his fingers'
ends" a great number of ballads, among
which are "the Serjeant and Frier, Colyn
Clout, and the Nutbrown Maid." That
it should be found in such company, and
at such a time, evinces the appreciation
in which it was held, and affords an inference, that it had not been forgotten
during the preceding half century, though
all traces of it have been lost.
With the closing years of the long
reign of Elizabeth, the Minstrels ceased
to receive encouragement from the great,
or protection from the laws. They were,
in direct terms, denounced by act of Parliament, and ever afterwards, so long as
they existed, were a prescribed, thriftless, and vagrant race; emerging, occasionally, from ale-houses and dark alleys
into the sunshine. But their occupation
was gone, and the oblivion which overtook them was not slow in overwhelming,
in a great measure, the ballads and metrical romances they were accustomed to
recite. There were political causes, too,
which tended to banish from the minds
of men what the refinements of society
had rendered unfashionable. The Reformation had wrought other changes than
freedom from papistical thraldoin. It
had unfettered thought; but it had engendered a puritanic furor which was
wild and fierce, and which tolerated no
learning outside of the Scriptures. A
citizen soldiery, who sang Psalms to the
music of the fife and drum, and held
prayer meetings on battle fields, may be
regarded as the representatives of a majority class who deemed all secular poetry
as profane. With the exception of Milton-the sweep of whose majestic pinions
was broad as the blue ether-no one, at
that day, had the taste to admire the old
ballads, or the moral courage to acknowledge it. Upon the downfall of puritanism came the Restoration and its new
style of poetry-witty, flippant, graceful,
versatile and immoral. Then rapidly followed the Revolution, which expelled an
English monarch from his throne and
crowned a stranger in his place. Whilst
important and interesting events like
these were transpiring-all of which
were novel, and many of which were
startling, it is not wonderful that the
Nut Brown Maid slumbered unnoticed
on the shelves of libraries for the space
of one hundred and thirty-two years.
With the repose which succeeded these
stirring times, the attention of scholars
was turned to the olderiditerature. Accordingly we find, that in 1707 the Nut
Brown Maid was reprinted in the "Muses'
Mercury for June," and introduced to
the public by a little i' Essay on the old
English Poets and Poetry." This writer
ingeniously maintains, that the poem
which he deems worthy of so much distinction, is "near three hundred years
old." This is Dr. Percy's account of its
revival. In Professor Child's edition of
the wqrks of Mathew Prior, it is stated
that the aforesaid essayist, "conjectures
that it was written about the year 1472."
Mr. Warton says "it was revived in the
year 1707," in a collection called the
"Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for
the Curious," and prefaced by a little essay on our ancient poets and poetry, in
which it is said to have been "three hundred [years] old."
Prior himself, who had such an admiration for this old ballad, that he made it
the ground-work of his beautiful poem,
of "Henry and Emma;"'and who first
met with it in the "Muses' Mercury,"
asserts in the edition of his works published in 1718, that its origin is coeval
with the beginning of the fifteenth century. In this opinion he is supported
by Wanly, Secretary to the Earl of Oxford, who enjoyed, in his day, an enviable reputation as an industrious antiquary and an acute critic. It was not until
"Prolusions or Select Pieces of Antient
Poetry" was published in 1760 that any
misgivings existed of the truth of these
suppositions. The editor of that colleation infers from an "identity of rythmus
1860.]
163