Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/55

INTRODUCTION. xlix VI. In these days of the philological agnostic, it must seem a bit of folly to set up Jacob Grimm, the thrice battered, as a god in poetical criticism. Three distinct theories which he held have been sharply, and in a measure suc- cessfully, attacked, — the theory of a native and original Germanic beast-epos ; the theory that our popular tales had their source in ancient Germanic and Aryan myth ; and the theory that poetry of the people " makes itself." Of these, nobody holds any longer to the first. The second is badly damaged, as any one must admit who reads the clear arraignment of it by Cosquin.^ The third is our present subject for consideration, and we must begin by giving an account of it in Grimm *s own words. Herder,* we remember, had spoken in a general way about Homer as a "singer of the people," as the poet of a time when heroic traditions "of themselves took on poetic form." Out of this phrase, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm made a definite critical proposition, and laid down a doctrine of ballad origins. They maintained that poetry of the people "sings itself," has no indi- 1 Conies Populaires de Lorraine^ with un essai sur Vorigine et la propagation des contes populaires europiens^ 2 vols., Paris, 1886. On p. xii is given the solution of the problem, as against the " vague vaporeux et poetique" of the Grimms, or the fatuity of a later writer, Hahn. Importation from the East, or elsewhere, doubt- less explains most of the tales ; but there is some sense in the objection, by anticipation, of Steinthal (on Afythos, Sage, Mdrchen u,s.w^ in his Zeitschrift, XVII, ii3ff.), that it is going too far when one assumes, *' because Europe imported so much, she must have been herself sterile and unproductive ** (p. 1 23). ^ Lack of space compels us to leave out of account minor, but deserving critics of the ballad like Gorres and Amim, as well as details about other ballad-collectors, the Wunderhorn, and all the rest. Digitized by LjOOQIC