Grundtvig's Index B of English and Scottish Ballads

Abstract

While Francis James Child was preparing the manuscript for the publication of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Svend Grundtvig sent to him, in the form of enclosures with letters dated August 25, 1877 and January 29, 1880, a numbered list of English and Scottish ballads arranged in the order which Grundtvig, at Child's earlier request, meant to propose as a proper sequence for publication. This list is printed in full in my Ballad Books and Ballad Men under the designation of the “Grundtvig-Child Index.” This index was prepared by Grundtvig mainly from two other manuscript indexes which he had drawn up many years before for convenient reference in his work with the Danish ballads. The first of the two, named Index A by Grundtvig himself, contained what he regarded at the time as a standard list of English and Scottish ballads. The second, named by him Index B, comprised ballads which he regarded for various reasons as questionable. Index A began in 1850; Index B appears to belong to approximately the same period. Between twenty and thirty years afterward, when Grundtvig prepared for Child's guidance the Grundtvig-Child Index, he admitted into it many ballads from Index B. In the interval he had obviously changed his mind or resolved his doubts as to the merits of a group of ballads originally regarded by him as distinctly secondary in value. It is to be observed, however, that, in his classifications for Child in the Grundtvig-Child Index, Grundtvig admits no ballad from Index B into his First Class, in his opinion the most ancient poems; on the other hand, he places a large number of pieces from Index B in his Fourth Class, “consisting of imitations of the old ballad style.” Whether, then, we take into account Grundtvig's earlier or his later judgment, Index B represents a secondary order of merit. Careful attention should be paid, meanwhile, to the variety of reasons which led Grundtvig, according to his own introductory note, to the formation of Index B. This index was to him in effect a sort of ballad purgatory, from which in the course of time he released such of the numbers as appeared to him worthy of liberation.