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STORY-TELLING BALLADS

THE LIFT GREW DARK, AND THE WIND BLEW LOUD,
AND GURLY GREW THE SEA (page 5)

STORY-TELLING
BALLADS

SELECTED AND ARRANGED FOR
STORY-TELLING AND READING ALOUD
AND FOR
THE BOYS’ AND GIRLS’ OWN READING

BY

FRANCES JENKINS OLCOTT

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY FRANCES JENKINS OLCOTT

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

TO MY SISTER

VIRGINIA OLCOTT

Here are 77 story-telling ballads and narrativepoems, that will make the heart beat faster andthe pulse bound, of any boy or girl from twelve tofifteen years of age.

They offer a feast of good things—romances,hero-tales, Faërie legends, and adventures ofKnights and lovely Damsels. They sing of proudand wicked folk, of gentle and loyal ones, ofLaidley Worms, Witches, Mermaids with goldencombs, sad maidens, glad ones and fearless lovers,moss-troopers, border-rievers, and Kings in disguise.All their doings are related in the stirring,leaping, joyous—or at times martial and mournful-balladmeasure.

The ancient ballads are here presented exactlyas when in days of old they were sung by minstrelsand recited by gaffers and gammers. Noalterations are made in the texts of the ballad-collectorsand collators, except the changing of afew objectionable words. Two or three of the lesswell-known ballads are done into modern spelling.A number, not hitherto found in children’s collections,will be delightfully new to young people.Some popular ballads, like “King John and theAbbot of Canterbury,” and “The King and the[viii]Miller of Mansfield,” are omitted because theyare in Story-Telling Poems...