Reliques Of Ancient English Poetry
Edited By
THOMAS PERCY
Thomas Percy was the son of a grocer
in Shifnal, a small town in Shropshire in England. He managed by dint of
talent, determination and hard work to rise as high as was possible for such a
man in the 18th Century -- an Irish bishopric. On the way he became chaplain
to the Duchess of Northumberland -- his namesake Elizabeth Percy. It did not
harm him that many people thought he was of a junior branch of the family,
indeed he liked to think so himself. A clergyman in the Church of England, he
mostly devoted himself to scholarship. The Reliques
of Ancient English Poetry is his
greatest work. Based on an old manuscript book of ballads which he rescued
"from the hands of the housemaid who was about to light the fire with
it," he supplemented it
with many other old ballads and with literary poems in the same idiom. First
published in 1764, it became the English exemplar of the burgeoning Romantic
ballad/saga movement exemplified in Scotland by Ossian. Its very various content includes ballads
of the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, and many others. Some of them
are still sung today, for example, Lord Donald and Little Musgrave; and Barbara
Allen. Others have been undeservedly forgotten. There are also poems by
literary poets such as Shakespeare, Jonson and Drayton; as well as a whole
section of traditional ballads which inspired or were quoted by Shakespeare.
