Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
Encyclopedia
The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (sometimes known as Reliques of Ancient Poetry or simply Percy's Reliques) is a collection of ballad
s and popular songs collected by Thomas Percy and published in 1765
.
which became known as the Percy Folio
. Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt. It was on the floor and Pitt's maid had been using the leaves to light fires. Once rescued, Percy would use forty-five of the ballads in the folio for his book despite claiming the bulk of it came from this folio. Other sources were the Pepys Library
of broadside ballads collected by Samuel Pepys
and Collection of Old Ballads
published in 1723, possibly by Ambrose Philips
. Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson
and William Shenstone
who also found and contributed ballads.
Percy did not treat the folio nor the work in them with scrupulous care. He wrote his own notes on the folio pages, emended the rhymes and even pulled pages out of the document. He was criticised for these actions even at the time, most notably by Joseph Ritson
a fellow antiquary. The folio he worked from seems to have been written by a single copyist and errors such as pan and wale for wan and pale needed correcting.
, The Battle of Otterburn, Lillibullero
, The Dragon of Wantley, The Nut-Brown Maid
and Sir Patrick Spens
along with ballads mentioned by or possibly inspiring Shakespeare and several ballads about Robin Hood
. The claim that the book contained samples of ancient poetry was only partially correct. The last part of each volume was given over to more contemporary works—often less than a hundred years old—included to stress the continuing tradition of the balladeer. The collection draws on the Folio and on other manuscript and printed sources, but in at least three cases anonymous informants, "ladies" in each case, contributed oral poetry known to them. He made substantial amendments to the Folio text in collaboration with his friend the poet William Shenstone
.
The work was dedicated to Elizabeth Seymour Duchess of Northumberland who was married to Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland
. Elizabeth was part of the Percy family and a descendant of Henry Percy
, whom some of the early ballads are about. Bishop Thomas Percy also claimed to be connected to the family and although this may have been fanciful on his part, it did seem to help him secure his bishop's job.
The dedication to Elizabeth meant that Thomas Percy arranged the work to give prominence to the border ballad
s which were composed in and about the Scottish and English borders, specifically Northumberland
. Percy also omitted some of the racier ballads from the Folio for fear of offending his noble patron: these were first published by F. J. Furnivall in 1868.
and William Wordsworth
to compose their own ballads in imitation, it also made the collecting and study of ballads a popular pastime. Sir Walter Scott
was another writer inspired by reading the Reliques in his youth, and he published some of the ballads he collected in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
. The more rigorous scholarship of folklorists would eventually supersede Percy's work, most notably Francis James Child
's Child Ballads
, but Percy gave impetus to the whole subject.
The book is also credited, in part, with changing the prevailing art movement of the 18th century, Neo-Classicism, into Romanticism
. The neo-classicists based their art on the perceived purity of classical antiquity
and took as their models the art of ancient Rome
and Greece
. The Reliques highlighted the traditions and folklore
of England seen as simpler and less artificial. It would inspire folklore collections and movements in other parts of Europe
and beyond, such as the Brothers Grimm
, and such movements would act as the foundation of romantic nationalism
. The Percy Society
was founded in 1840 to continue the work of publishing rare ballads, poems and early texts.
PDF scan - The first four pages of the 1765 edition.
Multiple formats at Ex-classics
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s and popular songs collected by Thomas Percy and published in 1765
1765 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* Benjamin Church, "The Times", English, Colonial America* James Beattie:** The Judgment of Paris...
.
Sources
The purported basis of the work was the manuscriptManuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
which became known as the Percy Folio
Percy Folio
The Percy Folio is a folio book of English ballads used by Thomas Percy to compile his Reliques of Ancient Poetry. Although the manuscript itself was compiled in the 17th century, some of its material goes back well into the 12th century...
. Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt. It was on the floor and Pitt's maid had been using the leaves to light fires. Once rescued, Percy would use forty-five of the ballads in the folio for his book despite claiming the bulk of it came from this folio. Other sources were the Pepys Library
Pepys Library
The Pepys Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, is the personal library collected by Samuel Pepys which he bequeathed to the college following his death in 1703....
of broadside ballads collected by Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
and Collection of Old Ballads
Collection of Old Ballads
A Collection of Old Ballads is an anonymous book published 1723 - 1725 in three volumes in London by Roberts and Leach. It was the second major collection of British folksongs to be published, following "Pills To Purge Melancholy" ....
published in 1723, possibly by Ambrose Philips
Ambrose Philips
-Life:He was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in...
. Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
and William Shenstone
William Shenstone
William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.-Life:...
who also found and contributed ballads.
Percy did not treat the folio nor the work in them with scrupulous care. He wrote his own notes on the folio pages, emended the rhymes and even pulled pages out of the document. He was criticised for these actions even at the time, most notably by Joseph Ritson
Joseph Ritson
Joseph Ritson was an English antiquary.He was born at Stockton-on-Tees, of a Westmorland yeoman family. He was educated for the law, and settled in London as a conveyancer at the age of twenty-two. He devoted his spare time to literature, and in 1782 published an attack on Thomas Warton's History...
a fellow antiquary. The folio he worked from seems to have been written by a single copyist and errors such as pan and wale for wan and pale needed correcting.
Content
The Reliques contained one hundred and eighty ballads in three volumes with three sections in each. It contains such important ballads as The Ballad of Chevy ChaseThe Ballad of Chevy Chase
There are two extant English ballads known as The Ballad of Chevy Chase, both of which narrate the same story. As ballads existed within oral tradition before being written down, other versions of this once popular song may also have existed....
, The Battle of Otterburn, Lillibullero
Lillibullero
Lillibullero is a march that sets the words of a satirical ballad generally said to be by Lord Thomas Wharton to music attributed to Henry Purcell. Although Purcell published Lillibullero in his compilation Music's Handmaid of 1689 as "a new Irish tune", it is probable that Purcell hijacked the...
, The Dragon of Wantley, The Nut-Brown Maid
The Nut-Brown Maid
"The Nut-Brown Maid", also known as "The Nut-Brown Maiden", is a ballad included by Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.-Synopsis:...
and Sir Patrick Spens
Sir Patrick Spens
"Sir Patrick Spens" is one of the most popular of the Child Ballads , and is of Scottish origin.-Historicity:The events of the ballad are similar to, and may chronicle, an actual event: the bringing home of the Scottish queen Margaret, Maid of Norway across the North Sea in 1290...
along with ballads mentioned by or possibly inspiring Shakespeare and several ballads about Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
. The claim that the book contained samples of ancient poetry was only partially correct. The last part of each volume was given over to more contemporary works—often less than a hundred years old—included to stress the continuing tradition of the balladeer. The collection draws on the Folio and on other manuscript and printed sources, but in at least three cases anonymous informants, "ladies" in each case, contributed oral poetry known to them. He made substantial amendments to the Folio text in collaboration with his friend the poet William Shenstone
William Shenstone
William Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.-Life:...
.
The work was dedicated to Elizabeth Seymour Duchess of Northumberland who was married to Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland
Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland
Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, KG, PC was an Engish peer, landowner and art patron.He was born Hugh Smithson, the son of Langdale Smithson and grandson of Sir Hugh Smithson, 3rd Baronet from whom he inherited the baronetcy in 1733...
. Elizabeth was part of the Percy family and a descendant of Henry Percy
Henry Percy
Sir Henry Percy, also called Harry Hotspur KG was the eldest son of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, 4th Lord Percy of Alnwick. His mother was Margaret Neville, daughter of Ralph Neville, 2nd Baron Neville de Raby and Alice de Audley. His nickname, 'Hotspur', is suggestive of his impulsive...
, whom some of the early ballads are about. Bishop Thomas Percy also claimed to be connected to the family and although this may have been fanciful on his part, it did seem to help him secure his bishop's job.
The dedication to Elizabeth meant that Thomas Percy arranged the work to give prominence to the border ballad
Border ballad
The English/Scottish border has a long and bloody history of conquest and reconquest, raid and counter-raid . It also has a stellar tradition of balladry, such that a whole group of songs exists that are often called "border ballads", because they were collected in that region.Border ballads, like...
s which were composed in and about the Scottish and English borders, specifically Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
. Percy also omitted some of the racier ballads from the Folio for fear of offending his noble patron: these were first published by F. J. Furnivall in 1868.
Reception
Ballad collections had appeared before but Percy's Reliques seemed to capture the public imagination like no other. Not only would it inspire poets such as Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
and William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
to compose their own ballads in imitation, it also made the collecting and study of ballads a popular pastime. Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
was another writer inspired by reading the Reliques in his youth, and he published some of the ballads he collected in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is a collection of Border ballads compiled by Walter Scott. It is not to be confused with his long poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel...
. The more rigorous scholarship of folklorists would eventually supersede Percy's work, most notably Francis James Child
Francis James Child
Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...
's Child Ballads
Child Ballads
The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century...
, but Percy gave impetus to the whole subject.
The book is also credited, in part, with changing the prevailing art movement of the 18th century, Neo-Classicism, into Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. The neo-classicists based their art on the perceived purity of classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
and took as their models the art of ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
and Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. The Reliques highlighted the traditions and folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
of England seen as simpler and less artificial. It would inspire folklore collections and movements in other parts of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and beyond, such as the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
, and such movements would act as the foundation of romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
. The Percy Society
Percy Society
The Percy Society was a British book-club. It was founded in 1840 and collapsed in 1852.It was a scholarly collective, aimed at publishing limited-edition books of rare poems and songs...
was founded in 1840 to continue the work of publishing rare ballads, poems and early texts.
External links
archive.org e-textPDF scan - The first four pages of the 1765 edition.
Multiple formats at Ex-classics