"Was never pike wallowed in galantine, As I in love am wallowed and y-wound; For which full oft I of myself divine That I am true Tristram the second.
My love may not refrayed [cooled down] be nor afound [foundered]; I burn ay in an amorous pleasance.
Do what you list, I will your thrall be found, Though ye to me ne do no daliance."
The absence of an envoi will be noticed in Chaucer"s, as in most of the medieval English ballades. This points to a relation with the earliest French form, in its imperfect condition, rather than with that which afterwards became accepted. But a ballade without an envoi lacks that section whose function is to tie together the rest, and complete the whole as a work of art. After the 16th century original ballades were no more written in English until the latter part of the 19th, when they were re-introduced, almost simultaneously, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse and W. E. Henley; but D. G. Rossetti"s popular translation of Villon"s "Ballade of Fair Ladies" may almost be considered an original poem, especially as it entirely disregards the metrical rules of the ballades. Mr. Dobson"s "The Prodigals" (1876) was one of the earliest examples of a correct English specimen. In 1880 Mr Lang published a volume of _Ballades in Blue China_, which found innumerable imitators. The modern English ballades have been, as a rule, closely modelled on the lines laid down in the 15th century by Henri de Croi. With the exception of the sonnet, the ballade is the n.o.blest of the artificial forms of verse cultivated in English literature. It lends itself equally well to pathos and to mockery, and in the hands of a competent poet produces an effect which is rich in melody without seeming fantastic or artificial.
(E. G.)
BALLADS. The word "ballad" is derived from the O. Fr. _baller_, to dance, and originally meant a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. Later, the word, in the form of _ballade_ (_q.v._), became the technical term for a particular form of old-fashioned French poetry, remarkable for its involved and [v.03 p.0265] recurring rhymes. "Laisse moi aux Jeux Floraux de Toulouse toutes ces vieux poesies Francoises comme _ballades_," says Joachim du Bellay in 1550; and Philaminte, the lady pedant of Moliere"s _Femmes Savantes_, observes--
"La ballade, a mon gout, est une chose fade, Ce n"en est plus la mode, elle sent son vieux temps."
In England the term has usually been applied to any simple tale told in simple verse, though attempts have been made to confine it to the subject of this article, namely, the literary form of popular songs, the folk-tunes a.s.sociated with them being treated in the article SONG. By popular songs we understand what the Germans call _Volkslieder_, that is, songs with words composed by members of the people, for the people, handed down by oral tradition, and in style, taste and even incident, common to the people in all European countries. The beauty of these purely popular ballads, their directness and freshness, has made them admired even by the artificial critics of the most artificial periods in literature. Thus Sir Philip Sydney confesses that the ballad of _Chevy Chase_, when chanted by "a blind crowder," stirred his blood like the sound of trumpet. Addison devoted two articles in the _Spectator_ to a critique of the same poem. Montaigne praised the _navete_ of the village carols; and Malherbe preferred a rustic _chansonnette_ to all the poems of Ronsard. These, however, are rare instances of the taste for popular poetry, and though the Danish ballads were collected and printed in the middle of the 16th century, and some Scottish collections date from the beginning of the 18th, it was not till the publication of Allan Ramsay"s _Evergreen and Tea Table Miscellany_, and of Bishop Percy"s _Reliques_ (1765), that a serious effort was made to recover Scottish and English folk-songs from the recitation of the old people who still knew them by heart. At the time when Percy was editing the _Reliques_, Madame de Chenier, the mother of the celebrated French poet of that name, composed an essay on the ballads of her native land, modern Greece; and later, Herder and Grimm and Goethe, in Germany, did for the songs of their country what Scott did for those of Liddesdale and the Forest. It was fortunate, perhaps, for poetry, though unlucky for the scientific study of the ballads, that they were mainly regarded from the literary point of view. The influence of their artless melody and straightforward diction may be felt in the lyrics of Goethe and of Coleridge, of Wordsworth, of Heine and of Andre Chenier. Chenier, in the most affected age even of French poetry, translated some of the Romaic ballads; one, as it chanced, being almost identical with that which Shakespeare borrowed from some English reciter, and put into the mouth of the mad Ophelia. The beauty of the ballads and the interest they excited led to numerous forgeries and modern interpolations, which it is seldom difficult to detect with certainty. Editors could not resist the temptation to interpolate, to restore, and to improve the fragments that came in their way. The marquis de la Villemarque, who first drew attention to the ballads of Brittany, is not wholly free from this fault. Thus a very general scepticism was awakened, and when questions came to be asked as to the date and authorship of the Scottish traditional ballads, it is scarcely to be wondered at that Dr Chambers attributed most of them to the accomplished Lady Wardlaw, who lived in the middle of the 18th century.
The vexed and dull controversy as to the origin of Scottish folk-songs was due to ignorance of the comparative method, and of the ballad literature of Europe in general. The result of the discussion was to leave a vague impression that the Scottish ballads were perhaps as old as the time of Dunbar, and were the production of a cla.s.s of professional minstrels. These minstrels are a stumbling-block in the way of the student of the growth of ballads. The domestic annals of Scotland show that her kings used to keep court-bards, and also that strollers, _jongleurs_, as they were called, went about singing at the doors of farm-houses and in the streets of towns.
Here were two sets of minstrels who had apparently left no poetry; and, on the other side, there was a number of ballads that claimed no author. It was the easiest and most satisfactory inference that the courtly minstrels made the verses, which the wandering crowders imitated or corrupted. But this theory fails to account, among other things, for the universal sameness of tone, of incident, of legend, of primitive poetical formulae, which the Scottish ballad possesses, in common with the ballads of Greece, of France, of Provence, of Portugal, of Denmark and of Italy. The object, therefore, of this article is to prove that what has long been acknowledged of nursery tales, of what the Germans call _Marchen_, namely, that they are the immemorial inheritance at least of all European peoples, is true also of some ballads. Their present form, of course, is relatively recent: in centuries of oral recitation the language altered automatically, but the stock situations and ideas of many romantic ballads are of dateless age and world-wide diffusion. The main incidents and plots of the fairy tales of Celts and Germans and Slavonic and Indian peoples, their unknown antiquity and mysterious origin, are universally recognized. No one any longer attributes them to this or that author, or to this or that date. The attempt to find date or author for a genuine popular song is as futile as a similar search in the case of a _Marchen_. It is to be asked, then, whether what is confessedly true of folk-tales,--of such stories as the _Sleeping Beauty_ and _Cinderella_,--is true also of folk-songs. Are they, or have they been, as universally sung as the fairy tales have been narrated? Do they, too, bear traces of the survival of primitive creeds and primitive forms of consciousness and of imagination? Are they, like _Marchen_, for the most part, little influenced by the higher religions, Christian or polytheistic? Do they turn, as _Marchen_ do, on the same incidents, repeat the same stories, employ the same machinery of talking birds and beasts?
Lastly, are any specimens of ballad literature capable of being traced back to extreme antiquity? It appears that all these questions may be answered in the affirmative; that the great age and universal diffusion of the ballad may be proved; and that its birth, from the lips and heart of the people, may be contrasted with the origin of an artistic poetry in the demand of an aristocracy for a separate epic literature destined to be its own possession, and to be the first development of a poetry of personality,--a record of individual pa.s.sions and emotions. After bringing forward examples of the ident.i.ty of features in European ballad poetry, we shall proceed to show that the earlier genre of ballads with refrain sprang from the same primitive custom of dance, accompanied by improvised song, which still exists in Greece and Russia, and even in valleys of the Pyrenees.
There can scarcely be a better guide in the examination of the _notes_ or marks of popular poetry than the instructions which M. Ampere gave to the committee appointed in 1852-1853 to search for the remains of ballads in France. M. Ampere bade the collectors look for the following characteristics:--"The use of a.s.sonance in place of rhyme, the brusque character of the recital, the textual repet.i.tion, as in Homer, of the speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers,--as three and seven,--and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life as being made of gold and silver." M. Ampere might have added that French ballads would probably employ a "bird chorus," the use of talking-birds as messengers; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world (see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superst.i.tions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious ident.i.ty. As to brusqueness of recital, and the use of a.s.sonance instead of rhyme, as well as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition. In the matter of recurring numbers, we have the eternal--
"Trois belles filles L"y en a"z une plus belle que le jour,"
who appear in old French ballads, as well as the "Three Sailors," whose adventures are related in the Lithuanian and Provencal originals of Thackeray"s _Little Billee_. Then there is "the league, [v.03 p.0266] the league, the league, but barely three," of Scottish ballads; and the [Greek: tria poulakia], three golden birds, which sing the prelude to Greek folk-songs, and so on. A more curious note of primitive poetry is the lavish and reckless use of gold and silver. H. F. Tozer, in his account of ballads in the _Highlands of Turkey_, remarks on this fact, and attributes it to Eastern influences. But the horses" shoes of silver, the knives of fine gold, the talking "birds with gold on their wings," as in Aristophanes, are common to all folk-song. Everything almost is gold in the _Kalewala_ (_q.v._), a so-called epic formed by putting into juxtaposition all the popular songs of Finland. Gold is used as freely in the ballads, real or spurious, which M. Verkovitch has had collected in the wilds of Mount Rhodope. The Captain in the French song is as lavish in his treatment of his runaway bride,--
"Son amant l"habille, Tout en or et argent";
and the rustic in a song from Poitou talks of his _faucille d"or_, just as a variant of Hugh of Lincoln introduces gold chairs and tables. Again, when the lover, in a ballad common to France and to Scotland, cuts the winding-sheet from about his living bride--"il tira ses ciseaux d"or fin."
If the horses of the Klephts in Romaic ballads are gold shod, the steed in _Willie"s Lady_ is no less splendidly accoutred,--
"Silver shod before, And gowden shod behind."
Readers of Homer, and of the Chanson de Roland, must have observed the same primitive luxury of gold in these early epics, in Homer reflecting perhaps the radiance of the actual "golden Mycenae."
Next as to talking-birds. These are not so common as in _Marchen_, but still are very general, and cause no surprise to their human listeners. The omniscient popinjay, who "up and spoke" in the Border minstrelsy, is of the same family of birds as those that, according to Talvj, pervade Servian song; as the [Greek: tria poulakia] which introduce the story in the Romaic ballads; as the wise birds whose speech is still understood by exceptionally gifted Zulus; as the wicked dove that whispers temptation in the sweet French folk-song; as the "bird that came out of a bush, on water for to dine," in the _Water o" Wearies Well_.
In the matter of ident.i.ty of plot and incident in the ballads of various lands, it is to be regretted that no such comparative tables exist as Von Hahn tried, not very exhaustively, to make of the "story-roots" of _Marchen_. Such tables might be compiled from the learned notes and introductions of Prof. Child to his _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ (1898). A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home "a braw new bride," and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel"s collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne on a bier to meet her lover. This occurs not only in Scotland, but in the popular songs of Provence (collected by Damase Arbaud) and in those of Metz (Puymaigre), and in both countries an incongruous sequel tells how the lover tried to murder his bride, and how she was too cunning, and drowned him. Another familiar feature is the bush and briar, or the two rose trees, which meet and plait over the graves of unhappy lovers, so that all pa.s.sers-by see them, and say in the Provencal,--
"Diou ague l"amo Des paures amourous."
Another example of a very widespread theme brings us to the ideas of the state of the dead revealed in folk-songs. _The Night Journey_, in M.
Fauriel"s Romaic collection, tells how a dead brother, wakened from his sleep of death by the longing of love, bore his living sister on his saddle-bow, in one night, from Bagdad to Constantinople. In Scotland this is the story of Proud Lady Margaret; in Germany it is the song which Burger converted into Lenore; in Denmark it is Aage und Else; in Brittany the dead foster-brother carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (_Barzaz Breiz_). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned in autumn, can warrior or maiden escape," is likewise pre-Christian. In Provencal and Danish folk-song, the cries of children ill-treated by a cruel step-mother awaken the departed mother,--
""Twas cold at night and the bairnies grat, The mother below the mouls heard that."
She reappears in her old home, and henceforth, "when dogs howl in the night, the step-mother trembles, and is kind to the children." To this ident.i.ty of superst.i.tion we may add the less tangible fact of ident.i.ty of tone. The ballads of Klephtic exploits in Greece match the Border songs of d.i.c.k of the Cow and Kinmont Willie. The same simple delight of living animates the short Greek _Scolia_ and their counterparts in France.
Everywhere in these happier climes, as in southern Italy, there are s.n.a.t.c.hes of popular verse that make but one song of rose trees, and apple blossom, and the nightingale that sings for maidens loverless,--
"Il ne chante pas pour moi, J"en ai un, Dieu merci,"
says the gay French refrain.
It would not be difficult to multiply instances of resemblance between the different folk-songs of Europe; but enough has, perhaps, been said to support the position that some of them are popular and primitive in the same sense as _Marchen_. They are composed by peoples of an early stage who find, in a natural improvisation, a natural utterance of modulated and rhythmic speech, the appropriate relief of their emotions, in moments of high-wrought feeling or on solemn occasions. "Poesie" (as Puttenham well says in his _Art of English Poesie_, 1589) "is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and Latines, and used of the savage and uncivill, who were before all science and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers, who by late navigations have surveyed the whole world, and discovered large countries, and wild people strange and savage, affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the very Canniball do sing and also say their highest and holiest matters in certain riming versicles." In the same way Aristotle, discoursing of the origin of poetry, says (_Poet_. c. iv.), [Greek: egennesan ten poiesin ek ton autoschediasmaton] M. de la Villemarque in Brittany, M. Pitre in Italy, Herr Ulrich in Greece, have described the process of improvisation, how it grows out of the custom of dancing in large bands and accompanying the figure of the dance with song. "If the people," says M. Pitre, "find out who is the composer of a _canzone_, they will not sing it." Now in those lands where a blithe peasant life still exists with its dances, like the _kolos_ of Russia, we find ballads identical in many respects with those which have died out of oral tradition in these islands. It is natural to conclude that originally some of the British ballads too were first improvised, and circulated in rustic dances. We learn from M. Bujeaud and M. de Puymaigre in France, that all ballads there have their air or tune, and that every dance has its own words, for if a new dance comes in, perhaps a fashionable one from Paris, words are fitted to it. Is there any trace of such an operatic, lyrical, dancing peasantry in austere Scotland?
We find it in Gawin Douglas"s account of--
"Sic as we clepe wenches and damosels, In gersy greens, wandering by spring wells, Of bloomed branches, and flowers white and red, Plettand their l.u.s.ty chaplets for their head, Some sang ring-sangs, dances, ledes, and rounds."
Now, ring-sangs are ballads, dancing songs; and _Young Tamlane_, for instance, was doubtless once danced to, as we know it possessed an appropriate air. Again, Fabyan, the chronicler (quoted by Ritson) says that the song of triumph over Edward II., "was after many days sung _in dances_, to the carols of the [v.03 p.0267] maidens and minstrels of Scotland." We might quote the _Complaynt of Scotland_ to the same effect. "The shepherds, and their wyvis sang mony other melodi sangs, ... than efter this sueit celestial harmony, tha began to dance in ane ring." It is natural to conjecture that, if we find identical ballads in Scotland, and in Greece and Italy, and traces of identical customs--customs crushed by the Reformation, by Puritanism, by modern so-called civilization,--the ballads sprang out of the inst.i.tution of dances, as they still do in warmer and pleasanter climates. It may be supposed that legends on which the ballads are composed, being found as they are from the White Sea to Cape Matapan, are part of the stock of primitive folk-lore. Thus we have an immemorial antiquity for the legends, and for the lyrical choruses in which their musical rendering was improvised. We are still at a loss to discover the possibly mythological germs of the legends; but, at all events, some ballads may be claimed as distinctly popular, and, so to speak, impersonal in matter and in origin. It would be easy to show that survivals out of this stage of inartistic lyric poetry linger in the early epic poetry of Homer and in the French _epopees_, and that the Greek drama sprang from the sacred choruses of village vintagers. In the great early epics, as in popular ballads, there is the same directness and simplicity, the same use of recurring epithets, the "green gra.s.s," the "salt sea," the "shadowy hills," the same repet.i.tion of speeches and something of the same barbaric profusion in the use of gold and silver. But these resemblances must not lead us into the mistake of supposing Homer to be a collection of ballads, or that he can be properly translated into ballad metre. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are the highest form of an artistic epic, not composed by piecing together ballads, but developed by a long series of n.o.ble [Greek: aoidoi], for the benefit of the great houses which entertain them, out of the method and materials of popular song.
We have here spoken mainly of romantic ballads, which retain in the refrain a vestige of the custom of singing and dancing; of a period when "dance, song and poetry itself began with a communal consent" (Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_, p. 93, 1901). The custom by which a singer in a dancing-circle chants a few words, the dancers chiming in with the refrain, is found by M. Junod among the tribes of Delagoa Bay (Junod, _Chantes et contes des Ba Ronga_, 1897). Other instances are the Australian song-dances (Siebert, in Howitt"s _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, Appendix 1904; and Dennett, _Folk-Lore of the Fiort_). We must not infer that even among the aborigines of Australia song is entirely "communal." Known men, inspired, they say, in dreams, or by the All Father, devise new forms of song with dance, which are carried all over the country; and Mr Howitt gives a few examples of individual lyric. The history of the much exaggerated opinion that a whole people, as a people, composed its own ballads is traced by Prof. Gummere in _The Beginnings of Poetry_, pp.
116-163. Some British ballads retain traces of the early dance-song, and most are so far "communal" in that, as they stand, they have been modified and interpolated by many reciters in various ages, and finally (in _The Border Minstrelsy_) by Sir Walter Scott, and by hands much weaker than his (see _The Young Tamlane_). There are cases in which the matter of a ballad has been derived by a popular singer from medieval literary romance (as in the Arthurian ballads), while the author of the romance again usually borrowed, like Homer in the _Odyssey_, from popular _Marchen_ of dateless antiquity. It would be an error to suppose that most romantic folk-songs are vulgarizations of literary romance--a view to which Mr Courthope, in his _History of English Poetry_, and Mr Henderson in _The Border Minstrelsy_ (1902), incline--and the opposite error would be to hold that this process of borrowing from and vulgarization of literary medieval romance never occurred. A good ill.u.s.tration of the true state of the case will be found in Child"s introduction to the ballad of _Young Beichan_.
Gaston Paris, a great authority, holds that early popular poetry is "improvised and contemporary with its facts" (_Histoire poetique de Charlemagne_). If this dictum be applied to such ballads as "The Bonny Earl o" Murray," "Kinmont Willie," "Jamie Telfer" and "Jock o" the Side," it must appear that the contemporary poets often knew little of the events and knew that little wrong. We gather the true facts from contemporary letters and despatches. In the ballads the facts are confused and distorted to such a degree that we must suppose them to have been composed in a later generation on the basis of erroneous oral tradition; or, as in the case of _The Queen"s Marie_, to have been later defaced by the fantastic interpolations of reciters. To prove this it is only necessary to compare the historical Border ballads (especially those of 1595-1600) with Bain"s _Border Papers_ (1894-1896). Even down to 1750, the ballads on Rob Roy"s sons are more or less mythopoeic. It seems probable that the existing form of most of our border ballads is not earlier than the generation of 1603-1633, after the union of the crowns. Even when the ballads have been taken from recitation, the reciter has sometimes been inspired by a "stall copy," or printed broadsheet.
AUTHORITIES.--The indispensable book for the student of ballads is Child"s _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, published in 1897-1898 (Boston, U.S.A.). Professor Child unfortunately died without summing up his ideas in a separate essay, and they must be sought in his introductions, which have never been a.n.a.lysed. He did not give much attention to such materials for the study of ancient poetry as exist copiously in anthropological treatises. In knowledge of the ballads of all European peoples he was unrivalled, and his bibliography of collections of ballads contains some four hundred t.i.tles, (Child, vol. v., pp. 455-468). The most copious ballad makers have been the Scots and English, the German, Slavic, Danish, French and Italian peoples; for the Gaelic there is but one entry, Campbell of Islay"s _Lea har na Feinne_ (London, 1872). The general bibliography occupies over sixty pages, and to this the reader must be referred, while Prof. Gummere"s book, _The Beginnings of Poetry_, is an adequate introduction to the literature, mainly continental, of the ballad question, which has received but scanty attention in England. For the relation of ballad to epic there is no better guide than Comparetti"s _The Kalewala_, of which there is an English translation. For purely literary purposes the best collection of ballads is Scott"s _Border Minstrelsy_ in any complete edition. The best critical modern edition is that of Mr T. F. Henderson; his theory of ballad origins is not that which may be gathered from Professor Child"s introductions.
(A. L.)
BALLANCE, JOHN (1839-1893), New Zealand statesman, eldest son of Samuel Ballance, farmer, of Glenavy, Antrim, Ulster, was born on the 27th of March 1839. He was educated at a national school, and, on leaving, was apprenticed to an ironmonger at Belfast. He became a clerk in a wholesale ironmonger"s house in Birmingham, and migrated to New Zealand, intending to start in business there as a small jeweller. After settling at w.a.n.ganui, however, he took an opportunity, soon offered, of founding a newspaper, the _w.a.n.ganui Herald_, of which he became editor and remained chief owner for the rest of his life. During the fighting with the Maori chief t.i.tokowaru, in 1867, Ballance was concerned in the raising of a troop of volunteer horse, in which he received a commission. Of this he was deprived owing to the appearance in his newspaper of articles criticizing the management of the campaign. He had, however, behaved well in the field, and, in spite of his dismissal, was awarded the New Zealand war medal. He entered the colony"s parliament in 1875 and, with one interval (1881-1884), sat there till his death. Ballance was a member of three ministries, that of Sir George Grey (1877-1879); that of Sir Robert Stout (1884-1887); and that of which he himself was premier (1891-1893). His alliance with Grey ended with a notorious and very painful quarrel. In the Stout government his portfolios were those of lands and native affairs; but it was at the treasury that his prudent and successful finance made the chief mark. As native minister his policy was pacific and humane, and in his last years he contrived to adjust equitably certain long-standing difficulties relating to reserved lands on the west coast of the North Island. He was resolutely opposed to the sale of crown lands for cash, and advocated with effect their disposal by perpetual lease. His system of state-aided "village settlements," by which small farms were allotted to peasants holding by lease from the crown, and money lent them to make a beginning of building and cultivation, has been on the whole successful. To Ballance, also, was due the law reducing the life-tenure of legislative councillors [v.03 p.0268] to one of seven years. He was actively concerned in the advocacy of woman suffrage. But his best known achievement was the imposition, in 1891, of the progressive land-tax and progressive income-tax still levied in the colony. As premier he brought together the strong experimental and progressive party which long held office in New Zealand. In office he showed debating power, constructive skill and tact in managing men; but in 1893, at the height of his success and popularity, he died at Wellington of an intestinal disease after a severe surgical operation. Quiet and una.s.suming in manner, Ballance, who was a well-read man, always seemed fonder of his books and his chessboard than of public bustle; yet his loss to New Zealand political life was great. A statue was erected to his memory in front of Parliament House, Wellington.
(W. P. R.)
BALLANCHE, PIERRE SIMON (1776-1847), French philosopher of the theocratic school, was born at Lyons. Naturally delicate and highly-strung, he was profoundly stirred by the horrors of the siege of Lyons. His sensitiveness received a second blow in an unsuccessful love affair, which, however, he bore with fort.i.tude. He devoted himself to an examination of the nature of society and his work brought him into connexion with the literary circle of Chateaubriand and Madame Recamier. His great work is the _Palingenesie_, which is divided into three parts, _L"orphee_, _La formule_, _La ville des expiations_. The first deals with the prehistoric period of the world, before the rise of religion; the second was to be an endeavour to deduce a universal law from known historical facts; the third to sketch the ultimate state of perfection to which humanity is moving. Of these the first alone was completed, but fragments of the other parts exist. Perhaps the most valuable part, of the work is the general introduction. His last work, _Vision d"Hebal_, intended as part of the _Ville des expiations_, describes the chief of a Scottish clan, who, gifted with second sight, gives semi-prophetic utterances as to the course of world-history. In 1841 Ballanche was elected a member of the French Academy. He died in 1847. A collected edition of his works in nine volumes was begun in 1830. Four only appeared. In 1833 a second edition in six volumes was published. As a man, Ballanche was warm-hearted and enthusiastic, but he was endowed with a too-vivid imagination and his strange thoughts are expressed in equally bizarre language. To give a connected account of his views is difficult; their full development should be studied in relation with his life-history, the stages of which are curiously parallel to his theory of the progress of man, the fall, the trial, the perfection.
As has been said, he belonged to the theocratic school, who, in opposition to the rationalism of the preceding age, emphasized the principle of authority, placing revelation above individual reason, order above freedom and progress. But Ballanche made a sincere endeavour to unite in one system what was valuable in the opposed modes of thinking. He held with the theocratists that individualism was an impracticable view; man, according to him, exists only in and through society. He agreed further with them that the origin of society was to be explained, not by human desire and efforts, but by a direct revelation from G.o.d. Lastly, with De Bonald, he reduced the problem of the origin of society to that of the origin of language, and held that language was a divine gift. But at this point he parts company with the theocratists, and in this very revelation of language finds a germ of progress. Originally, in the primitive state of man, speech and thought are identical; but gradually the two separate; language is no longer only spoken, it is also written and finally is printed. Thus the primitive unity is broken up; the original social order which co-existed with, and was dependent on it, breaks up also. New inst.i.tutions spring up, upon which thought acts, and in and through which it even draws nearer to a final unity, a _palingenesis_. The volition of primitive man was one with that of G.o.d but it becomes broken up into separate volitions which oppose themselves to the divine will, and through the oppositions and trials of this world work onward to a second and completer harmony. Humanity, therefore, pa.s.ses through three stages, the fall from perfection, the period of trial and the final re-birth or return to perfection. In the dim records of mythical times may be traced the obscure outlines of primitive society and of its fall. Actual history exhibits the conflict of two great principles, which may be said to be realized in the patricians and plebeians of Rome. Such a distinction of caste is regarded by Ballanche as the original state of historical society; and history, as a whole, he considers to have followed the same course as that taken by the Roman plebs in its attempts to attain equality with the patriciate. On the events through which the human race is to achieve its destiny Ballanche gives few intelligible hints. The sudden flash which disclosed to the eyes of Hebal the whole epic of humanity cannot be reproduced in language trammelled by time and s.p.a.ce. Scattered throughout the works of Ballanche are many valuable ideas on the connexion of events which makes possible a philosophy of history; but his own theory does not seem likely to find more favour than it has already received. Besides the _Palingenesie_, Ballanche wrote a poem on the siege at Lyons (unpublished); _Du sentiment considere dans la litterature et dans les arts_ (1801); _Antigone_, a prose poem (1814); _Essai sur les inst.i.tutions sociales_ (1818), intended as a prelude to his great work; _Le Vieillard et le jeune homme_, a philosophical dialogue (1819); _L"Homme sans nom_, a novel (1820).
See Ampere, _Ballanche_ (Paris, 1848); Ste Beuve, _Portraits contemporains_, vol. ii.; Damiron, _Philosophie de XIX^e siecle_; Eugene Blum, "Essai sur Ballanche" (in _Critique Philos._, 30th June 1887); Gaston Frainnet, _Essai sur la philos de P. S. Ballanche_ (Paris, 1903, containing unpublished letters, portraits and full bibliography); C. Huit, _La Vie et les oeuvres de Ballanche_ (1904). An admirable a.n.a.lysis of the works composing the _Palingenesie_ is given by Barchou, _Revue des deux mondes_ (1831), t. 2. pp. 410-456.
BALLANTINE, WILLIAM (1812-1887), English serjeant-at-law, was born in London on the 3rd of January 1812, being the son of a London police-magistrate. He was educated at St Paul"s school, and called to the bar in 1834. He began in early life a varied acquaintance with dramatic and literary society, and his experience, combined with his own pushing character and acute intellect, helped to obtain for him very soon a large practice, particularly in criminal cases. He became known as a formidable cross-examiner, his great rival being Serjeant Parry (1816-1880). The three great cases of his career were his successful prosecution of the murderer Franz Muller in 1864, his skilful defence of the Tichborne claimant in 1871 and his defence of the gaekwar of Baroda in 1875, his fee in this last case being one of the largest ever known. Ballantine became a serjeant-at-law in 1856. He died at Margate on the 9th of January 1887, having previously published more than one volume of reminiscences. Serjeant Ballantine"s private life was decidedly Bohemian; and though he earned large sums, he died very poor.
BALLANTYNE, ROBERT MICHAEL (1825-1894), Scottish writer of fiction, was born at Edinburgh on the 24th of April 1825, and came of the same family as the famous printers and publishers. When sixteen years of age he went to Canada and was for six years in the service of the Hudson"s Bay Company. He returned to Scotland in 1847, and next year published his first book, _Hudson"s Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America_. For some time he was employed by Messrs Constable, the publishers, but in 1856 he gave up business for the profession of literature, and began the series of excellent stories of adventure for the young with which his name is popularly a.s.sociated. _The Young Fur-Traders_ (1856), _The Coral Island_ (1857), _The World of Ice_ (1859), _Ungava: a Tale of Eskimo Land_ (1857), _The Dog Crusoe_ (1860), _The Lighthouse_ (1865), _Deep Down_ (1868), _The Pirate City_ (1874), _Erling the Bold_ (1869), _The Settler and the Savage_ (1877), and other books, to the number of upwards of a hundred, followed in regular succession, his rule being in every case to write as far as possible from personal knowledge of the scenes he described. His stories had the merit of being thoroughly healthy in tone and possessed considerable graphic force. Ballantyne was also no mean artist, and exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy. He lived in later years at Harrow, and died on the 8th of February 1894, at Rome, where he had gone to attempt to shake off the results of overwork. He wrote a volume of _Personal Reminiscences of Book-making_ (1893).
BALLARAT [BALLAARAT] and BALLARAT EAST, a city and a town of Grenville county, Victoria, Australia, 74 m. by rail W.N.W. of Melbourne. The city and Ballarat East, separated only by the Yarrowee Creek, are distinct munic.i.p.alities. Pop. of Ballarat (1901) 25,448, of Ballarat East, 18,262.
Ballarat is the second city and the chief gold-mining centre of the state.
The alluvial gold-fields were the richest ever opened up, but as these deposits have become exhausted the quartz reefs at deep levels have been exploited, and several mines are worked at depths exceeding 2000 ft. The city is the seat of Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops. It has a number of admirable public buildings, while, among several parks and recreation grounds, mention must be made of the fine botanical garden, 750 acres in extent, [v.03 p.0269] where, in Lake Wendouree, pisciculture is carried on with great success. The school of mines is the most important in Australia and is affiliated to the university of Melbourne. Ballarat is an important railway centre and its industries include woollen-milling, brewing, iron-founding, flour-milling and distilling. Owing to its elevation of 1438 ft. it has an exceptionally cool and healthy climate. Although the district is princ.i.p.ally devoted to mining it is well adapted for sheep-farming, and some of the finest wool in the world is produced near Ballarat. The existence of the towns is due to the heavy immigration which followed upon the discovery of the gold-fields in 1851. In 1854, in their resistance of an arbitrary tax, the miners came into armed conflict with the authorities; but a commission was appointed to investigate their grievances; and a charter was granted to the town in 1855. In 1870 Ballarat was raised to the rank of a city.
BALLAST (O. Swed. _barlast_, perhaps from _bar_, bare or mere, and _last_, load), heavy material, such as gravel, stone or metal, placed in the hold of a ship in order to immerse her sufficiently to give adequate stability.
In botany "ballast-plants" are so-called because they have been introduced into countries in which they are not indigenous through their seeds being carried in such ballast. A ship "in ballast" is one which carries no paying cargo. In modern vessels the place of ballast is taken by water-tanks which are filled more or less as required to trim the ship. The term is also applied to materials like gravel, broken slag, burnt clay, &c., used to form the bed in which the sleepers or ties of a railway track are laid, and also to the sand which a balloonist takes up with him, in order that, by throwing portions of it out of the car from time to time, he may lighten his balloon when he desires to rise to a higher level.
BALLATER (Gaelic for "the town on a sloping hill"), a village in the parish of Glenmuick, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, 670 ft. above the sea, on the left bank of the Dee, here crossed by a fine bridge, 43 m. by rail W. by S. of Aberdeen. It is the terminus of the Deeside railway and the station for Balmoral, 9 m. to the W. Founded in 1770 to provide accommodation for the visitors to the mineral wells of Pannanich, 1 m. to the E., it has since become a popular summer resort. It contains the Albert Memorial Hall and the barracks for the sovereign"s bodyguard, used when the king is in residence at Balmoral. Red granite is the chief building material of the houses. Ballatrich farm, where Byron spent part of his boyhood, lies some 4 m. to the E. Ballater has a mean temperature of 44.6 F., and an average annual rainfall of 33.4 in.
BALLENSTEDT, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, on the river Getel, 20 m. E. of Quedlinburg by rail. Pop. (1900) 5423. It is pleasantly situated under the north-eastern declivity of the Harz mountains. The inhabitants are mostly engaged in agriculture and there is practically no other industry. The palace of the dukes of Anhalt, standing on an eminence, contains a library and collections of various kinds, including a good picture gallery. It is approached by a fine avenue of trees and is surrounded by a well-wooded park. In the Schlosskirche the grave of Albert the Bear, margrave of Brandenburg (1100-1170) has been discovered.
BALLET, a performance in which dancing, music and pantomime are involved.
Originally derived from the (Sicilian) Gr. [Greek: ballizein], to dance, the word has pa.s.sed through the Med. Lat. _ballare_ (with _ballator_ as synonymous with _saltator_) to the Ital. _ballare_ and _ballata_, to the Fr. _ballet_, to the O. Eng. word _ballette_, and to _ballad_. In O. Fr., according to Rousseau, _ballet_ signifies "to dance, to sing, to rejoice"; and thus it incorporates three distinct modern words, "ballet, ball and ballad." Through the gradual changes in the amus.e.m.e.nts of different ages, the meaning of the first two words has at length become limited to dancing, and the third is now confined to singing. But, although ballads are no longer the vocal accompaniments to dances round the maypole, old ballads are still sung to dance tunes. The present acceptation of the word _ballet_ is--a theatrical representation in which a story is told only by gesture, accompanied by music, which should be characterized by stronger emphasis than would be employed with the voice. The dancing should be connected with the story but is more commonly incidental. The French word was found to be so comprehensive as to require further definition, and thus the above-described would be distinguished as the _ballet d"action_ or pantomime ballet, while a single scene, such as that of a village festival with its dances, would now be termed a _divertiss.e.m.e.nt_.
The _ballet d"action_, to which the changed meaning of the word is to be ascribed, and therewith the introduction of modern ballet, has been generally attributed to the 15th century. Novelty of entertainment was then sought for in the splendid courts of Italy, in order to celebrate events which were thought great in their time, such as the marriages of princes, or the triumphs of their arms. Invention was on the rack for novelty, and the skill of the machinist was taxed to the utmost. It has been supposed that the art of the old Roman _pantomimi_ was then revived, to add to the attractions of court-dances. Under the Roman empire the _pantomimi_ had represented either a mythological story, or perhaps a scene from a Greek tragedy, by mute gestures, while a chorus, placed in the background, sang _cantica_ to narrate the fable, or to describe the action of the scene. The question is whether mute pantomimic action, which is the essence of modern ballet, was carried through those court entertainments, in which kings, queens, princes and princesses, took parts with the courtiers; or whether it is of later growth, and derived from professional dances upon the stage.
The former is the general opinion, but the court entertainments of Italy and France were masques or masks which included declamation and song, like those of Ben Jonson with Inigo Jones for the court of James I.
The earliest modern ballet on record was that given by Bergonzio di Botta at Tortona to celebrate the marriage of the duke of Milan in 1489. The ballet, like other forms of dancing, was developed and perfected in France; it is closely a.s.sociated with the history of the opera; but in England it came much later than the opera, for it was not introduced until the 18th century, and in the first Italian operas given in London there was no ballet. During the regency of Lord Middles.e.x a ballet-master was appointed and a _corps_ of dancers formed. The ballet has had three distinct stages in its development. For a long time it was to be found only at the court, when princely entertainments were given to celebrate great occasions. At that time ladies of the highest rank performed in the ballet and spent much time in practising and perfecting themselves for it. Catherine de"Medici introduced these entertainments into France and spent large sums of money on devising performances to distract her son"s attention from the affairs of the state. Baltasarini, otherwise known as Beaujoyeulx, was the composer of a famous entertainment given by Catherine in 1581 called the "Ballet Comique de la Reyne." This marks an era in the history of the opera and ballet, for we find here for the first time dance and music arranged for the display of coherent dramatic ideas. Henry IV., Louis XIII. and XIV.