KINDS AND DATES	57
Robin Hood and Marko Kraljevic, who are regarded as almost
wholly admirable. Old Novak, the haiduk, is less heroic than
Marko Kraljevic, but of invincible independence. There is some
esteem to spare for a robber baron like Lindenschmid, who is cap-
tured and executed, after a gallant fight; the Catalan Serrallonga
and those of his kidney are used to point a vulgar moral about evil
communications which lead to the scaffold. At last we read
notices of a revolting nature or shocking tragedies. Whether such
have historical backing is not always easy to ascertain; the treat-
ment is so generalized that the event might be merely imagined in
order to point a moral. It is then uncertain whether the piece
should be called historical or not. Fortunately the dilemma is not
an important one, since the base metal of most of these pieces does
not deserve assaying. The descending curve of merit has also its
chronological aspect, since the more admirable heroes belong to the
earlier epochs when the people remained homogeneous, but ballads
of bull-fighters and murderers are plebeian and late. We have to
add to this class those ballads which belong to professions that have
themselves an historical date: professions such as the military,
with its succession (in Germany) of Swiss pikernen, German
reiters and landsknechts, the victims of the corvees of the eigh-
teenth century, and modern conscripts. Historical data are often
embedded in their songs—more richly in the older strata—though
the permanent subject is the vicissitudes of the profession. With
these ballads also the exact repartition is a matter of tact, and a
piece may be given a double classification.
For historical ballads it is important that there should be some
direct connexion between the song and the event, condition, or
person it represents. A ballad carved out of a chronicle is not
historical in the same sense, though it may be convenient on occa-
sion to overlook the difference. But we should rather insist on the
difference in the case of epical ballads. There was a Theodorich
of Verona, but the ballads of Dietrich von Bern have no direct
relationship to him, but only to the hypothetical epics and real
saga which lie between. The same is true In Spain of Ruy Diaz
the Cid, Count Fernan Gonzalez, or King Rodrigo. The epics on
the first two and the traditions about the last may be rightly de-
scribed as historical; but the ballads are dependent on the previous
oral and written literature, and are therefore akin to other liter-
ary ballads. It is true that the epical and historical 'romances'
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