THE ASCENT OF BALLADS 115

traditional narrative poetry, whether epic or ballad; and whether
in Plato's thought or that of Alfonso the Wise, the discovery that
the poet has indulged in fabling causes a sharp feeling of exaspera-
tion. The audience for which the minstrel composes, and of which
he is a part, is not critical in the factual sense, and applies its own
peculiar standards of verisimilitude. One may note these standards
in the treatment of the supernatural: almost wholly absent from the
Castilian 'romancero', this element is abundant in the 'viser* and
the Balkan ballads, because that is how nature seems to each. The
presence of nixes in a Castilian ballad or their absence from the
Scandinavian repertoire would seem equally untrue to nature; it
is part of our northern experience that winter and storm and raging
waters are spirits bitterly hostile to human life. As evidence of the
truth of their ballads, the singers are wont to identify the places
where the events occurred. The Douglas Tragedy took place 'way
back in Mutton Hollow', as one old gentleman remembered,
through having been aware of it at the time. The notes to Grundt-
vig's Danmarks gamle Folkeviser have many such identifications.
One can describe, with some accuracy, the Jutish kingdom ruled
by Holger the Dane, and defended against Burmand and Diderik.
It does not matter that Holger was a figment of a French imagina-
tion and the Douglas Tragedy an offshoot of the Edda\ the point is
that, as ballads, both were accepted as true. This sort of truth
reaches its maximum in the historical pieces, and gives them their
special importance. A sturdy and ancient balladry generally
springs from a stout historical trunk. When they travel from one
land to another, which is but seldom, they go as simple adventures;
but at home theirs is a solid veracity, which educates the people.
Their tale has a definite importance. To the Castilian they explain
the chief mutations of Spanish history: the Moslem conquest, the
rivalry of Leon and Castile, the progress of the reconquest down to
its close. The Montenegrin, listening to the heroic story of Kosovo,
and comparing it with the songs of outlawry, must have felt some-
thing like the exaltation Tennyson attributed to Ulysses:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
we are not now that strength which in old days
moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
one equal temper of heroic hearts,
made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.