242 NORDIC BALLADS

a unique gift of improvisation; but they are not suited for a more
reflective art. Their gifts are displayed, apart from the famous
* spirituals', in numerous ballads, peculiarly fluid in style. What
constitutes any one ballad is a certain coherence of inner structure,
but not any contexture of words. Almost any verse can appear in
almost any ballad; improvisation and tricks of memory deform the
tales almost out of recognition, and throw them together in strange
confusion. John Henry, a gigantic steel-driver, and John Hardy,
a murderer, have been confused in this manner. Rude and plebeian
as they are, there is some suggestion of the old economy of effect
in negro ballads, as in Stagolee:

Stagolee was a bully man, an5 ev'ybody knowed,
when dey seed Stagolee comin', to give Stagolee de road.

Stagolee started out, he gave his wife his han':
'Good-bye, darlin5, I'm gain' to kill a man.'

The cowboys on the western ranges had also their peculiar
interests, which have found expression in ballads. The type has
disappeared with the annihilation of the herds of bison that once
roamed the plains, but while the horsemen continued they had to
find such recreation as they could in singing beside their camp-
fires or while riding. The Old Chisholm Trail is a catalogue of cow-
boy woes, not unlike the Blighty of 1918, and ending in the same
hope of release:

Goin5 back to town to draw my money,
goin' back home to see my honey.

With my knees in the saddle and my seat in the sky,
I'll quit punching cows in the sweet by and by.
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy yay youpy ya,
coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya.

The occupation was seasonal, as was that of the lumberjacks, who
had their own heroes Paul Bunyan and Young Munroe, but no
ballads of notable merit.

4. Germany and the Low Countries

The supreme merit of the German ballad collectors has been to
realize to the full the importance of ballad melodies. It is not that
they anticipated other scholars in this respect. On the contrary, the
collections made between the dates of Herder and Uhland—the
collections which, in fact, have exerted a powerful influence on th$