BALLADS.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 November 1927, Page 4

BALLADS.

i The old Scottish ballads, which con--1 tain some of the most delightful poetry in our literature, are not so widely known araoii" us as they should be. They can he read and enjoyed equally by those who know much or little or nothing at all about ballad history, that vast and complex subject which scholars have found so fascinating, and which has been the source of such endless controversy and conjecture. We should only know, perhaps, that there is little we can know with certainty about them ; that they have come down to u.s in. a large number of different versions, and that it is only possible to surmise, for the most part, how or when they were composed. For the rest, we can accept and enjoy them as they arc—without troubling ourselves much about their origin and develop-1 tnent and significance—in the pages i ofr instance, of the "Oxford Book of I Ballads. ’’ most enchanting of anthologies. To a certain extent all ballads are alike in form and style, and everybody knows in a general way how they are told. Characteristic of nearly all of them, for instance, is an odd combination of the swift and the leisurely in movement; they can be by turns magnificently brief and astonishingly prolix.—Letty Stack in “ The English Review.”

ALLEGED VIRTUES OF SILENCE. For some obscure reason proverbial philosophy and reflective verse have combined to set silence on a pedestal, like patience on a monument, smiling, not at grief, but with complacent self-satisfaction. “Silence is golden,” is a handy club with which to smite alike the indiscreet chatterer and the inconvenient interrupter of youthful years; “still waters run deep” has given many a man a reputation tor wisdom which he has maintained by the simple process ot not opening his mouth. Silence may be either golden or pinchbeck, and you cannot tell which till it is broken. The mountain in labour which brought forth a mouse has often been paralleled by most impressive silences which were absolutely barren. Maeterlinck, indeed, assures us that souls are weighed in silence as gold and silver are weighed in pure water; but be guards himself by saying that he does not refer to passive silence, which is only the reflection of sleep, of death, or nonexistence. But the value of the other, the active silence, cannot be gauged till it has expressed itself in word or act. and then its activity may amount to nothing.—'“ The Glasgow Herald.”