Reliques of Ancient English Poetry by Thomas Percy

Title Page

RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY: 

CONSISTING OF OLD HEROIC BALLADS, SONGS, 

AND OTHER PIECES OF OUR EARLIER POETS; 

TOGETHER WITH SOME FEW OF LATER DATE. 

BY THOMAS PERCY, 

LORD BISHOP OF DROMORE. 

EDITED BY J. V. PRICHARD.

Dedication.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 

Elizabeth, Countess of Northumberland: 

IN HER OWN RIGHT 

BARONESS PERCY, LUCY, POYNINGS, FITZPAYNE, BRYAN, AND LATIMER.

MADAM,

THOSE writers who solicit the protection of the noble and the 

great are often exposed to censure by the impropriety of their 

addresses: a remark that will perhaps be too readily applied to him 

who, having nothing better to offer than the rude Songs of ancient 

Minstrels, aspires to the patronage of the Countess of 

Northumberland, and hopes that the barbarous productions of 

unpolished ages can obtain the approbation or the notice of her, who 

adorns courts by her presence, and diffuses elegance by her example.

But this impropriety, it is presumed, will disappear, when it is 

declared that these poems are presented to your Ladyship, not as 

labours of art, but as effusions of nature, showing the first efforts 

of ancient genius, and exhibiting the customs and opinions of remote 

ages, -- of ages that had been almost lost to memory, had not the 

gallant deeds of your illustrious Ancestors preserved them from 

oblivion.

No active or comprehensive mind can forbear some attention to 

the reliques of antiquity: it is prompted by natural curiosity to 

survey the progress of life and manners, and to inquire by what 

gradations barbarity was civilized, grossness refined, and ignorance 

instructed; but this curiosity, Madam, must be stronger in those who, 

like your Ladyship, can remark in every period the influence of some 

great Progenitor, and who still feel in their effects the 

transactions and events of distant centuries.

By such Bards, Madam, as I am now introducing to your presence, 

was the infancy of genius nurtured and advanced; by such were the 

minds of unlettered warriors softened and enlarged; by such was the 

memory of illustrious actions preserved and propagated; by such were 

the heroic deeds of the Earls of Northumberland sung at festivals in 

the hall of ALNWICK and those Songs which the bounty of your 

ancestors rewarded, now return to your Ladyship by a kind of 

hereditary right; and, I flatter myself, will find such reception as 

is usually shown to poets and historians by those whose consciousness 

of merit makes it their interest to be long remembered.

I am, Madam, 

Your Ladyship's most humble 

and most devoted servant, 

THOMAS PERCY, 

MDCCLXV.

Advertisement to the Edition of 1876.

As early as the year 1794, when only the fourth edition of the  

Reliques had appeared, the Rev. Thomas Percy, acting as assistant- 

editor to his uncle, the Bishop of Dromore, hinted at the difficulty 

attendant upon such a composition as a collection of poems from a 

mutilated and incorrect manuscript. At that date Bishop Percy, his 

nephew, and a few friends were alone enabled to pass this judgment. 

To-day, however, the concealed manuscript is the property of the 

British Museum, its masterly edition [1] by Messrs. Hales and 

Furnivall rests in the hands of the public, and our knowledge of the 

original poems enables us to appreciate the extraordinary ingenuity 

displayed by the Bishop in his manipulation of the forty-five numbers 

extracted from his Folio Manuscript; nor is our admiration for his 

poetic genius other than redoubled by the discovery.

The Folio Manuscript itself, which has been too closely 

connected in the general mind with the Reliques, considering that the 

latter contains only about one-sixth of the contents of the former, 

is a narrow book, about fifteen and a half inches long by five and a 

half wide, which has been torn and cut, and is deficient in many 

parts.

It consists of a mass of some two hundred Sonnets, Ballads, 

Historical Songs, and Metrical Romances, transcribed, we are assured, 

"from defective copies, or the imperfect recitation of illiterate 

singers; so that a considerable portion of the song or narrative is 

sometimes omitted, and miserable trash or nonsense not unfrequently 

introduced into pieces of considerable merit."[2]

Mr. Furnivall fixes the date of the handwriting to the year 

1650, or thereabouts, and observes, "The dialect of the copies of the 

MS. seems to have been Lancashire."[3] Who this copier may have been