The oldest extant German ballad of the kind described under this title is the famous Bible brandslied, can be traced to the Eighth Century, and is the only survivor of its period and class. By the middle of the Twelfth Cen tury, the development of German poetry, despite all Romance influences, had definitely won its greatest triumphs in the field of native ballad literature. By I:300, the courtly minnesinger had begun to give place to the bourgeois meister singer ; and the latter, for two centuries, summed up the poetical life of the nation in their ballads. The Sixteenth Century was a period of rapid de cline, as in England; and it was not, as already indicated, until Percy's influence on Herder and Burger had caused a revival of interest that the ballad again came to the front, and was during the Nineteenth Century a subject of wide literary interest.
Among the Latin nations the Spaniardsposse.ss the richest ballad literature. Here the fact that the ballad preceded the romance is easy of demon stration. The simple emotions of the people are vividly depicted in the coplas, seguidillas, and to unciras which sprang up in great numbers. The octosyllabie line was the commonest metre, and assonance was used instead of rhyme.
The ballads (pjesme) of Servia, while com paratively little known, deserve an important place in any general treatment of the subject. Their history is at least as long as that of the Western ballads; and the researches of recent scholars, especially Kruk Stephanovich (1787 1864), have succeeded in accumulating in per manent form a vast mass of them which possess the same general characteristics in subject as the other ballads, while as to form the older ones are generally composed in fifteen and sixteen syllable lines, the modern in deeasyllabic metre.
As a nation comparatively untouched by modern unifying civilization, the Servians are still pro ducing, or maintaining, in popular use, ballads which look upon life from the simple primitive point of view, which has long been lost in the West.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For English and Scottish balBibliography. For English and Scottish bal- lads. Percy, folio ilanuseript, 3 vols., ed. Hales & Furnivall ( London, 1867-68) ; a good pre paratory book is Dhl English Ballads (Boston. 1894) ; the best general work, Child, English. and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vole. (Boston, ISS3.98) ; the last volume contains an alnmst exhaustive bibliography.
For the German, Uhland, hock- and nie denrcutsche l'olkslieder, 4 vole., 3d ed. (Leipzig, 1892 ) ; Scherer, Die sehon•ten dentsehen Volks lieder (Leipzig. 1868 ) ; Si ni rock, Licdcr der Mi»nesinger (Elherfeld, 1857).
For the Spanish, Marin, Cantos populares espanoles, 5 vols. (Madrid, 1882-83) ; Bibliotcca de his tradiciones populares, 11 vols. (Seville, 1883) ; Bifhl von Faber, Plorcsta de rimas anti gnus castellanas, 3 vole. (Hamburg, 1821-25) ; Ticknor. History of Spanish. Literature (New York, 1849) ; Lockhart, Ancient Spanish Bal lads (London, 1823).
For the Servian, Bow-ring, Nerrian Popular Poetry (London, 1827).