Introduction to Llewellyn Jewitt's Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire

Derby, February 1867

It is certainly somewhat curious that, in a county so confessedly rich in ballads and in popular songs as Derbyshire is, no attempt should hitherto have been made to collect together and give to the world even a smal selection of these valuable and interesting remains. Such, however, is the fact, and the ballads, the traditions, and the lyrics of the county have remained to the present day uncollected, and, it is to be feared, uncared for, by those to whom the task of collection in days gone by would have been tolerable easy. It has therefore remained for me, with my present volume, to initiate a series of works which shall enhance these and kindred subjects, and vindicate for Derbyshire its place in the literary history of the kingdom.

In my present volume I have given a selection of upwards of fifty ballads and songs, many of them extremely curious, and all highly interesting, which are purely Derbyshire, and relate entirely to that county, to events which have happened within its bounds, or to Derbyshire families. Those I have collected together from every available sources, and several amongst them have never before been reprinted from the old broad-sheets and garlands in which they are contained; while others, taken down from the lips of "old inhabitants", or from the original MSS, are for the first time put into type. Knowing that in ballads it is next to, if ont quite, impossible to accomplish a successful chronological arrangement, and feeling that, if accomplished, such an arrangement is open to grave objections.

I have purposely avoided the attempt, and have contented myself with varying as much as possible, the contents of my volume, and in giving to each ballad and introductory notice touching on the event commemorated, on the writer of the piece, or on the source from whence the ballad has been obtained. Having done this, the necessity for a long introduction here is obviated, and it only remains for me to announce my intention of following up my present volume with another similar one, as a "Second Series" of Derbyshire Ballads and Songs, and with others on the Poets and Poetry of Derbyshire; on the Political and Criminal songs of the county; and on its Folk-Lore and Traditions, etc. ....tbc