Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England

The editor had passed his earliest years in a romantic mountain district in the North of England, where old customs and manners,and old songs and ballads still linger. Under the influence of these associations, he imbibed a passionate love for peasant rhymes; having little notion at that time that the simple minstrelsy which afforded him so much delight could yield hardly less pleasure to those who cultivated more artificial modes of poetry, and who knew little of the life of the peasantry.