Excerpt from A Collection of Ballads Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil, Skarphedin, are always sing ing. In Kidnapped, Mr. Stevenson intro duces The Song of the Sword of Alan, a fine example of Celtic practice: words and air are beaten out together, in the heat of victory. In the same way, the women sang improvised dirges, like Helen; lul labies, like the lullaby of Dance in Simon ides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of life, war, agriculture the chase, had its appropriate magical and mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among Australian blacks. The deeds of men were chanted by heroes, as by Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls, like Homer's N ausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and medicine-men ac companied rites and magical ceremonies by songs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.