The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (sometimes known as Reliques of Ancient Poetry or simply Percy's Reliques) is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Thomas Percy and published in 1765. A ballad is a story in a song, usually a narrative song or poem. ... Thomas Percy (April 13, 1729 - September 30, 1811), was Bishop of Dromore, and is remembered as editor of Tatler, Guardian, and Spectator. ... 1765 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

Sources

The basis of the work was the manuscript which became known as the Percy Folio. Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt. It was on the floor and Pitt's maid had been using the leaves to light fires. Once rescued, Percy would use forty-five of the ballads in the folio for his book despite claiming the bulk of it came from this folio. Other sources were the Pepys Library of broadside ballads collected by Samuel Pepys and Collection of Old Ballads published in 1723 by Ambrose Philips. Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson and William Shenstone who also found and contributed ballads. A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus, written by hand), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. ... The Percy Folio is a folio book of English ballads used by Thomas Percy to compile his Reliques of Ancient Poetry. ... The Pepys Library is housed on the first floor of its own building in the second court of Magdalene College, Cambridge. ... A broadside is the side of a ship; the battery of cannon on one side of a warship; or their simultaneous (or near simultaneous) fire in naval warfare. ... Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys (23 February 1633 - 26 May 1703) was a leading 17th century English civil servant, latterly famous for his diary. ... Events February 16 - Louis XV of France attains his majority Births February 24 - John Burgoyne, British general (d. ... Ambrose Philips (c. ... Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ... William Shenstone (November 13, 1714 - February 11, 1763) was an English poet and one of the earliest practitoners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes. ...

Percy did not treat the folio nor the work in them with scrupulous care. He wrote his own notes on the folio pages, emended the rhymes and even pulled pages out of the document. He was criticised for these actions even at the time, most notably by Joseph Ritson a fellow antiquary. His editing of the text, although now frowned upon, made it more approachable for non-academics to read and contributed to its popularity. The folio he worked from seems to have been written by a single copyist and errors such as pan and wale for wan and pale needed correcting. Joseph Ritson (October 2, 1752 - September 23, 1803), was an English antiquary. ... An antiquarian is one concerned with antiquities or things of the past. ...

Content

The Reliques contained one hundred and eighty ballads in three volumes with three sections in each. It contains such important ballads as The Ballad of Chevy Chase, The Battle of Otterburn, Lillibullero, The Dragon of Wantley and Sir Patrick Spens along with ballads mentioned by or possibly inspiring Shakespeare and several ballads about Robin Hood. The claim that the book contained samples of ancient poetry was only partially correct. The last part of each volume was given over to more contemporary works—often less then a hundred years old—included to stress the continuing tradition of the balladeer. At least two English ballads known as The Ballad of Chevy Chase exist, but the nature of ballads mean that many more versions of this once popular song may not have survived. ... The Battle of Otterburn took place on the 9 August 1388 or 15 August 1388, as part of the continuing border skirmishes between the Scottish and English. ... Lillibullero is a march that sets the words of a satirical ballad generally attributed to Lord Thomas Wharton to music by Henry Purcell. ... The Dragon of Wantley is a 17th century satirical verse parody about a dragon and a brave knight. ... Sir Patrick Spens is one of the most popular of the Child Ballads (No. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero, an outlaw who, in modern versions of the legend, stole from the rich to give to the poor. ...

The work was dedicated to Elizabeth Seymour Duchess of Northumberland who was married to Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Elizabeth was part of the Percy family and a descendant of Henry Percy, who some of the early ballads are about. Bishop Thomas Percy also claimed to be connected to the family and although this may have been fanciful on his part, it did seem to help him secure his bishop's job. The dedication to Elizabeth meant that Thomas Percy arranged the work to give prominence to the border ballads which were composed in and about the Scottish and English borders specifically Northumberland. Percy also omitted some of the racier ballads for fear of offending his noble patron. The Most Noble Sir Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (c. ... The title of Earl of Northumberland was created several times in the Peerages of England and Great Britain. ... A carving of Henry Hotspur Percy Sir Henry Percy, also called Harry Hotspur (May 20, 1364/1366 – July 23, 1403) was the eldest son of Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, 4th Lord Percy of Alnwick. ... The English/Scottish border has a long and bloody history of conquest and reconquest, raid and counter-raid. ... For other places with this name, see Northumberland (disambiguation) Northumberland is a traditional, ceremonial and administrative county in northern England. ...

Reception

Ballad collections had appeared before but Percy's Reliques seemed to capture the public imagination like no other. Not only would it inspire poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth to compose their own ballads in imitation, it also made the collecting and study of ballads a popular pastime. Sir Walter Scott was another writer inspired by reading the Reliques in his youth and he published some of the ballads he collected in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The more rigorous scholarship of folklorists would eventually supersede Percy's work, most notably Francis James Child's Child Ballads, but without Percy gave impetus to the whole subject. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet, 1795 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and as one of the Lake Poets. ... William Wordsworth, English poet William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major English poet who with Samuel Taylor Coleridge launched the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads. ... Sir Walter Scott, Bart. ... Francis James Child (February 1, 1825 - September 11, 1896), was an American scholar and educationist, and collector of what came to be known as the Child Ballads. ... The Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child. ...

The book is also credited, in part, with changing the prevailing art movement of the 18th century, Neo-Classicism, into Romanticism. The neo-classicists based their art on the perceived purity of classical antiquity and took as their models the art of ancient Rome and Greece. The Reliques highlighted the traditions and folklore of England seen as simpler and less artificial. It would inspire folklore collections and movements in other parts of Europe and beyond, such as the Brothers Grimm, and such movements would act as the foundation of romantic nationalism. (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in the history of ideas that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ... Classical antiquity is a broad and perhaps misleading term for a long period of European, Middle East and North African history, that begins roughly with the earliest recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire... Ancient Rome was a civilization that existed in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East between 753 BC and its downfall in AD 476. ... Folklore is the ethnographic concept of the tales, legends, or superstitions current among a particular population, a part of the oral history of a particular culture. ... World map showing location of Europe When considered a continent, Europe is the worlds second-smallest continent in terms of area, with an area of 10,600,000 km² (4,140,625 square miles), making it larger than Australia only. ... Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm The Brothers Grimm (Brüder Grimm) are Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm and were well known for publishing collections of German fairy tales, as Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Childrens and Household Tales), in 1812, with a second volume in 1814 (1815 on the title page), as... Liberty Leading the People, embodying the Romantic view of the French Revolution of 1830; its painter Eugène Delacroix also served as an elected deputy Romantic nationalism (also organic nationalism, identity nationalism) is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of...