BENTLEY BALLADS, COMPRISING THE TIPPERARY HALL BALLADS, NOW FIRST REPUBLISHED FROM "Bentley's Miscellany," ASTORBRARY, DON APR 1376 WITH PREFACE AND NORIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL JOHN SHEEHAN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW OF THE INNER TEMPLE; AUTHOR OF "THE IRISH WHISKEY DRINKER PAPERS," "THE KNIGHT RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty. 1869. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. "He beginneth not with obscure definitions, but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well enchanting skill of music;;-and with a tale;he cometh to you with a tale, which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner."-SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. THE ENGLISH BALLAD, which in old times was a tale or story in verse of love, chivalry, or marvel, or even of mirth and humour, has gradually assumed a less exclusive application, until within about a century back it at length attained a generic character, and was understood to comprise several species of lyrical composition. The title of THE BENTLEY BALLADS consequently has been adopted as the most suitable to the collection of poems, the choicest of their respective kinds, which appeared in Bentley's Miscellany' over a space of about fifteen years, during which it was under the auspices of the New Burlington House. 6 In this new and much enlarged edition of those Ballads the reader will be glad to recognize a selection from the Golden Legends, it having been fairly considered at length that any array of the lyrists of the Miscellany in its palmy days which excluded one of its most brilliant contributors--inter primos, if not the very first-were partial and incomplete. Unfortunately, the length to which, almost in every instance, the Ingoldsby Poems extend, rendered a larger selection impossible; but those chosen for the |