Conclusions

The preceding discussion demonstrates that the selection of ballads in BDL appears to foreshadow the configuration of the modern tradition in both Ireland and Scotland.  The representative nature of the BDL selection relative to both countries is demonstrated eloquently in the matching of texts: 14 of the BDL texts are attested in later Irish tradition, and a similar number in Scottish tradition.  The number of BDL poems found only in Irish tradition is 5, and the number found only in Scottish tradition is 4.

The broader patterns which emerge from this study are set out in the accompanying table.  The table shows not only the corresponding poems, but also the relative frequency of the later Irish and Scottish versions.  Four of the BDL poems occur fairly commonly, and five (and part of a sixth) are very common, in both Ireland and Scotland.  There is thus good reason to conclude that the BDL selection represents a powerful and influential phase of ballad composition which contributed very significantly to the complexion of the later post-1600 traditions of Scotland and Ireland.

The table demonstrates that the highest degree of matching of BDL with both traditions occurs from Poem X to the end of the selection.  The selection of poems comprising the first third of the BDL corpus contains the greatest number of poems unmatched in later Scottish or Irish tradition, and it also contains the four BDL poems which are found in DF.  This could suggest that the BDL selection contains an 'earlier' or 'more unusual' primary phase before Poem X.  The bias in this primary phase is towards later Irish sources. The selection becomes more noticeably 'mainstream', but with an emerging Scottish bias, from Poem X onwards.  BDL does, however, appear to contain six poems which may be said (in the present state of our knowledge) to be peculiar, or even unique, to itself.  The overall taste of the collection, giving heavy emphasis to elegiac themes and especially to death-tales, links BDL more closely to Scotland than to Ireland, but its interest in poems of this nature is significantly greater than that found in later Scottish tradition.