"""This is ballad scholarship at its best."-Wilhelm F. Nicolaisen William Motherwell (l797-l835), journalist, poet, man-of-letters, wit, civil servant, and outspoken conservative, published his anthology of ballads, Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern, in l827. His views on authenticity, editorial practice, the nature of oral transmission, and the importance of sung performance--acquired through field collecting--anticipate much later scholarly discourse...