Francis James Child was a persevering scholar and punctilious editor who contributed significantly to both literary and folkloric research. His significant contributions to literary study include his 1855 edition of Spenser, which was called by George Lyman Kittredge, shortly after Child's death, the best edition in existence, and his 1862 Observations on the Language of Chaucer (Based on Wright's edition of the Canterbury Tales), which was praised by W. W. Skeat as providing the only full solution to the question of the proper scansion of The Canterbury Tales. Child's major folkloric accomplishment is his comprehensive compilation of English and Scottish popular ballads, in which he attempted to include authentic versions of the best-known ballads from those countries. His work so definitively established the canon of folk ballads that they have become known to folklorists as the Child ballads, according to the number that Child gave them, which is perhaps the...