Francis James Child is best remembered for The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-1898), published first in ten parts, then in five quarto volumes. The set included 305 different ballads with their many variants and notes, and a glossary of terms. Child preceded each ballad with a preface explaining its history, sources, and foreign language parallels in as many as thirty different languages. The work is still considered one of the most important and painstaking collections of ballad literature, with its publication eventually paving the way for the study of folk literature in its own right. Thomas R. Lounsbury, Professor of English at Yale College, called The English and Scottish Popular Ballads "not merely one of a kind that has never before been done, in the English Language at least, but which will never have to be done a second time." Although this publication is Child's crowning achievement, he...