Collecting Ballads

I really enjoyed reading The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders because it gave me a lens in which to view the work that Scott had put forth in the world. I had never really thought about ballads in connection with folklore or fairy tales, something that is told and handed down through the generations. The extent to which Scott went searching for the originals and his detailed accounts of how these ballads moved through the people was fascinating. I was especially interested in how the ballads where written down (page 4), and how much thought and work was put in to making the ballad what it once was, "to remove obvious corruptions, and fit the ballads for press." Even the process of getting the ballads, from the border lands or from up in the mountains, you collect more of the history of the culture from whence the ballad originated. Even the very work of collecting itself, seems to me, romantic.