ballads, selected, for their classic qualities, from the author's long years of collecting, are accompanied by an interesting introduction reviewing his career in the field, and each is prefaced by information about the song and the person who sang it for him. Here a fast-growing music audience will find nursery rhymes and riddles, lords and ladies and lasses, death and murder, mermaids, gypsies and devils, and their lives and times from the 19th and 20th centuries. There are piano settings for one verse and there is a key to the guitar chords used in the book; there is a bibliography and an index by title, by first line and of explanatory material. An authority, Mr. Niles has made available much worthwhile material.