Both
Francis James Child and his successor
George Lyman Kittredge gathered about themselves a group of students to assist in and continue the study of the
ballads. While a student at Harvard, Gummere assisted Child in their compilation. He later wrote two books which were based upon this collaboration. His first was
Old English Ballads, which he dedicated to Child as "the teacher who has taught a host of pupils to welcome honest work in whatever degree of excellence, and of the friend who never failed to help and encourage the humblest of his fellows." In the
Preface, Gummere acknowledged Child's review of the publisher's proof sheets for his book's
Glossary, and acknowledged Kittredge's review of the proof sheets of the
Introduction,
Glossary, and
Notes. Gummere's selection was intended as a representative sampling from the Child ballads. It was in this book that Gummere introduced his concept of the communal composition of ballads as primitive "poetry which once came from the people as a whole, from the compact body as yet undivided by lettered or unlettered taste, and represents the sentiment neither of individuals nor of a class." In his second book,
The Popular Ballad, • William Hall Clawson wrote his doctoral thesis on the Robin Hood ballads, which was later published as
The Gest of Robin Hood. Prior to the publication of his thesis, Clawson wrote a summary article for
The Journal of American Folklore. In this article, Clawson combined the ballad classification work done by Gummere and Hart. ==
Beowulf translation==