Beginning to Walk in Grace: Francis Barton Gummere, Manhood, and Virtue in the Popular Ballad

Abstract In 1965, John Ashby Lester, Class of 1896, tape-recorded his memories of Francis Barton Gummere's ballad teaching at Haverford College in the period from 1892 to 1896, the years during which Gummere crafted his communal theory of the ballad and prepared his first major ballad publication, Old English Ballads. This essay uses Lester's remembrance to describe the impact of Gummere's ballad teaching on the formation of individual character and collective student identity, making it a study of a dedicated teacher/scholar attempting to cultivate manhood and virtue through the teaching of the popular ballad.