Francis Barton Gummere

During these years he took trips to Europe to pursue further studies, ultimately earning a PhD magna cum laude at Freiburg in 1881.

[4] 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.

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.

[5]: vii  It was in this book that Gummere introduced his concept of the communal composition of ballads[5]: xi-xii  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.

Ðá cóm of móre | under misthleoþum Grendel gongan· | godes yrre bær· mynte se mánscaða | manna cynnes sumne besyrwan | in sele þám héan· Then from the moorland, by misty crags, with God's wrath laden, Grendel came.

Their son Richard Mott Gummere was a professor of Latin and headmaster of the William Penn Charter School.