Reliques of Ancient English Poetry

Percy found the folio in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt at Shifnal, a small market town of Shropshire.

Bishop Percy was encouraged to publish the work by his friends Samuel Johnson and the poet William Shenstone, who also found and contributed ballads.

The folio he worked from seems to have been written by a single copyist and errors such as pan and wale for wan and pale needed correcting.

Not only would it inspire poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth to compose their own literary ballads in imitation, it also made the collecting and study of oral poetry a popular pastime.

Sir Walter Scott was another writer inspired by reading the Reliques in his youth, and he published some of the ballads he collected in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

The Percy Society was founded in 1840 to continue the work of publishing rare ballads, poems and early texts.