Many of these ballads are adapted from secular songs.
The ballads relating to the Cid, of which nearly two hundred are extant, are greatly inferior in merit, though some of them are not unworthy to be ranked with the best in this kind.
Dumfries, Annan, Kirkcudbright, Lochmaben and Sanquharthe "Five Carlins" of Burns's Election Ballads - combine to return one member to Parliament.
The of tencited poems attributed to Nezahualcoyotl may not be quite genuine, but at any rate poetry had risen above the barbaric level, while the mention of ballads among the people, court odes, and the chants of temple choirs would indicate a vocal cultivation above that of the instrumental music of drums and horns, pipes and whistles, the latter often of pottery.
The only extant songs of any importance are the seventy-one Ballads of Gower (Stengel, Gower's Minnesang, 1886).