Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)

Bishop Thomas Percy (1729–1811) was a English clergyman, poet, and antiquarian. His greatest contribution to the world was his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1768), the first of the great ballad collections and responsible for the ballad revival in English poetry.

Prior to publishing the Reliques, Percy was a poor churchman. He was a friend of Samuel Johnson, Joseph and Thomas Warton, and James Boswell. In the 1760s, he obtained a manuscript of ballads (the Percy Folio) from a source in Northumberland. He had in mind the idea of writing a history of the Percy family of the peerage, and he had sought materials of local interest. He had sought out old tales from near Alnwick, the ancestral home of the Northumberland family, and he had come across many ballad tales.

In 1763, Percy, aiming for the market that Ossian had opened for "ancient poetry" (see James MacPherson), published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry from Icelandic, which he translated and "improved."

In 1764, Samuel Johnson and others encouraged Percy to preserve the poetry he was finding at home. Percy therefore took the ballad material he had from his folio and began searching for more ballads, in particular. He wanted to collect material from the border areas, near Scotland. In 1765, he published the Reliques to great success.

Still not having secured an adequate living, Thomas Percy continued with his project of commemorating the Alnwick area, and so he composed his own ballad poem on Warkworth Castle, with the Dukes of Northumberland controlling that castle, then a ruin, as well. Combining the "Churchyard Poet" vogue with the ballad vogue that he himself had set in motion, Thomas Percy wrote The Hermit of Warkworth in 1771. Samuel Johnson famously composed three ex tempore parodies of this verse in the 1780s. When an admirer too often told Johnson of the beautiful "simplicity" of the ballad verse form, Johnon pointed out that the line between simplicity and simple mindedness is narrow: just remove the sense. He then demonstrated:

"The tender infant meek and mild

Fell down upon a stone;

The nurse took up the squealing child

But yet the child squeal'd on."

Thomas Percy was angered by the parody, but Hesther Thrale says that he soon came to his senses and realized that Johnson was satirizing the form, and not the poem.

In 1782, Percy was ordained as the bishop of Dromore.

The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry set the stage not only for Robert Burns, but also for Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads.