and stilted than that of the North. Its literary culture was more
provincial, and its style a great deal more inflated and artificial. It
was the "foemen" that they were to meet instead of the enemy, and "gore"
instead of blood that was to be shed; and there was a great deal about
the "clank of the tyrant's chain," and the "bloodstained sword," and
such other fuliginous figures of speech. Sometimes there was a good deal
of force behind this sounding rhetoric, as in Henry Timrod's A Call to
Arms and in James R. Randall's There's Life in the Old Land yet, but for
the most part it had an air of bombast and turgidity, which would have
given a false impression in regard to the real spirit of determination
among the Southern people, if one had only judged by its inflated
expression. The pages of the Southern Amaranth, and other collections of
rebel poetry, give the impression of having been written by school-boys,
and contain little but sophomoric rhetoric of the most sounding and
inflated description. That it had a fiery energy and an invincible
determination behind it was abundantly shown, but the voice of the South
in its polite literature was one of inflated extravagance. Nevertheless
it produced the most manly and vigorous song of the whole war in Dr.
J. W. Palmer's Stonewall Jackson's Way; and some verses appeared in a
Richmond paper in 1861, entitled Call All, which have a fiery energy and
directness unsurpassed, and were in the genuine language of the people:
CALL ALL.
Whoop! the Doodles have broken loose,
Roaring around like the very deuce.
Lice of Egypt, a hungry pack;
After 'em, boys, and drive 'em back,
Bull-dog, terrier, cur, and fice,
Back to the beggarly land of ice.
Worry 'em, bite 'em, scratch and tear
Everybody and everywhere.
Old Kentucky is caved from under;
Tennessee is split asunder,
Alabama awaits attack,
And Georgia bristles up her back.
Old John Brown is dead and gone,
Still his spirit is marching on,--
Lantern-jawed, and legs, my boys,
Long as an ape's from Illinois.
Want a weapon? Gather a brick,
A club or cudgel, a stone or stick,
Anything with a blade or butt,
Anything that can cleave or cut;
Anything heavy, or hard, or keen;
Any sort of slaying machine;
Anything with a willing mind
And the steady arm of a man behind.
Want a weapon? Why, capture one;
Every Doodle has got a gun,
Belt and bayonet, bright and new.
Kill a Doodle and capture two!
Shoulder to shoulder, son and sire,
All, call all! to the feast of fire,
Mother and maiden, child and slave,
A common triumph or a single grave.
The street ballad did not exist in the South, so far as I can discover,
and the popular song-books were very few in comparison with those of the
North. There were some, however, printed on discolored paper and with
worn-out type. Among them were The New Confederate Flag Songster, S. C.
Griggs, Mobile; The General Lee Songster, John C. Schreiner & Son, Macon
and Savannah; The Jack Morgan Songster, compiled by a captain in General
Lee's army; and Songs of Love and Liberty, compiled by a North Carolina
lady, Raleigh, 1864. Like the Northern song-books, they contained an
admixture of the popular negro melodies with the songs of the war, and
there are but few instances of any genuine and native expression. The
song which gave the title to The Jack Morgan Songster, however, has
a good deal of force and vigor, and was evidently written by the camp
fire. It is entitled Three Cheers for our Jack Morgan:--
The snow is in the cloud,
And night is gathering o'er us,
The winds are piping loud,
And fan the flame before us.
Then join the jovial band,
And tune the vocal organ,
And with a will we 'll all join in
Three cheers for our Jack Morgan.
Chorus. Gather round the camp fire,
Our duty has been done,
Let's gather round the camp fire
And have a little fun.
Let's gather round the camp fire,
Our duty has been done,
'T was done upon the battle field,
Three cheers for our Jack Morgan.
Jack Morgan is his name,
The peerless and the lucky;
No dastard foe can tame
The son of old Kentucky.
His heart is with his State,
He fights for Southern freedom;
His men their General's word await,
They 'll follow where he 'll lead 'em.
He swore to free his home,
To burst her chains asunder,
With sound of trump and drum
And loud Confederate thunder.
And in the darksome night,
By light of homesteads burning,
He puts the skulking foe to flight,
Their hearts to wailings turning.
The dungeon, dark and cold,
Could not his body prison,
Nor tame a spirit bold
That o'er reverse had risen.
Then sing the song of joy,
Our toast is lovely woman,
And Morgan he's the gallant boy
To plague the hated foeman.
The tone of the Southern songs was not only a good deal more ferocious
and savage than that of those of the North, but there were fewer
indications of that spirit of humor which pervaded the Northern camps,
and found expression in the soldiers' songs. There is, however, one
Southern piece of verse, descriptive of the emotions of the newly
drafted conscript, which has an original flavor of comicality, although
evidently inspired by the spirit of Yankee Doodle:--
THE VALIANT CONSCRIPT.
How are you, boys? I'm just from camp,
And feel as brave as Cæsar;
The sound of bugle, drum, and fife
Has raised my Ebenezer.
I'm full of fight, odds shot and shell,
I 'll leap into the saddle,
And when the Yankees see me come,
Lord, how they will skedaddle!
Hold up your head, up, Shanghai, Shanks,
Don't shake your knees and blink so,
It is no time to dodge the act;
Brave comrades, don't you think so?
I was a ploughboy in the field,
A gawky, lazy dodger,
When came the conscript officer
And took me for a sodger.
He put a musket in my hand,
And showed me how to fire it;
I marched and countermarched all day;
Lord, how I did admire it!
With corn and hog fat for my food,
And digging, guarding, drilling,
I got as thin as twice-skimmed milk,
And was scarcely worth the killing.
And now I'm used to homely fare,
My skin as tough as leather,
I do guard duty cheerfully
In every kind of weather.
I'm brimful of fight, my boys,
I would not give a "thank ye"
For all the smiles the girls can give
Until I've killed a Yankee.
High private is a glorious rank,
There's wide room for promotion;
I 'll get a corporal's stripes some day,
When fortune's in the notion.
'T is true I have not seen a fight,
Nor have I smelt gunpowder,
But then the way I 'll pepper 'em
Will be a sin to chowder.
A sergeant's stripes I now will sport,
Perhaps be color-bearer,
And then a captain--good for me--
I 'll be a regular tearer.
I'll then begin to wear the stars,
And then the wreaths of glory,
Until the army I command,
And poets sing my story.
Our Congress will pass votes of thanks
To him who rose from zero,
The people in a mass will shout,
Hurrah, behold the hero!
(Fires his gun by accident.)
What's that? oh dear! a boiler's burst,
A gaspipe has exploded,
Maybe the Yankees are hard by
With muskets ready loaded.
On, gallant soldiers, beat'em back,
I 'll join you in the frolic,
But I 've a chill from head to foot,
And symptoms of the colic.
The spirit of the Southern women is well known to have been as vigorous
and determined as that of their brothers, and the sacrifices which they
were compelled to make were much more severe and general than at the
North. They had been dependent upon the North and foreign countries for
clothing and the luxuries of the household, and when these sources of
supply were cut off by the war and the blockade, they had to make and
sew their own homespun dresses, and forego all the delights of fashion
and adornment. The sacrifices and devotion of the daughters of the South
were sung in turgid rhetoric, like the threats and appeals of the men,
but here is a genuine voice, evidently a woman's own, which speaks
for her sisters in their homelier trials, as well as in their deeper
emotions:--
THE SOUTHERN GIRL'S SONG.
Oh yes, I am a Southern girl,
And glory in the name,
And boast it with far greater pride
Than glittering wealth or fame.
We envy not the Northern girl
With robes of beauty rare,
Though diamonds grace her snowy neck
And péarls bedeck her hair.
Hurrah, hurrah,
For the sunny South so dear.
Three cheers for the homespun dress
That Southern ladies wear!
The homespun dress is plain, I know,
My hat's palmetto, too,
But then it shows what Southern girls
For Southern rights will do.
We have sent the bravest of our land
To battle with the foe,
And we will lend a helping hand;
We love the South, you know.
Now, Northern goods are out of date,
And since old Abe's blockade,
We Southern girls can be content
With goods that's Southern made.
We sent our sweethearts to the war,
But, dear girls, never mind,
Your soldier love will ne'er forget
The girl he left behind.
The soldier is the lad for me,
A brave heart I adore;
And when the sunny South is free,
And when the fight is no more,
I 'll choose me then a lover brave
From out the gallant band;
The soldier lad I love the best
Shall have my heart and hand.
The Southern land's a glorious land,
And has a glorious cause;
Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights
And for the Southern boys.
We 'll scorn to wear a bit of silk,
A bit of Northern lace;
And make our homespun dresses up,
And wear them with such grace.
And now, young men, a word to you:
If you would win the fair,
Go to the field where honor calls
And win your lady there.
Remember that our brightest smiles
Are for the true and brave,
And that our tears are all for those
Who fill a soldier's grave.
The folk-songs of the civil war, in which millions were engaged and
which lasted for four years, do not compare in quality with those which
much lighter struggles have produced, notably the Jacobite rebellion in
Scotland. The Americans were not a singing people in the bent of their
genius, and the conditions of life and civilization were not favorable
to this form of expression. The newspaper had taken the place of the
ballad as a means of influencing the public mind, and poetry had passed
from the people to the literary artists. So when the great crisis of
the civil war came, affecting all minds and all hearts, the people were
unfamiliar with this mode of expression, and the literary artists had
not the power to interpret their feelings except in their own artificial
forms without touching the heart or giving vital meaning to the voice.
The accident of the combination of genius with this sincerity, which
produced La Marseillaise and Der Wacht am Rhein, did not occur, so
that the great struggle is without an equally great song embodying and
interpreting the spirit of the nation, and whatever fine poems and songs
there were distinctly fall below this ideal. But in such a struggle the
voice of the people could not fail to find expression by the means which
the history of mankind has shown to be the most natural expression of
emotion and enthusiasm, and their songs, however imperfect, either as
literature or popular poetry, are the most genuine expression of the
feelings and thoughts which filled their hearts and minds, and have a
genuineness which informs the rude or inadequate words, and are a most
important illustration of the history of that tremendous conflict.
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS.
|Professor Francis James Child's edition of
the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, monumental in size, is still
more monumental in the labor which it represents. It embodies not only
diligent research for the most authentic and original versions of the
ancient ballads in all the known sources in print or in manuscript, and
the recovery of many from still living traditions in Great Britain and
the United States, but a careful study and comparison of the folk-song
of kindred European nations and of the world for resemblances in subject
and story; thus making a most interesting and valuable addition to the
knowledge of the common development of the human intellect in primitive
thought and form of expression in diverse countries. How much study this
has involved can only be appreciated by those who have seen its results
in the concise introductions to each ballad, citing comparisons in every
known literature, and yet further work in this direction will be left
for later scholars, as the study and collection of folk-song is being
pursued with more and more zeal and success in every quarter of
the world, under the appreciation of its great literary as well as
historical value. Professor Child has been governed by the strictest
conscientiousness in giving his version of the popular ballads, not
only going to the original sources like the Percy folio, the manuscript
materials for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border preserved at
Abbotsford, Motherwell's note books, and other manuscripts and stall
copies, but reprinting them with all their omissions and defects,
not supplying the most obvious missing word or even letter without
indicating it. He has not followed the example of the strictly faithful
editors of the ancient ballads like Motherwell in presenting alone the
most complete and perfect specimen, nor allowed himself like others,
substantially faithful, like Scott and Jamieson, to collate a number of
copies derived from different sources into a harmonious whole,-but gives
each version distinct in itself, even to a solitary variant verse. It
is one of the commonplaces of the history of English and Scottish
ballad poetry that most of its collectors and editors from Bishop
Percy downward have felt themselves entitled to amend and correct the
imperfect fragments to a greater or less degree, supplying missing lines
or stanzas to connect or complete the story, and that this has resulted
sometimes in the most incongruous patchwork in which the sentiments
and poetical fashions of one generation have been foisted upon those of
another to the utter destruction of all verisimilitude, to say nothing
of strength and genuineness of expression. Bishop Percy, with all his
fine taste and genuine poetic power, was a conspicuous sinner in this
respect, and patched the rough and strong frieze of the ancient ballads
with pieces of the thin and sleazy silk of eighteenth century sentiment
and diction. Even Scott, with all his sense of honesty and appreciation
of the value of the integrity of the ancient ballads, could not always
refrain from his possessing temptation "to give a hat and stick" to the
stories which he heard, and, as Professor Child points out, there are
some stanzas in the Border Minstrelsy which bear suspiciously his
mark, and of which the originals have not been found in his manuscript
materials. It is true enough that Scott's additions and emendations,
as well as those of Allan Cunningham, who was wholly indifferent to the
genuineness and integrity of his originals, were likely to be in the
very spirit and turn of expression of the ancient ballads, and that the
lover of poetry for its own sake will not be likely to find fault with
them, but the real student of folk-song must repudiate them, and can
be content only with the genuine expressions of the people, as they
lived in tradition, however inchoate and imperfect they may he. The
historical and ethnological value of the ancient ballads consists
in their absolute genuineness, and even the imperfection of their
utterances illustrates the condition of the popular mind and the
characteristics of the individual intelligence which produced them, and
are important geological evidences of the growth and development of the
human intellect. At the same time this very imperfection of speech,
and the struggle of primitive thought to express itself in language
sometimes creates, as it were by accident, the very flower of strength
and vividness in picturesque description, and the interpretation of
emotion as the most skillful art has been unable to do. How strong these
ballads were, and what a hold they had upon the minds and imaginations
of the people, as the interpretation of their innate poetic spirit, is
shown in the tenacity with which they have lived, and been reproduced in
varying forms through generations down to the present day. Ballads like
The Cruel Sister and Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, the production probably
of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, have been recovered, with the
essential burden of their verse and the subject of their story, from the
mouths of English peasants and Irish servant girls, and in the folk-lore
of the American nursery, to which they had been transmitted simply by
the force of oral tradition, and without any assistance from print; and
it is not likely that they will entirely disappear for generations to
come, any more than the perennial nursery tales which were created by
and appeal to the primitive and childish imagination. These traditional
versions have been altered to suit the localities, and weakened in
their coherence and vigor of expression from the time when they were the
literature of the main body of the people instead of the lowest class,
as the stall copies of the ballads of the ancient minstrels, when they
were the attendants of kings and nobles and shared the inspiration of
chivalry, have been degraded to the level of the intelligence of the
audience of the street singers or the gatherings in the taprooms of
the village alehouses; but they retain the essential characteristics of
simple emotion, inherent melody, and primitive language, and have still
something of the fine and penetrating flavor of popular romance.
It is almost needless to say to the student of literature that the
art of popular ballad writing is extinct, or is successful only in the
rarest instances. Poets of genuine power and inspiration, imbued and
saturated with the spirit of the ancient ballads, have attempted to
re-create them in the telling of an ancient or modern story, but,
whatever their original power or imitative skill, they have failed to
reproduce that native strength and peculiar flavor of expression which
gives the ancient ballads such a hold upon the mind. The modern ballads
are admired by the intellect rather than felt by the heart, and are
recognized as the product of skillful art rather than as the expression
of original emotion. Even Scott, whose literary genius was so saturated
with their spirit, and Wordsworth, who sought his inspiration in the
simple emotions of the peasant heart and interpreted them so perfectly
in a literary form of glowing simplicity, could not produce a popular
ballad, and even Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, with all its powerful and
naked mystery and natural archaism of thought and language, appeals
to the literary rather than to the popular imagination. All the more
absolute imitations of ancient literature, like those of Rossetti
and Morris, have still more the air of unreality, in spite of what is
oftentimes their very great power and skill, and Sir Samuel Ferguson's
Lays of the Western Gael, perfect as they are in the reproduction of the
Celtic spirit and expression, are for the admiration of scholars rather
than the feeling of the people. It is hardly too much to say that in
modern English literature there are but two poems which fulfill the
conditions of the ancient ballads in their simplicity, directness, and
originality of language, their power upon the mind and heart through
the ear, and the indefinable flavor of primitive emotion, and those very
different in style, subject, and form of expression. These are Cowper's
Loss of the Royal George, and Rudyard Kipling's Danny Deever. Every one
who has heard it or read it can repeat,--
Toll for the brave,
The brave that are no more,
Sunk beneath the wave
Fast by their native shore;
and the burden and the measure, the simplicity and strength of diction,
of Danny Deever are equally calculated to take a possessing hold upon
the ear. These ballads are not imitations derived from study of the
ancient popular ballads, but obtaining their inspiration from the same
original source in strong and primitive emotion interpreted in the
simplest language possible, and speaking through the ear by the chanted
rather than through the eye by the printed line. It is this appeal to
the ear which is the strongest characteristic of the form of the ancient
ballads. They were made to be sung or chanted rather than read, and
therefore they have a felicity of sound as an interpreter of meaning
which is often perfect in its expression; and when imperfect, that is,
when the meaning is not clear, but is only vaguely and dimly attached
to the sound, as in the refrains and burdens, there is a flavor or an
atmosphere of meaning which pervades it and adds to the effect.
There is a touch of the plaintiveness of natural sounds which no
literary art could give in the opening of The Queen of Elphan's
Nourrice:--
I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low,
An' a cow low down in yon fauld.
Long, long will my young son greet
Or his mother take him from cauld.
Even when the burden is still more arbitrary, and without any direct
reflection of the meaning whatever, it is never felt to be incongruous
or artificial, and has a mystic and intensifying effect, as in the
painful ballad of The Sheath and Knife:--
He has made a grave that was long and deep,
The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair,
And he's buried his sister, with her babe at her feet,
And they 'll never gang down to the broom any mair.
And even when the refrain might be called simply a meaningless chant, it
makes a part of the ballad which could not be taken away without a loss
of the quality which gives it a living voice, as in the chorus, which
sings of itself to The Elfin Knight:
My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And o'er the hills and far awa,
And far awa to Norowa.
My plaid shall not be blawn awa.
As to these stanzas and lines, which give a perfect marriage of sound
and meaning either in the interpretation of emotion or description,
and in which the ear is the interpreter of the eye and the heart with
a skill which no art could give, they are numberless, and of the very
substance of the genius of the old ballad singers. There is nothing
in the cultivated skill of trochee and spondee to equal such untaught
perfections of the human voice as these:--
O, we were sisters, sisters seven;
We were the fairest under heaven.
(Gil Brenton.)
And a lightsome bugle then heard he blowe,
Over the bents sae browne.
(Sir Cawline.)
It was a sad and rainy night,
As ever rained from town to town.
(Clerk Saunders.)
But't was wind and weet and fire and sleet
When we came to the castle wa.
(Kinmont Willie.)
O, he has ridden o'er field and fell
Through ruins and moss and many a mire,
He spurs a steed that was sair to ride,
And frae her forefeet flew the fire.
(Annan Water.)
And this, in which the very gallop of the horse's feet runs along the
lines:--
It's twenty lang miles to Sillerton toun,
The langest that ever were gane,
But the steed it was wight and the lady was light,
And she rade linkin in.
(Prince Robert.)
The element of poetry of the highest kind in these ballads is the
strength as well as the simplicity of passion interpreted in language of
naked directness and dramatic power. Their stories are mainly those of
the bloody tragedies and the violent events and emotions in the lives
of a people to whom strife and adventure were an integral part of
existence, and whose passions were strong and vigorous, although a
proportion of the ballads have an element of rustic humor, and the cycle
of those relating to Robin Hood is mainly of this kind. There is an
element of the supernatural in the English and Scottish ballads, more
particularly in the latter, which, if not so marked and pervading as in
those of the Celtic nations, shows that the mysterious terrors of nature
were still embodied in the visible forms of the imagination, and that
the woods were still haunted by elfin knights, the green braes by
fairies, while human beings were still liable to be transformed into
laidly worms and foul toads by the enchantment of witches, in at least
a pervading shadow of popular belief. But for the most part they were
singularly free from the tincture of the marvelous, and mainly the
simple chronicles of stirring events or the tragedies of passion.
This gives them an element of strength, which is wanting to the
phantasmagorial figures of more imaginative nations, whatever glow of
misty glory shines about them as in the creations of the early
Celtic bards. The impression of the soul of nature is strong but not
overpowering as in these latter, and the influence of the landscape and
the sky in storm or calm illuminates but does not interfere with the
dramatic action. As has been said, strength of thought and strength
of language are their prevailing characteristics. Their strength of
language is that which belongs to the speech of a people when it is
fresh and new, and before it has been overlaid with words created for
literary purposes and by the introduction of foreign words to give
niceties of meaning, and no cultivated language has the same power and
directness as that which is the simple expression of the thoughts of
the people. Goethe, with his sound critical insight, noted this when he
said, "The unsophisticated man is the more master of direct, effective
expression than he who has had a regular training," and a language may
often lose in strength what it gains in ornament and flexibility.
This strength of expression is written large over all the English and
Scottish ballads, and specimens are merely arbitrary and may be taken
almost at random:--
Aye she waukened at the dead man,
And aye she waukened him to and fro.
(Clerk Saunders.)
And when she came out of the Kirk,
She shimmered like the sun.
(Lord Thomas and Fair Annet.)
The Lindsays flew like fire about,
Till all the fray was done.
(The Battle of Otterbourne.)