among the chançons, those on the rote, and those on the vielle, those
on the harp and those on the fret, (_i.e._ flute).[35] The rote was a
pierced board, over which strings were drawn, and it could be played
with both hands, one above, the other below, through the hole. The
vielle was a hurdy-gurdy.
A healthier taste existed in Scotland than in England, and the old
heroic ballads were never completely killed out there. In England they
had been expelled the court, and banished from the hall long before
they disappeared from the alehouse and the cottage. The milk-maids
sang them; the nurses sang them; the shepherds sang them; but not the
cultured ladies and gentlemen of the Elizabethan period. The musicians
of that period set their faces against ballad airs, and introduced the
motette and madrigal, in which elaborate part-singing taxed the skill
of the performers. But the common people loved the simple melodious
ballads. Miles Coverdale, in his “Address unto the Christian Reader,”
in 1538, which he prefixed to his “Goastly Psalms,” laments it. “Wolde
God that our mynstrels had none other thynge to play upon, neither
our carters and pluomen other thynge to whistle upon, save psalmes,
hymns, and such godly songes. And if women at the rockes (distaff),
and spinnynge at the wheles, had none other songes to pass their tyme
withal than such as Moses’ sister ... songe before them, they should be
better occupied than with, _Hey nonny nonny_,--_Hey trolly lolly_, and
such like fantasies.”
Laneham, in 1575, thus describes his evening amusements: “Sometimes I
foot it with dancing; now with my gittern, and else with my cittern,
then at the virginals (ye know nothing comes amiss to me); then carol I
up a song withal; that by and by they come flocking about me like bees
to honey; and ever they cry, ‘Another, good Laneham, another!’”
In the great agitation of minds caused by the Reformation, the
itinerant minstrels were an element of danger to the Crown, for they
kept alive the popular feeling against the changes in religion, and
the despotic measures of the Sovereign. Moreover, an immense number of
ballads were printed, having a religious or political character, were
set to the old ballad airs, and sung in place of the traditional lays,
and then hawked by the singers. Accordingly, in 1543, an Act was passed
“for the advancement of true religion,” and it recites that, forasmuch
as certain froward persons have taken upon them to print “ballads,
rhymes, etc., subtilly and craftily to instruct His Highness’ people
untruly, for the reformation whereof His Majesty considereth it most
requisite to purge the realm of all such books, ballads, rhymes, and
songs.” The Act contains a list of exceptions; but it is noticeable
that no ballads of any description were excepted.
[Illustration: _Fig. 38._--BALLAD SINGERS, FROM A BROADSIDE.]
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth another Act was passed, in 1597,
against “minstrels wandering abroad,” by virtue of which they were to
be whipped, put in the stocks, and imprisoned, if caught going from
place to place with their ballads.
Then came the period of Puritan domination under the Commonwealth,
when every engine was set to work to suppress popular music and ballad
singing, and to sour the English character. The first Act levelled
against them and stage players was in 1642. In the following year a
tract was issued complaining that this measure had been ineffective,
in which the writer says, “Our musike that was held so delectable and
precious that they scorned to come to a tavern under twenty shillings
salary for two hours, now wander with their instruments under their
cloaks (I mean such as have any), to all houses of good fellowship,
saluting every room where there is company with, _Will you have any
musike, gentlemen?_” But even the license to go round the country was
to be denied the poor wretches. In 1648 Captain Bertham was appointed
Provost Marshall, “with power to seize upon all ballad-singers, and
to suppress stage-plays.” The third Parliament of Cromwell struck the
heaviest blow of all. It enacted that any minstrel or ballad-singer who
was caught singing, or making music in any alehouse or tavern, or was
found to have asked anyone to hear him sing or play, was to be haled
before the nearest magistrate, whipped and imprisoned.
With the Restoration came a better time for ballad-singing; but the
old romantic ballad was almost dead, and though many of the ancient
melodies remained, to them new ballads were set. Of these vast numbers
poured from the press. The printed ballad which supplanted the
traditional ballad was very poor in quality. It turned on some moral or
religious topic; it satirised some fashion of the day; it recorded in
jingling rhymes some fire, earthquake, flood, or other accident. Above
all, it narrated the story of a murder. Now for the first time did the
vulgar assassin stand forward as the hero of English poetry and romance.
Many an old song or ballad was parodied. Thus the famous song of “The
Hunt is up,” was converted into a political ballad in 1537; and a man
named John Hogon was arrested for singing it. “An Old Woman Clothed in
Grey” was the tune to which all England rang at the Restoration, with
the words, “Let Oliver now be forgotten.” “Grim King of the Ghosts” was
made use of for “The Protestants’ Joy,” a ballad on the coronation of
King William and Queen Mary; and “Hey, then, up go we!” served, with
parodied words against the Rump Parliament, as the “Tories’ Delight,”
as an anti-Papal ballad, and even as a ballad on the great frost of the
winter of 1683-4.
The dissociation of the old tunes from the ballads that had given them
their names, and to which they had been composed, did much to occasion
the loss of our early ballads. Not only so, but with James I.’s reign
there came in a fashion for recomposing the old themes in the new
style; and the new editions caused the disappearance of the earlier
ballad. There can be little doubt that the romantic and historic
ballad, which has been happily preserved in Scotland, was common to all
English-speaking people. These ballads are called Scottish, because
they have been preserved in Scotland, but it is more than doubtful that
they are of Scottish origin. Ballads travelled everywhere. We have in
Thomas of Erceldoune’s “Sir Tristram,” an instance of a French metrical
romance turned into a long poem in Scotland, in the thirteenth century.
Many of the Scottish ballads have, as their base, myths or legends
common to all the Norse people, and found in rhymes among them.
At the beginning of this century, Mr. Davis Gilbert published a
collection of Cornish Christmas Carols, and subjoined a couple of
samples of the ballads sung by the Cornish people. One is “The Three
Knights.” It begins--
“There did three knights come from the West,
With the high and the lily oh!
And these three knights courted one lady,
And the rose was so sweetly blown.”
This is precisely the ballad given by Herd and others as “The Cruel
Brother.” One version in Scotland begins:--
“There was three ladies play’d at the ba’
With a hegh-ho! and lily gay;
There came a knight and play’d o’er them a’,
And the primrose spread so sweetly.”
But another version sung in Scotland begins--
“There was three ladies in a ha’,
Fine flowers i’ the valley;
There came three lords among them a’,
Hi’ the red, green, and the yellow.”
Now, the remarkable thing is, that there is still sung in Cornwall--or
was, till quite recently--a form of the ballad with a burden like this
latter. It begins--
“There was a woman and she was a widow,
O the red, the green, and the yellow!
And daughters had three as the elm tree,
The flowers they blow in the valley.”
with this chorus:--
“The harp, the lute, the fife, the flute, and the cymbal.
Sweet goes the treble violin,
The flowers that blow in the valley.”
How is it possible that a ballad sung in two forms in Scotland, and
recovered there in a fragmentary condition, should be known in very
similar forms in Cornwall? To suppose that the two versions were
carried from the Highlands to the Land’s End, so as to have become
popular, is inconceivable. It is more likely that the same English
ballad found its way both north and south-west, and when it had been
displaced elsewhere, remained in the extremities of the island. The
burden in each case is clearly that which marked the melody. We very
much wish that the Scottish airs, to which these ballads were sung, had
been preserved, that they might be compared with those to which they
were sung in Cornwall. The burden in each case has nothing to do with
the story, but it seems to indicate that the same ballad in its two
forms, to two independent airs, was carried all over Great Britain at
some period unknown. The same ballad was also sung in Cheshire at the
close of last century, and also in Ireland.
Another specimen given by Mr. Gilbert is that of the “Three Sisters.”
“There were three sisters fair and bright,
Jennifer, Gentle and Rosemaree;
And they three loved one valiant knight;
As the doo (dove) flies over the mulberry tree.”[36]
The same is found in broadside, in the Pepysian and other collections,
and as “The Unco Knicht’s Wooing” in Scotland.
Take again the ballad of “The Elfin Knight” or “The Wind hath blown
my Plaid away.” This is found in Scotland, but also as a broadside in
the Pepysian collection; it was the subject within the memory of man
of a sort of play in farmhouses in Cornwall; it is found in a more or
less fragmentary condition all over England. The same ballad is found
in German, in Danish, in Wend--and the story in Tyrol, in Siberia, and
Thibet.
Buchan, in his “Ballads of the North of Scotland,” gives the ballad
of “King Malcolm and Sir Colvin,” but it is based on a story told by
Gervase of Tilbury, in his Otia Imperialia, and the scene is laid by
him on the Gogmagog Hills in Cambridgeshire. He wrote in the 12th
century, and his story is clearly taken from a ballad. So also Buchan’s
“Leesome Brand” is found in Danish and Swedish. And “The Cruel Sister”
is discovered in Sweden and the Faroe Isles. At an early period there
was a common body of ballad, where originated no one can say; the same
themes were sung all over the North of Europe, and the same words,
varied slightly, were sung from the Tweed to the Tamar, in the marches
of Wales and in Ireland.
The greatest possible debt of gratitude is due to the Scots for having
preserved these ballads when displaced and forgotten elsewhere, and it
speaks volumes for the purity of Scottish taste that it appreciated
what was good and beautiful, when English taste was vitiated and
followed the fashion to prefer the artificial and ornate to the simple
and natural expression of poetic fancy.
It has been said that about the period of James I., the fashion set in
for re-writing the old ballads in the style then affected.
There is a curious illustration of this accessible.
A ballad still sung by the English peasants, and found in an imperfect
condition in Catnach’s broadsides, is “Henry Martyn.” It is couched in
true ballad metre, and runs thus--
“In merry Scotland, in merry Scotland
There lived brothers three,
They all did cast lots which of them should go
A robbing upon the salt sea.
“The lot it fell upon Henry Martyn,
The youngest of the three,
That he should go rob on the salt, salt sea,
To maintain his brothers and he.
“He had not a-sailed a long winter’s night,
Nor yet a short winter’s day,
Before he espied a gay merchant ship
Come sailing along that way.
“Oh when that she came to Henry Martyn,
Oh prithee, now let me go!
Oh no! oh no! but that will I not,
I never that will do.
“Stand off! stand off! said he, God wot,
And you shall not pass by me.
For I am a robber upon the salt seas,
To maintain my brothers and me.
“How far? how far? cries Henry Martyn,
How far do you make it? says he,
For I am a robber upon the salt seas,
To maintain my brothers and me.
“They merrily fought for three long hours,
They fought for hours full three.
At last a deep wound got Henry Martyn,
And down by the mast fell he.
“’Twas a broadside to a broadside then,
And a rain and a hail of blows.
But the salt, salt sea ran in, ran in;
To the bottom then she goes.
“Bad news! bad news for old England;
Bad news has come to the town,
For a rich merchant vessel is cast away,
And all her brave seamen drown.
“Bad news! bad news through London street,
Bad news has come to the King,
For all the brave lives of his mariners lost,
That sunk in the watery main.”
Now there is sad confusion here. The ballad as it now exists is a mere
fragment. Clearly the “bad news” belongs to an earlier portion of the
ballad, and it induces the King to send against the pirate and to sink
his vessel. This “Henry Martyn” is, in fact, Andrew Barton. In 1476,
a Portuguese squadron seized a richly laden vessel, commanded by John
Barton, in consequence of which letters of reprisal were granted to
Andrew, Robert, and John Barton, sons of John, and these were renewed
in 1506. The King of Portugal remonstrated against reprisals for so
old an offence, but he had put himself in the wrong four years before,
by refusing to deal with a herald sent by the Scottish King for the
arrangement of the matter in dispute. Hall, in his Chronicle, says: “In
June, 1511, the King (Henry VIII.) being at Leicester, tidings were
brought him that Andrew Barton, a Scottish man, and a pirate of the
sea, did rob every nation, and so stopped the King’s streams that no
merchants almost could pass, and when he took the Englishmen’s goods,
he said they were Portingale’s goods, and thus he haunted and robbed at
every haven’s mouth. The King, moved greatly with this crafty pirate,
sent Sir Edward Howard, Lord Admiral of England, and Lord Thomas
Howard, son and heir to the Earl of Surrey, in all haste to the sea,
which hastily made ready two ships, and without any more abode, took
the sea, and by chance of weather, were severed. The Lord Howard lying
in the Downs, perceived when Andrew blew his whistle to encourage the
men, yet, for all that, the Lord Howard and his men, by clean strength,
entered the main deck; then the Englishmen entered on all sides, and
the Scots fought sore on the hatches, but, in conclusion, Andrew was
taken, which was so sore wounded that he died there; then all the
remainder of the Scots were taken with their ship, called the _Lion_.”
Buchanan, about twenty years after Hall--_i.e._, in 1582--also tells
the story. Barton he calls Breton with further details. He says that
Andrew Breton, though several times wounded, and with one leg broken by
a cannon ball, seized a drum and beat a charge to inspirit his men to
fight, until breath and life failed.
Now a ballad relative to Sir Andrew Barton has been given by Percy; it
is found among the Douce, the Pepysian, the Roxburghe, the Bagford, and
the Wood collection of old English ballads. In the Percy MS. the ballad
consists of eighty-two stanzas, but there is something lost between the
thirty-fifth and the next. It begins:--
“As itt beffell in Midsummer-time
When birds sing sweetlye on every tree,
Our noble king, King Henry the Eighth,
Over the river Thames past he.”
Another version is in the black letter collection. It begins:--
“When Flora, with her fragrant flowers,
Bedeckt the earth so firm and gay,
And Neptune, with his dainty showers,
Came to present the month of May,
“King Henry would a progress ride;
Over the river Thames past he,
Upon a mountain top also
Did walk, some pleasure for to see.”
The first is a recomposition of the earlier ballad in the reign of
James I. It makes a historical blunder. It supposes that Lord Charles
Howard, who was not born till twenty-five years after the death of
Andrew Barton, was sent against the pirate. The memory of the admiral
who served against the Armada had eclipsed the fame of the earlier high
admiral. The fact of this historic error existing in the ballad marks
it as a late composition.
The second ballad is a still later recast, probably of the reign of
Charles II. These two later versions would be all that we have, had not
the popular memory held to the earliest and original ballad--because
associated with a remarkably fine melody. Unhappily, it has retained
but a few of the stanzas.
The Robin Hood ballads most fortunately escaped remodelling, and they
retain the fresh character of the ancient ballad.
Ravenscroft preserved some ballads in his “Deuteromelia,” 1609. One
begins:--
“Yonder comes a courteous knight
Lustily raking over the lay.
He was full ’ware of a bonny lasse,
As she came wandering over the way.
Then she sang, downe a down a down,
Hey down derry.”
Another is “John Dory”:--
“As it fell on a hole day
And upon a hole tide,
John Dory bought him an ambling nag,
Ambling nag to Paris for to ride.”
Another:--
“Who liveth so merry in all the land
As doth the poor widow that selleth sand,
And ever she singeth as I can guess,
Will you buy my sand, my sand, mistress?”
Also:--
“The Flye she sat in the shamble row,
And shambled with her heels, I trow,
And then came Sir Cranion
With legs so long and many a one.”
A few--but only a few, unspoiled ballads have found their way into
print in broadsides. Such are, “The Baffled Knight,” “The Knight and
the Shepherd’s Daughter,” “Lord Thomas and the fair Eleanor,” “Barbara
Allen,” “The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington,” “The Brown Girl.” They
are miserably few, but they are all that remain to us of the ballad
poetry of England, except what has been preserved to us by the Scotch,
who knew better than ourselves what was good, and had a finer poetic
sense.
[Illustration: _Fig. 39._--WOMAN AT HER SPINNING WHEEL, FROM A
BROADSIDE.]
Moreover, our English ballad collectors never went to the right
sources. There were to be had black and white letter broadsides, more
or less scarce, and they set their booksellers to work to gather for
them the drifting sheets, and fondly thought that they were collecting
the ballad poetry of England. They were collecting make-shifts, the
wretched stuff which had ousted the old ballad poetry. It occurred to
none of them to go to the people. What would have been the result had
Motherwell, Kinloch, Buchan, and Herd set to work in the same fashion?
There is to be found in the British Museum a volume of Scottish
Broadside Ballads printed at Aberdeen, and Glasgow, and Edinburgh. What
do these sheet ballads contain? As great rubbish as do the English
broadsides? Herd, Motherwell, and Buchan had more sense than our
Ritson, Phillips, and Evans; they sat at the feet of the shepherds,
listened beside the wheels of the old spinners, sat at the tavern table
and over the peat fires with the peasants, and collected orally. Percy
went to his MS. folio, Ritson to his booksellers, and passed over the
great living wellspring of traditional poetry. Now it is too late. The
utmost that can be gleaned is fragments. But enough does remain either
in MS. or in black letter broadside, or in allusion and quotation by
our early dramatists, to show that we in England had a mass of ballad
poetry, one in kind and merit with the Scottish.
The first collection of scattered ballads and songs in a garland was
made in the reign of James I., by Thomas Delony and Richard Johnson,
and from that time forward these little assemblages of fugitive pieces
were issued from the press. They rarely contain much that is good; they
are stuffed with recent compositions. Everyone knew the traditional
ballads, and it was not thought worth while reprinting them. A new
ballad had to be entered at Stationers’ Hall, and composer as well as
publisher reaped a profit from the sale, as a novelty.
The old tunes remained after that the words to which they had been
wedded were forgotten; and it may be said that in the majority of cases
the music is all that does remain to us of the old ballad song of
England.
This is the sort of balderdash that was substituted by a degraded taste
for the swinging musical poetry of the minstrel epoch--
“In searching ancient chronicles
It was my chance to finde
A story worth the writing out
In my conceit and mind,” etc.
or:--
“Of two constant lovers, as I understand,
Were born near Appleby, in Westmoreland;
The lad’s name Anthony, Constance the lass;
To sea they both went, and great dangers did pass.”
or:--
“I reade in ancient times of yore,
That men of worthy calling
Built almeshouses and spittles store,
Which now are all downfalling,” etc.
Compare the following with such beginnings as these:--
“In summer-time, when leaves grow green,
And blossoms bedecke the tree,
King Edward wold a hunting ryde,
Some pastime for to see.”
or:--
“There came a bird out o’ a bush,
On water for to dine;
An’ sicking sair, says the King’s dochter,
O wae’s this heart o’ mine,” etc.
or:--
“There was a pretty shepherd boy
That lived upon a hill,
He laid aside his bag o’ pipes
And then he slept his fill.”
or:--
“O! blow away, ye mountain breezes,
Blow the winds, heigh-ho!
And clear away the morning kisses,
Blow the winds, heigh-ho!” etc.
The ring of the latter is fresh and pleasant; the former have no
ring at all. The first articles are manufactured in a garret by a
publisher’s poetaster, the latter have sprung spontaneously from the
hearts of the people in the merry month of May.
Of black-letter printed ballads, the earliest we have are, “The
Nut-brown Maid,” which was discovered in a book of customs, dues, etc.,
published at Antwerp, about 1502, and “The Ballade of the Scottish
King,” written by John Skelton, poet laureate to King Henry VIII., and
of the date 1513. This was found within the binding of an old book that
was knocking about on the floor of a garret in a farmhouse at Whaddon,
in Dorset. Mr. Arber’s Transcripts of the entries in Stationers’ Hall
give us the list of ballads issued from the press, with their dates.
The list begins in the year 1557. We will take a few extracts only.
1588, 4th March. John Wolfe obtained leave to print three ballads; one
was, “Goe from my window, goe.” Now this no longer exists as a ballad,
but as a folk-tale, in which occur snatches of rhyme, with a certain
melody attached to them; and this air, with the snatches of rhyme,
has been preserved. Both are printed by Mr. Chappell in his “Popular
Music of the Olden Time.” What the subject of the ballad was the writer
learned from a blacksmith, who told him that he was in a village inn
about 1860, when a very old man came in, and standing by the fire,
recited and sang the following story:--
“Two men courted a pretty maid; the one was rich, the other was poor;
and the rich man was old, but the poor man she loved; he was young. Her
father forced her to marry the rich man, but still she loved the poor
man; and sometimes he came under her window and tapped, and when the
husband was away she let him in.
“So passed a twelvemonth and a day, and she had a little child.
“Then one night the lover came under the window, thinking her goodman
was from home. With his tapping the husband woke, and asked what the
sound was. She said an ivy leaf was caught in a cobweb, and fluttered
against the pane. Then the lover began to call, and her husband asked
what that sound was. She said the owls were hooting in the night. But
fearing lest her lover should continue to call and tap, she began to
sing, as she rocked the cradle:--
“‘Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the wind, and O the rain,
They have sent him back again,
So thou can’st not have a lodging here.’
“Again the lover tapped, and the husband asked what that meant. She
said it was a flittermouse that had flown against the pane. Then she
sang:--
“‘Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the weather is so warm,
It will never do thee harm,
And thou can’st not have a lodging here.’
“Then the lover began to call a third time, and the husband asked what
it was. She said it was the whistling of the wind among the trees, and
she sang:--
“‘Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the wind is in the West,
And the cuckoo’s in his nest,
So thou can’st not have a lodging here.’
“Again the lover tapped. Then she sprang out of bed, threw open the
casement, and sang:--
“‘Begone, begone, my Willy, you silly;
Begone, you fool, yet my dear.
O the devil’s in the man,
And he can not understan’
That he cannot have a lodging here.’”