Book. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” old
Merrythought says,
“Go from my window, love, go;
Go from my window, my dear.
The wind and the rain
Will drive you back again;
You cannot be lodged here.
“Begone, begone, my juggy, my puggy;
Begone, my love, my dear.
The weather is warm;
’Twill do thee no harm;
Thou can’st not be lodged here.”
It is again quoted in Fletcher’s “Monsieur Thomas,” and again in “The
Tamer Tamed.”
Almost certainly this was originally a ballad. But the ballad tale has
been lost, and only scraps of rhyme were committed to writing.
1588, 26th Sept. John Wolfe had license to print “Peggy’s Complaint for
the Death of her Willye.”[37]
9th Nov. Thomas Orwyn had license to print “Martyn said to his man, Who
is the foole now?”
This has been preserved for us, with its tune, by Ravenscroft, in his
“Deuteromelia.”
“Martyn said to his man, fie man, fie O!
Who’s the fool now?
Martyn said to his man, fill the cup and I the can,
Thou hast well drunken, man,
Who’s the fool now?
“I see a sheep sheering come, fie man, fie O!
And a cuckold blow his horn.
“I see a man in the moon
Clouting St. Peter’s shoon.
“I see a hare chase a hound
Twenty miles above the ground.
“I see a goose ring a hog,
And a snayle that did bite a dog.
“I see a mouse catch a cat,
And the cheese to eat a rat.”
1591, 27th August. Robert Bourne obtained license to print a ballad on
“A combat between a man and his wife for the breeches.” This has been
often re-written.
1592, 5th Jan. Richard Jones, “The Valliant Acts of Guy of Warwick,” to
the tune of “Was ever man soe tost (lost) in love?” The ballad of Guy
is lost. The tune we have.
1592, 18th Jan. H. Kyrkham, “The crowe she sitteth upon a wall:”
“Please one and please all.” The former is, perhaps, the original of
“The crow sat in a pear-tree.” “Please one and please all” has been
preserved.
1592, 21st July. John Danter, “The soules good morrowe.”
1592, 28th July. H Kyrkham, “The Nightingale’s Good-night.”
1593, 1st Oct. Stephen Peel, “Betwixt life and death,” to the tune of
“Have with you into the country.”
1594, 16th Oct. John Danter, “Jones’ ale is new.” This is sung to the
present day in village taverns. One verse is roared forth with special
emphasis. It is that of the mason:--
“He dashed his hammer against the wall;
He hoped both tower and church would fall;
For Joan’s ale is new, my boys,
For Joan’s ale is new.”
1594, 16th Oct. E. White, “The Devil of Devonshire and William of the
West, his Sonne.” This is lost.
1595, 14th Jan. Thomas Creede, “The Saylor’s Joye,” to the tune of
“Heigh-ho! hollidaie.” Both ballad and air lost.
1595, 24th Feb. Thomas Creede, The first part of “The Merchante’s
Daughter of Bristole.” This we have, but it is a recast in the
sixteenth century of a far earlier ballad.
1595, 15th Oct. Thomas Millington, “The Norfolk Gentleman, his Will and
Testament, and howe he committed the keeping of his children to his
owne brother.” This--“The Babes in the Wood,” we have, as well as the
melody.
1595, 15th Oct. W. Blackwall, “The Prowde Mayde of Plymouthe.” Lost.
1603, 11th June. Wm. White, “A Sweet Maie Flower;” “The Ladie’s Fall;”
“The Bryde’s Buriell;” “The Spanish Ladie’s Love;” “The Lover’s
Promises to his Beloved;” “The Fayre Lady Constance of Cleveland and of
her Disloyal Knight.”
We have “The Lady’s Fall” and the two that follow. “A Sweet Mayflower”
is probably a real loss, as also the ballad of the Lady Constance and
her disloyal knight. This will suffice to show how interesting are
these records, and also how much has perished, as well as how much
is preserved. It must not, however, be lost to mind that these were
all new ballads, and were serving to displace the earlier and better
ballads.[38]
Every accident, every murder, every battle was turned into doggerel and
printed as a new ballad. Fourpence was the cost of a license.
In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Philastes,” Megra threatens the King--
“By all those gods you swore by, and as many
More of mine own--
The princess, your daughter, shall stand by me
On walls, and sung in ballads.”
She refers to the manner in which every bit of court scandal was
converted into rhythmic jingle, and also to the custom of pasting the
ballads on the walls. The least acquaintance with the old black-letter
ballads will make the reader understand the allusion to the two figures
heading the broadside, in rude woodcut, standing side by side.
A large proportion of the black-letter ballads were of moral and
religious import. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “The Coxcomb,” the tinker
refers to these, when he finds poor Viola wandering in the streets at
night, and listens to her doleful words. He says:--
“What’s this? a prayer or a homily, or a ballad of good counsel?”
If we compare the black-letter issues of the sixteenth century with the
snatches of ballads that come to us through the playwrights, we find
that they do not wholly agree.
The dramatists made their characters sing the folk-ballads, the same
that are described in “A Defence for Milksmaydes” in 1563.
“They rise in the morning to hear the larke sing,
And welcome with balletts the somer’s coming.
* * * * *
In going to milking, or coming away,
They sing merry balletts, or storeys they say.
Their mouth is as pure and as white as their milk;
--You can not say that of your velvett and silke.”
So the mad jailor’s daughter in Fletcher’s and Shakespeare’s “The Two
Noble Kinsmen.”
She says: “Is not this a fine song?”
_Brother_: “Oh, a very fine one!”
_Daughter_: “I can say twenty more, I can sing _The Broom_
and _Bonny Robin_.”
And she begins to troll “Oh fair! oh sweet!” etc.
Unhappily the authors of this play did not write out the song, as it
was too well known to require transcription, and now it is lost. So
also are those she sings in another scene.
“The George alow came from the South,
From the Coast of Barbary-a!
And there we met with brave gallants of war,
By one, by two, by three-a!
“Well hail’d, well hail’d, you jolly gallants!
And whither now are you bound-a?
Or let me have your company
Till I come to the Sound-a!”
This sounds as though a part of the “Henry Martyn” (Andrew Barton)
already given. Another of the mad girl’s songs is:--
“There were three fools fell out about an howlet.
The one said ’twas an owl;
The other said nay.
The third he said it was a hawk,
And her bells were cut away.”
So also with some of the songs and ballads of Ophelia. They were too
well known to be printed, and now they are irrecoverably gone.
We have lost nearly the whole of our earliest ballad poetry, and only a
tithe of that which took its place has come down to us.
“Our earliest ballads,” says the editor of Percy’s folio, “though
highly popular in the Elizabethan age, were yet never collected into
any collections, save in Garlands, till the year 1723. They wandered up
and down the country without even sheepskins or goatskins to protect
them; they flew about like the birds of the air, and sung songs dear
to the hearts of the common people--songs whose power was sometimes
confessed by the higher classes, but not so thoroughly appreciated as
to conduce them to exert themselves for their preservation.”
In the reign of Queen Anne and through the early Hanoverian period,
sheets of copperplate were issued with engraved songs and ballads,
together with their music. Among them may be found a few--but only
a very few--of the old favourites. Most are compositions of Arne,
Carey, Berg, Dunn, etc., and the words are quite unsuited to hold the
attention of the peasantry. Hardly any of these found their way into
broadsides and garlands, and none can now be heard by the cottage fire
or in the village ale-house.
In 1808, John Catnach of Newcastle settled in London, and began to
print broadsides. He was quickly followed by others in London and in
country towns. Catnach kept a number of ballad-mongers in his pay, who
either composed verses for him or swept up such traditional ballads as
they chanced to hear. They were paid half-a-crown for a copy, whether
original or adulterate. If one of these poetasters chanced to hear an
ancient ballad, he added to it some of his own verses, so as to be
able to call it his property, and then disposed of it to one of the
broadside publishers.
If these men had been sent round the country to collect from cottages
and village hostelries, in the way in which Wardour Street Jews send
about into every part of England to pick up old oak, then a great
amount of our traditional ballad poetry might have been recovered. It
was not too late in the first ten or twenty years of this century.
But this was not done. These pot-poets loafed about in the low London
public-houses, where it was only by the rarest chance that a country
man, fresh from the fields, and woods, and downs, with his memory laden
with the fragrance of the rustic music, was to be found. Moreover,
these fellows were overweening in their opinion of their own powers.
They had neither taste, nor ear, nor genius. They poured forth floods
of atrocious rhymes, and of utter balderdash, as was required, as
an occasion offered, and as they stood in need of half-crowns.
Consequently the broadside “white-letter” ballad no more represents the
folk ballad of the English people than does the black-letter ballad.
Who that has a sprinkling of grey on his head does not remember the
ballad-singer at a fair, with his or her yards of verse for sale? The
ballad-seller, who vended his broadsheets, did much to corrupt the
taste of the peasant. He had begun to read, and he read the ha’penny
broadside, and learned by heart what he had bought; then he set it to
some fine old melody as ancient as the Wars of the Roses, and sang it;
and what is unfortunate, discarded the old words for the sake of the
vile stuff composed by the half-tipsy, wholly-stupid band, in the pay
of Ryle, Catnach, Harkness of Preston, Williams of Portsea, Snidall of
Manchester, etc.
Mr. Hindley, in his “History of the Catnach Press,” 1886, gives
an amusing account of his acquaintance with John Morgan, the last
surviving of Catnach’s poets:--“Mr. John Morgan, full of bows and
scrapes, was ushered into our presence. ‘Take a seat, sir.’ ‘Yes, sir,
and thank you too,’ he replied, at the same time sitting down, and
then very carefully depositing his somewhat dilapidated hat under--far
under--the chair. We then inquired whether he would have anything to
eat, or have a cup of coffee. No! it was a little too early for eating,
and coffee did not agree with him. Or, a drop of good ‘Old Tom,’ we
somewhat significantly suggested. Mr. John Morgan would very much like
to have a little drop of gin, for it was a nasty, raw, cold morning.
In answer to our inquiry whether he would prefer hot or cold water,
elected to have it neat, if it made no difference to us.
“Mr. John Morgan, at our suggestion, having ‘wet the other eye,’
_i.e._, taken the second glass, the real business commenced thus:--‘We
have been informed that you were acquainted with, and used to write
for, the late James Catnach, who formerly lived in Seven Dials,
and that you can give us much information that we require towards
perfecting a work we have in hand, treating on street literature.’ ...
Here Mr. Morgan expressed his willingness to give all the information
he could on the subject, and leave it to our generosity to pay him what
we pleased, and adding that he had no doubt that we should not fall
out on that score. Mr. Morgan talked and took gin. Mr. Morgan got
warm--warmer, and warmer,--and very entertaining. We continued to talk
and take notes, and Mr. Morgan talked and took gin, until he emulated
the little old woman who sold ‘Hot Codlings,’ for of her it is related
that, ‘The glass she filled, and the bottle she shrunk, And this little
old woman in the end got--’
“At last it became very manifest that we should not be able to get any
more information out of Mr. John Morgan on that day, so proposed for
him to call again on the morrow morning. Then having presented him with
a portrait of Her Most Gracious Majesty, set in gold, we endeavoured to
see him downstairs, which, we observed, were very crooked; Mr. Morgan
thought they were very old and funny ones....
“At length the wishful morrow came, also ten of the clock, the hour
appointed, but not so Mr. John Morgan, nor did he call at any hour
during the day. But soon after eleven o’clock the next day he made his
appearance; but being so stupidly drunk we gave him some money and told
him to call again tomorrow. And he did, but still so muddled that we
could make nothing out of him, and so curtly dismissed him.”
Here are specimens of the sort of stuff turned out for Catnach by John
Morgan and the like. The first is on the birth of the Princess Royal.
“Of course you’ve heard the welcome news,
Or you must be a gaby,
That England’s glorious queen has got
At last a little baby.
“A boy we wanted--’tis a girl!
Thus all our hopes that were
To have an heir unto the Throne
Are all _thrown to the air_.”
Here is a ballad on a policeman of the old style when the new
regulations came in, in 1829:--
“Upon his beat he stood to take a last farewell
Of his lantern and his little box wherein he oft did dwell.
He listen’d to the clock, so familiar to his ear,
And with the tail of his drab coat he wiped away a tear.
“Beside that watchhouse door a girl was standing close,
Who held a pocket handkerchief, with which she blew her nose.
She rated well the policeman, which made poor Charley queer,
Who once more took his old drab coat to wipe away a tear.
“He turn’d and left the spot; O do not deem him weak;
A sly old chap this Charley was, though tears were on his cheek.
Go watch the lads in Fetterlane, where oft you’ve made them fear;
The hand, you know, that takes a bribe, can wipe away a tear.”
Here is one stanza by a composer with whom the writer of this article
made acquaintance:--
“Pale was the light of the Pole-axe star,
When breakers would hide them so near.
But Love is the ocean of hunters far,
And convoys him to darkness so drear.
Then sad at the door of my love I lay,
Slumbering the six months all away.”
Horace sang something about lying exposed to the cold and rain at the
door of his beloved, and vowed he would not do it again. There is
certainly a distance of something beside two thousand years between
Horace and the gentleman who wrote the above lines.
There is a really astonishing poem entitled “The Lights of Asheaton,”
which, happily, everyone can purchase for a ha’penny. It is the
composition of a recent Irish poet of the same class as Mr. John
Morgan, and is a dissuasive against Protestantism. What the “Lights” of
Asheaton are does not transpire. It opens thus:--
“You Muses now aid me in admonishing Paganism,
The new Lights of Asheaton, whose fate I do deplore.
From innocence and reason they are led to condemnation,
Their fate they’ve violated, the occasion of their woe.”
After some wonderful lines that we hardly like to quote, as savouring
of irreverence--though that was far from the poet’s intention--he
assures us:--
“Waters will decrease most amazing to behold,
No fanatic dissenter, no solvidian (_sic_) cripple,
Dare them to dissemble, the truths for to relinquish,
For the enthusiast will tremble at the splendors of the Pope.”
The sheet of broadside ballad that is passing away deserves a little
attention before it disappears. It reveals to us the quality of song
that commended itself to the uneducated. It shows us how the song
proper has steadily displaced the ballad proper. It is surprising
for what it contains, as well as for what it omits. Apparently in
the latter part of this century the sole claim to admission is that
words--no matter what they be--should be associated to a taking air.
We find on the broadsheets old favourites of our youth--songs by Balfe,
and Shield, and Hudson; but the Poet Laureate is unrepresented; even
Dibdin finds but grudging admission. When we look at the stuff that is
home-made, we find that it consists of two sorts of production--one,
the ancient ballad in the last condition of wreck, cast up in
fragments; and the other, of old themes worked up over and over again
by men without a spark of poetic fire in their hearts. A century or two
hence we shall have this rubbish collected and produced as the folk
song of the English peasantry, just as we have had the black-letter
ballads raked together and given to the world as the ballad poetry of
the ancient English.
The broadside ballad is at its last gasp. Every publisher in the
country who was wont to issue these ephemerides has discontinued
doing so for thirty or forty years. In London, in place of a score of
publishers of these leaves, there are but three--Mr. Fortey, of Seven
Dials; Mr. Such, of the Boro’; and Mr. Taylor, of Bethnal Green. As
the broadside dies, it becomes purer. There are ballads in some of the
early issues of a gross and disgusting nature. These have all had the
knife applied to them, and nothing issues from the press of Mr. Fortey,
Mr. Such, and Mr. Taylor which is offensive to good morals. Mr. Such,
happily, has all his broadsides numbered, and publishes a catalogue of
them; some of the earlier sheets are, however, exhausted, and have not
been reprinted.
It is but a matter of a few years and the broadside will be as extinct
as the Mammoth and the Dodo, only to be found in the libraries of
collectors. Already sheets that fetched a ha’penny thirty years ago are
cut down the middle, and each half fetches a shilling. The garlands
are worth more than their weight in gold. Let him that is wise collect
whilst he may.
X.
Riddles.
There is a curious little work, the contents of which are said
to have been collected by Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg cobbler and
master-singer, in 1517. This curious book was reprinted several times
in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century, but it
is now somewhat scarce. It was issued without place of publication or
publisher’s name, in small form without cover. The book pretends to
have been prepared by Hans Sachs for his private use, that he might
make merriment among his friends, when drinking, and they were tired
of his songs. It does not contain any anecdotes; it is made up of a
collection of riddles more or less good, some coarse, and some profane;
but the age was not squeamish. The title under which the little work
was issued was, _Useful Table-talk, or Something for all; that is
the Happy Thoughts, good and bad, expelling Melancholy and cheering
Spirits, of Hilarius Wish-wash, Master-tiler at Kielenhausen_. The
book consists of just a hundred pages, of which a quarter are consumed
by prefaces, introductions, etc., and about thirteen filled with
postscript and index. The humours of the book are somewhat curious;
for instance, in the preliminary index of subjects it gives--“IX. The
reason why this book of Table-talk was so late in being published.”
When we turn to the place indicated for the reason, we find a blank.
There is no such reason. There is a fulsome and absurd dedication to
the “Honourable and Knightly Tileburner” who lives “By the icy ocean
near Moscow, in Lapland, one mile below Podolia and three miles above
it.”
Although we are not told in the place indicated why the little
collection was not issued immediately after the death of Hans Sachs,
nor among his works, we learn the reason elsewhere, in the preface,
where we are told that the jokes it contained were so good that a
rivalry ensued among them as to precedence, and till this was settled,
it was impossible to get the book printed. The collection contains in
all one hundred and ninety-six riddles; among them is that which gives
the date of the book, and that in a chronogram: “When was this book
of Table-talk drawn up? _Answer._ In IetzIg taVsenD fIInff hVnDert
sIbenzehenDen Iahr” (1517).
Here are some of the conundrums.--_Question._ After Adam had eaten the
forbidden fruit, did he stand or sit down?--_Ans._ Neither; he fell.
_Ques._ Two shepherds were pasturing their flocks. Said one to the
other: “Give me one of your sheep, then I shall have twice as many
sheep as you.”--“Not so,” replied the second herdsman: “give me one
of yours, and then we shall have equal flocks.” How many sheep had
each?--_Ans._ One had seven, the other five. If the first took a sheep
out of the flock of the second, he had eight, the other four; if the
contrary, each had six.
_Ques._ What is four times six?--_Ans._ 6666.
_Ques._ What does a goose do when standing on one leg?--_Ans._ Holds up
the other!
_Ques._ When did carpenters first proclaim themselves to be intolerable
dawdles?--_Ans._ When building the Ark--they took a hundred years over
it.
_Ques._ What sort of law is military law?--_Ans._ Can(n)on law.
Some of the riddles have survived in the jocular mouth to the present
day; for instance, who does not know this?--_Ques._ What smells most in
an apothecary’s shop?--_Ans._ The nose. There is one conundrum which
surprises us. The story was wont to be told by Bishop Wilberforce that
he had asked a child in Sunday School why the angels ascended and
descended on Jacob’s ladder, whereupon the child replied that they did
so because they were moulting, and could not fly. But this appears in
Hans Sachs’ book, and is evidently a very ancient joke indeed.
In this collection also appears the riddle: “Which is heaviest, a pound
of lead or a pound of feathers?” which everyone knows, but with an
addition, which is an improvement. After the answer, “Each weighs a
pound, and they are equal in weight,” the questioner says further: “Not
so--try in water. The pound of feathers will float, and the pound of
lead will sink.”
_Ques._ How can you carry a jug of water in your hands on a broiling
summer day, in the full blaze of the sun, so that the water shall not
get hotter?--_Ans._ Let the water be boiling when you fill the jug.
_Ques._ How can a farmer prevent the mice from stealing his
corn?--_Ans._ By giving them his corn.
_Ques._ A certain man left a penny by his will to be divided equally
among his fifty relatives, each to have as much as the other, and
each to be quite contented with what he got, and not envy any of the
other legatees. How did the executor comply with this testamentary
disposition?--_Ans._ He bought a packet of fifty tin-tacks with the
penny, and hammered one into the back of each of the legatees.
There is another very curious old German collection of riddles called
_Æsopus Epulans_; but that contains anecdotes as well and a great deal
of very interesting matter. This is a much larger volume, and is the
commonplace book of a party of priests who used to meet at each other’s
houses to smoke, and drink, argue, and joke. One of the members took
down the particulars of conversation at each meeting, and published
it. A most curious and amusing volume it is. Some of the conundrums
the old parsons asked each other were the same as those in Hans Sachs’
collection; they had become traditional. We may safely say that none
were better, and some were, if possible, more pointless. They have all
much the same character: they resemble faintly the popular conundrum
of the type so widely spread, and so much affected still by nurses
and by the labouring class, and which so often begins with “London
Bridge is broken down,” or, “As I went over London Bridge.” These are
very ancient. We have analogous riddles among those which Oriental
tradition puts into the mouth of the Queen of Sheba when she “proved
Solomon with hard questions.” Mr. Kemble published for the Ælfric
Society a collection of questions and answers that exist in Anglo-Saxon
as a conversation between Solomon and Saturn, and numerous versions
existed in the Middle Ages of the dialogue between Solomon and--as the
answerer was often called--Markulf. But these questions only partially
correspond with our idea of riddles.