As in the case of ballads, or narrative songs, it was important to
sunder not only the popular from the artistic, but also the ballad of
the people from the ballad for the people; precisely so in the article
of communal lyric one must distinguish songs of the folk--songs made
by the folk--from those verses of the street or the music hall which
are often caught up and sung by the crowd until they pass as genuine
folk-song. For true folk-song, as for the genuine ballad, the tests
are simplicity, sincerity, mainly oral tradition, and origin in a
homogeneous community. The style of such a poem is not only simple,
but free from individual stamp; the metaphors, employed sparingly at
the best, are like the phrases which constantly occur in narrative
ballads, and belong to tradition. The metre is not so uniform as in
ballads, but must betray its origin in song. An unsung folk-song is
more than a contradiction,--it is an impossibility. Moreover, it is to
be assumed that primitive folk-songs were an outcome of the dance, for
which originally there was no music save the singing of the dancers. A
German critic declares outright that for early times there was "no
dance without singing, _and no song without a dance_; songs for the
dance were the earliest of all songs, and melodies for the dance the
oldest music of every race." Add to this the undoubted fact that
dancing by pairs is a comparatively modern invention, and that
primitive dances involved the whole able-bodied primitive community
(Jeanroy's assertion that in the early Middle Ages only women danced,
is a libel on human nature), and one begins to see what is meant by
folk-song; primarily it was made by the singing and dancing throng, at
a time when no distinction of lettered and unlettered classes divided
the community. Few, if any, of these primitive folk-songs have come
down to us; but they exist in survival, with more or less trace of
individual and artistic influences. As we cannot apply directly the
test of such a communal origin, we must cast about for other and more
modern conditions.
When Mr. George Saintsbury deplores "the lack, notorious to this day,
of one single original English folk-song of really great beauty,"
he leaves his readers to their own devices by way of defining this
species of poetry. Probably, however, he means the communal lyric
in survival, not the ballad, not what Germans would include under
_volkslied_ and Frenchmen under _chanson populaire_. This distinction,
so often forgotten by our critics, was laid down for English usage a
century ago by no less a person than Joseph Ritson. "With us," he
said, "songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are
properly called Songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative
compositions, which now denominate Ballads."
Notwithstanding this lucid statement, we have failed to clear the
field of all possible causes for error. The song of the folk is
differentiated from the song of the individual poet; popular lyric is
set over against the artistic, personal lyric. But lyric is commonly
assumed to be the expression of individual emotion, and seems in its
very essence to exclude all that is not single, personal, and
conscious emotion. Professor Barrett Wendell, however, is fain to
abandon this time-honored notion of lyric as the subjective element in
poetry, the expression of individual emotion, and proposes a
definition based upon the essentially musical character of these
songs. If we adhere strictly to the older idea, communal lyric, or
folk-song, is a contradiction in terms; but as a musical expression,
direct and unreflective, of communal emotion, and as offspring of the
enthusiasm felt by a festal, dancing multitude, the term is to be
allowed. It means the lyric of a throng. Unless one feels this
objective note in a lyric, it is certainly no folk-song, but merely an
anonymous product of the schools. The artistic and individual lyric,
however sincere it may be, is fairly sure to be blended with
reflection; but such a subjective tone is foreign to communal
verse--whether narrative or purely lyrical. In other words, to study
the lyric of the people, one must banish that notion of individuality,
of reflection and sentiment, which one is accustomed to associate with
all lyrics. To illustrate the matter, it is evident that Shelley's 'O
World, O Life, O Time,' and Wordsworth's 'My Heart Leaps Up,' however
widely sundered may be the points of view, however varied the
character of the emotion, are of the same individual and reflective
class. Contrast now with these a third lyric, an English song of the
thirteenth century, preserved by some happy chance from the oblivion
which claimed most of its fellows; the casual reader would
unhesitatingly put it into the same class with Wordsworth's verses as
a lyric of "nature," of "joy," or what not,--an outburst of simple and
natural emotion. But if this 'Cuckoo Song' be regarded critically, it
will be seen that precisely those qualities of the individual and the
subjective are wanting. The music of it is fairly clamorous; the
refrain counts for as much as the verses; while the emotion seems to
spring from the crowd and to represent a community. Written down--no
one can say when it was actually composed--not later than the middle
of the thirteenth century, along with the music and a Latin hymn
interlined in red ink, this song is justly regarded by critics as
communal rather than artistic in its character; and while it is set
to music in what Chappell calls "the earliest secular composition, in
parts, known to exist in any country," yet even this elaborate music
was probably "a national song and tune, selected according to the
custom of the times as a basis for harmony," and was "not entirely a
scholastic composition." It runs in the original:--
Sumer is icumen in.
Lhude sing cuccu.
Groweth sed
And bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth,
Bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu.
Wel singes thu cuccu,
Ne swik thu naver nu.