_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!_
This is the trochaic rhythm dear to the common people of Rome and the
near provinces, who as every one knows spoke a very different speech
from the speech of the patrician, and sang their own songs withal; a
few specimens of the latter, notably the soldiers' song about Caesar,
have come down to us.[11]
[11] We cannot widen our borders so as to include that
solitary folk-song rescued from ancient Greek literature, the
'Song of the Swallow,' sung by children of the Island of
Rhodes as they went about asking gifts from house to house at
the coming of the earliest swallow. The metre is interesting
in comparison with the rhythm of later European folk-songs,
and there is evident dramatic action. Nor can we include the
fragments of communal drama found in the favorite Debates
Between Summer and Winter,--from the actual contest, to such
lyrical forms as the song at the end of Shakespeare's 'Love's
Labor's Lost.' The reader may be reminded of a good specimen
of this class in 'Ivy and Holly,' printed by Ritson, 'Ancient
Songs and Ballads,' Hazlitt's edition, page 114 ff., with the
refrain:--
Nay, Ivy, nay,
Hyt shal not be, I wys;
Let Holy hafe the maystry,
As the maner ys.
The refrain itself, of whatever metre, was imitated by classical poets
like Catullus; and the earliest traditions of Greece tell of these
refrains, with gathering verses of lyric or narrative character, sung
in the harvest-field and at the dance. In early Assyrian poetry, even,
the refrain plays an important part; while an Egyptian folk-song, sung
by the reapers, seems to have been little else than a refrain. Towards
the end of the Middle Ages, courtly poets took up the refrain,
experimented with it, refined it, and so developed those highly
artificial forms of verse known as roundel, triolet, and ballade. The
refrain, in short, is corner-stone for all poetry of the people, if
not of poetry itself; beginning with inarticulate cries of joy or
sorrow, like the _eya_ noted above, mere emotional utterances or
imitations of various sounds, then growing in distinctness and
compass, until the separation of choral from artistic poetry, and the
increasing importance of the latter, reduced the refrain to a merely
ancillary function, and finally did away with it altogether. Many
refrains are still used for the dance which are mere exclamations,
with just enough coherence of words added to make them pass as poetry.
Frequently, as in the French, these have a peculiar beauty. Victor
Hugo has imitated them with success; but to render them into English
is impossible.
The refrain, moreover, is closely allied to those couplets or
quatrains composed spontaneously at the dance or other merry-making of
the people. In many parts of Germany, the dances of harvest were until
recent days enlivened by the so-called _schnaderhuepfl_, a quatrain
sung to a simple air, composed on the spot, and often inclining to the
personal and the satiric. In earlier days this power to make a
quatrain off-hand seems to have been universal among the peasants of
Europe. In Scandinavia such quatrains are known as _stev_. They are
related, so far as their spontaneity, their universal character, and
their origin are concerned, to the _coplas_ of Spain, the _stornelli_
of Italy, and the distichs of modern Greece. Of course, the specimens
of this poetry which can be found now are rude enough; for the life
has gone out of it, and to find it at its best one must go back to
conditions which brought the undivided genius of the community into
play. What one finds nowadays is such motley as this,--a so-called
_runda_ from Vogtland, answering to the Bavarian _schnaderhuepfl_:--
I and my Hans,
We go to the dance;
And if no one will dance,
Dance I and my Hans!
A _schnaderhuepfl_ taken down at Appenzell in 1754, and one of the
oldest known, was sung by some lively girl as she danced at the
reapers' festival:--
Mine, mine, mine,--O my love is fine,
And my favor shall he plainly see;
Till the clock strike eight, till the clock strike nine,
My door, my door shall open be.
It is evident that the great mass of this poetry died with the
occasion that brought it forth, or lingered in oral tradition, exposed
to a thousand chances of oblivion. The Church made war upon these
songs, partly because of their erotic character, but mainly, one may
assume, because of the chain of tradition from heathen times which
linked them with feasts in honor of abhorred gods, and with rustic
dances at the old pagan harvest-home. A study of all this, however,
with material at a minimum, and conjecture or philological combination
as the only possible method of investigation, must be relegated to the
treatise and the monograph;[12] for present purposes we must confine
our exposition and search to songs that shall attract readers as well
as students. Yet this can be done only by the admission into our pages
of folk-song which already bears witness, more or less, to the touch
of an artist working upon material once exclusively communal and
popular.
[12] Folk-lore, mythology, sociology even, must share in this
work. The reader may consult for indirect but valuable
material such books as Frazer's 'Golden Bough,' or that
admirable treatise, Tylor's 'Primitive Culture.'
Returning to our English type, the 'Cuckoo Song,' we are now to ask
what other communal lyrics with this mark upon them, denoting at once
rescue and contamination at the hands of minstrel or wandering clerk,
have come down to us from the later Middle Ages. Having answered this
question, it will remain to deal with the difficult material
accumulated in comparatively recent times. Ballads are far easier to
preserve than songs. Ballads have a narrative; and this story in them
has proved antiseptic, defying the chances of oral transmission. A
good story travels far, and the path which it wanders from people to
people is often easy to follow; but the more volatile contents of the
popular lyric--we are not speaking of its tune, which is carried in
every direction--are easily lost.[13] Such a lyric lives chiefly by
its sentiment, and sentiment is a fragile burden. We can however get
some notion of this communal song by process of inference, for the
earliest lays of the Provencal troubadour, and probably of the German
minnesinger, were based upon the older song of the country-side.
Again, in England there was little distinction made between the singer
who entertained court and castle and the gleeman who sang in the
villages and at rural festivals; the latter doubtless taking from the
common stock more than he contributed from his own. A certain proof of
more aristocratic and distinctly artistic, that is to say, individual
origin, and a conclusive reason for refusing the name of folk-song to
any one of these lyrics of love, is the fact that it happens to
address a married woman. Every one knows that the troubadour and the
minnesinger thus addressed their lays; and only the style and general
character of their earliest poetry can be considered as borrowed from
the popular muse. In other words, however vivacious, objective,
vigorous, may be the early lays of the troubadour, however one is
tempted to call them mere modifications of an older folk-song, they
are excluded by this characteristic from the popular lyric and belong
to poetry of the schools. Marriage, says Jeanroy, is always respected
in the true folk-song. Moreover, this is only a negative test. In
Portugal, many songs which must be referred to the individual and
courtly poet are written in praise of the unmarried girl; while in
England, whether it be set down to austere morals or to the practical
turn of the native mind, one finds little or nothing to match this
troubadour and minnesinger poetry in honor of the stately but
capricious dame.[14] The folk-song that we seek found few to record
it; it sounded at the dance, it was heard in the harvest-field; what
seemed to be everywhere, growing spontaneously like violets in spring,
called upon no one to preserve it and to give it that protection
demanded by exotic poetry of the schools. What is preserved is due
mainly to the clerks and gleemen of older times, or else to the
curiosity of modern antiquarians, rescuing here and there a belated
survival of the species. Where the clerk or the gleeman is in
question, he is sure to add a personal element, and thus to remove the
song from its true communal setting. Contrast the wonderful little
song, admired by Alceste in Moliere's 'Misanthrope,' and as
impersonal, even in its first-personal guise as any communal lyric
ever made,--with a reckless bit of verse sung by some minstrel about
the famous Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Henry II. of England. The song
so highly commended by Alceste[15] runs, in desperately inadequate
translation:--
If the King had made it mine,
Paris, his city gay,
And I must the love resign
Of my bonnie may,[16]--
To King Henry I would say:
Take your Paris back, I pray;
Better far I love my may,--
O joy!--
Love my bonnie may!