If the whole wide world were mine,
From the ocean to the Rhine,
All I'd be denying
If the Queen of England once
In my arms were lying![17]
[13] For early times translation from language to language is
out of the question, certainly in the case of lyrics. It is
very important to remember that primitive man regarded song
as a momentary and spontaneous thing.
[14] Yet even rough Scandinavia took up this brilliant but
doubtful love poetry. To one of the Norse kings is attributed
a song in which the royal singer informs his "lady" by way of
credentials for his wooing,--"I have struck a blow in the
Saracen's land; _let thy husband do the same!_"
[15] 'Le Misanthrope,' i. 2; he calls it a _vielle chanson_.
M. Tiersot concedes it to the popular muse, but thinks it is
of the city, not of the country.
[16] _May_, a favorite ballad word for "maid," "sweetheart."
[17] 'Carm. Bur.,' page 185: "Waer diu werlt alliu min."
The tone is not directly communal, but it smacks more of the village
dance than of the troubadour's harp; for even Bernart of Ventadour did
not dare to address Eleanor save in the conventional tone of despair.
The clerks and gleemen, however, and even English peasants of modern
times,[18] took another view of the matter. The "clerk," that
delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between church and
tavern, between breviary and love songs, has probably done more for
the preservation of folk-song than all other agents known to us. In
the above verses he protests a trifle or so too much about himself;
let us hear him again as mere reporter for the communal lyric, in
verses that he may have brought from the dance to turn into his
inevitable Latin:--
Come, my darling, come to me,
I am waiting long for thee,--
I am waiting long for thee,
Come, my darling, come to me!
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain,
Come and make me well again;--
Come and make me well again,
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain.[19]
[18] See Child's Ballads, vi. 257, and Grandfer Cantle's
ballad in Mr. Hardy's 'Return of the Native.' See next page.
[19] 'Carm. Bur.,' page 208: "Kume, Kume, geselle min."
More graceful yet are the anonymous verses quoted in certain Latin
love-letters of a manuscript at Munich; and while a few critics rebel
at the notion of a folk-song, the pretty lines surely hint more of
field and dance than of the study.
Thou art mine,
I am thine,
Of that may'st certain be;
Locked thou art
Within my heart,
And I have lost the key:
There must thou ever be!
Now it happens that this notion of heart and key recurs in later
German folk-song. A highly popular song of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries has these stanzas:[20]
For thy dear sake I'm hither come,
Sweetheart, O hear me woo!
My hope rests evermore on thee,
I love thee well and true.
Let me but be thy servant,
Thy dear love let me win;
Come, ope thy heart, my darling,
And lock me fast within!
* * * * *
Where my love's head is lying,
There rests a golden shrine;
And in it lies, locked hard and fast,
This fresh young heart of mine:
Oh would to God I had the key,--
I'd throw it in the Rhine;
What place on earth were more to me,
Than with my sweeting fine?
Where my love's feet are lying,
A fountain gushes cold,
And whoso tastes the fountain
Grows young and never old:
Full often at the fountain
I knelt and quenched my drouth,--
Yet tenfold rather would I kiss
My darling's rosy mouth!
And in my darling's garden[21]
Is many a precious flower;
Oh, in this budding season,
Would God 'twere now the hour
To go and pluck the roses
And nevermore to part:
I think full sure to win her
Who lies within my heart!
* * * * *
Now who this merry roundel
Hath sung with such renown?
That have two lusty woodsmen
At Freiberg in the town,--
Have sung it fresh and fairly,
And drunk the cool red wine:
And who hath sat and listened?--
Landlady's daughter fine!
[20] Translated from Boehme 'Altdeutsches Liederbuch,'
Leipzig, 1877, page 233. Lovers of folk-song will find this
book invaluable on account of the carefully edited musical
accompaniments. With it and Chappell, the musician has ample
material for English and German songs; for French, see
Tiersot, 'La Chanson Populaire en France.'
[21] The garden in these later songs is constantly a symbol
of love. To pluck the roses, etc., is conventional for making
love.
What with the more modern tone, and the lusty woodsmen, one has
deserted the actual dance, the actual communal origin of song; but one
is still amid communal influences. Another little song about the heart
and the key, this time from France, recalls one to the dance itself,
and to the simpler tone:--
Shut fast within a rose
I ween my heart must be;
No locksmith lives in France
Who can set it free,--
Only my lover Pierre,
Who took away the key![22]
[22] Quoted by Tiersot, page 88, from 'Chansons a Danser en
Rond,' gathered before 1704.
Coming back to England, and the search for her folk-song, it is in
order to begin with the refrain. A "clerk," in a somewhat artificial
lay to his sweetheart, has preserved as refrain what seems to be a bit
of communal verse:--
Ever and aye for my love I am in sorrow sore;
I think of her I see so seldom any more,[23]--
rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed.
[23] Boeddeker's 'Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with
notes, etc., in German; Berlin, 1878, page 179.
Better by far is the song of another _clericus_, with a lusty little
refrain as fresh as the wind it invokes, as certainly folk-song as
anything left to us:--
Blow, northern wind,
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow, northern wind,
Blow, blow, blow!
The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good
movement. A stanza may be quoted:--
I know a maid in bower so bright
That handsome is for any sight,
Noble, gracious maid of might,
Precious to discover.
In all this wealth of women fair,
Maid of beauty to compare
With my sweeting found I ne'er
All the country over!
Old too is the lullaby used as a burden or refrain for a religious
poem printed by Thomas Wright in his 'Songs and Carols':--
Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng,
Lullay, my dere herte, myn owyn dere derlyng.[24]
[24] See also Ritson, 'Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3rd Ed.,
pages xlviii., 202 ff. The Percy folio MS. preserved a cradle
song, 'Balow, my Babe, ly Still and Sleepe,' which was
published as a broadside, and finally came to be known as
'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' These "balow" lullabies are
said by Mr. Ebbsworth to be imitations of a pretty poem first
published in 1593, and now printed by Mr. Bullen in his
'Songs from Elizabethan Romances,' page 92.
The same English manuscript which has kept the refrain 'Blow, Northern
Wind,' offers another song which may be given in modern translation
and entire. All these songs were written down about the year 1310, and
probably in Herefordshire. As with the _carmina burana_, the lays of
German "clerks," so these English lays represent something between
actual communal verse and the poetry of the individual artist; they
owe more to folk-song than to the traditions of literature and art.
Some of the expressions in this song are taken, if we may trust the
critical insight of Ten Brink, directly from the poetry of the people.
A maid as white as ivory bone,
A pearl in gold that golden shone,
A turtle-dove, a love whereon
My heart must cling:
Her blitheness nevermore be gone
While I can sing!
When she is gay,
In all the world no more I pray
Than this: alone with her to stay
Withouten strife.
Could she but know the ills that slay
Her lover's life!
Was never woman nobler wrought;
And when she blithe to sleep is brought,
Well for him who guessed her thought,
Proud maid! Yet O,
Full well I know she will me nought.
My heart is woe.
And how shall I then sweetly sing
That thus am marred with mourning?
To death, alas, she will me bring
Long ere my day.
_Greet her well, the sweete thing,
With eyen gray!_
Her eyes have wounded me, i-wis.
Her arching brows that bring the bliss;
Her comely mouth whoso might kiss,
In mirth he were;
And I would change all mine for his
That is her fere.[25]
Her fere, so worthy might I be,
Her fere, so noble, stout and free,
For this one thing I would give three,
Nor haggle aught.
From hell to heaven, if one could see,
So fine is naught,
[Nor half so free;[26]
All lovers true, now listen unto me.]
Now hearken to me while I tell,
In such a fume I boil and well;
There is no fire so hot in hell
As his, I trow,
Who loves unknown and dares not tell
His hidden woe.
_I will her well, she wills me woe;
I am her friend, and she my foe;_
Methinks my heart will break in two
For sorrow's might;
_In God's own greeting may she go,
That maiden white!_
_I would I were a throstlecock,
A bunting, or a laverock,[27]
Sweet maid!
Between her kirtle and her smock
I'd then be hid!_
[25] _Fere_, companion, lover. "I would give all I have to
be her lover."
[26] Superfluous verses; but the MS. makes no distinction.
_Free_ means noble, gracious. "If one could see everything
between hell and heaven, one would find nothing so fair and
noble."
[27] Lark. The poem is translated from Boeddeker, page 161
ff.
The reader will easily note the struggle between our poet's
conventional and quite literary despair and the fresh communal tone in
such passages as we have ventured, despite Leigh Hunt's direful
example, to put in italics. This poet was a clerk, or perhaps not even
that,--a gleeman; and he dwells, after the manner of his kind, upon a
despair which springs from difference of station. But it is England,
not France; it is a maiden, not countess or queen, whom he loves; and
the tone of his verse is sound and communal at heart. True, the metre,
afterwards a favorite with Burns, is one used by the oldest known
troubadour of Provence, Count William, as well as by the poets of
miracle plays and of such romances as the English 'Octavian'; but like
Count William himself, who built on a popular basis, our clerk or
gleeman is nearer to the people than to the schools. Indeed, Uhland
reminds us that Breton _kloer_ ("clerks") to this day play a leading
part as lovers and singers of love in folk-song; and the English
clerks in question were not regular priests, consecrated and in
responsible positions, but students or unattached followers of
theology. They sang with the people; they felt and suffered with the
people--as in the case of a far nobler member of the guild, William
Langland; and hence sundry political poems which deal with wrongs and
suffering endured by the commons of that day. In the struggle of
barons and people against Henry III., indignation made verses; and
these, too, we owe to the clerks. Such a burst of indignation is the
song against Richard of Cornwall, with a turbulent refrain which
sounds like a direct loan from the people. One stanza, with this
refrain, will suffice. It opens with the traditional "lithe and
listen" of the ballad-singer:--
Sit all now still and list to me:
The German King, by my loyalty!
Thirty thousand pound asked he
To make a peace in this country,--
And so he did and more!