The first day of April is a festival too prominent in the Kalendar of
Momus to be passed over without due commemoration. The son of Nox, who,
according to that prince of heralds, Hesiod, presides especially over
the destinies of reviewers, demands a sacrifice at our hands; and as, in
the present state of the provision market, we cannot afford to squander
a steer, we shall sally forth into the regions of rhyme and attempt to
capture a versifier.
The time has been when such a task was, to say the least of it, very
simple. Each successive spring, at the season when "a livelier iris
glows upon the burnished dove," Parnassus sent forth its leaves, and the
voices of many cuckoos were heard throughout the land. Small difficulty
then, either to flush or to bag sufficient game. But, somehow or other,
of late years there has been a sort of panic among the poets. The
gentler sort have either been scared by the improvisatore warblings of
Mr Wakley, or terrified into silence by undue and undeserved
apprehensions of the Knout. Seldom now are they heard to chirrup except
under cover of the leaves of a sheltering magazine; and although we do
occasionally detect a thin and ricketty octavo taking flight from the
counter of some publisher, it is of so meek and inoffensive a kind that
we should as soon think of making prize of a thrush in a bed of
strawberries. We are much afraid that the tendency of the present age
towards the facetious has contributed not a little to the dearth of
sonnets and the extermination of the elegiac stanza. So long as friend
Michael Angelo Titmarsh has the privilege of frequenting the house of
Mrs Perkins and other haunts of fashionable and literary celebrity,
Poseidon Hicks will relapse into gloomy silence, and Miss Bunion refrain
from chanting her Lays of the Shattered Heart-strings. It a hard thing
that a poet may not protrude his gentle sorrows for our commiseration,
mourn over his blighted hopes, or rejoice the bosom of some budding
virgin by celebrating her, in his Tennysonian measure, as the
light-tressed Ianthe or sleek-haired Claribel of his soul, without being
immediately greeted by a burst of impertinent guffaws, and either
wantonly parodied or profanely ridiculed to his face. So firm is our
belief in the humanising influence of poetry that we would rather, by a
thousand times, that all the reviews should perish, and all the
satirists be consigned to Orcus, than behold the total cessation of song
throughout the British Islands. And if we, upon any former occasion,
have spoken irreverently of the Nincompoops, we now beg leave to tender
to that injured body our heartfelt contrition for the same; and invite
them to join with us in a pastoral pilgrimage to Arcadia, where they
shall have the run of the meadows, with a fair allowance of pipes and
all things needful--where they may rouse a satyr from every bush,
scamper over the hills in pursuit of an Oread, or take a sly vizzy at a
water-nymph arranging her tresses in the limpid fountains of the
Alpheus. What say you, our masters and mistresses, to this proposal for
a summer ramble?
Hitherto we have spoken merely of the gentler section of the bards. But
there is another division of that august body by no means quite so
diffident. Since our venerated Father Christopher paid, some four years
ago, a merited tribute to the genius of Mr Macaulay, commenting upon the
thews and sinews of his verse, and the manly vigour of his Lays of
Ancient Rome--ballad poetry in all its forms and ramifications has
become inconceivably rampant. The Scottish poetry also, which from time
to time has appeared in MAGA, seems to have excited, in certain
quarters, a spirit of larcenous admiration; and not long ago it was our
good fortune to behold in the Quarterly Review a laudation of certain
lines which are neither more nor less than a weak dilution of a ballad
composed by one of our contributors. It would be well, however, had we
nothing more to complain of than this. But the ballad fever has got to
such a height that it may be necessary to make an example. Our young
English poets are now emulating in absurdity those German students, who
dress after the costume of the middle ages as depicted by Cornelius, and
terrify the peaceful Cockney on the Rhine by apparitions of Goetz of
Berlichingen. They are no longer Minnesingers, but warriors of
sanguineous complexion. They are all for glory, blood, chivalry, and the
deeds of their ancestors. They cut, thrust, and foin as fiercely as
fifty Francalanzas, and are continually shouting on Saint George. Dim
ideas of the revival of the Maltese Order seem to float before their
excited imaginations; and, were there the slightest spark of genuine
feeling in their enthusiasm, either Abd-el-Kader or Marshal Bugeaud
would have had by this time some creditable recruits. But the fact is,
that the whole system is a sham. Our young friends care about as much
for Saint George as they do for Saint Thomas Aquinas; they would think
twice before they permitted themselves to be poked at with an unbuttoned
foil; and as for the deeds of their ancestors, a good many of them would
have considerable difficulty in establishing their descent even from a
creditable slop-seller--"the founder of our family"--in the reign of
George the Third. It is therefore a mystery to us why they should
persevere in their delusion. What--in the name of the Bend
Sinister--have they to do with the earlier Harrys or Edwards, or the
charge of the Templars at Ascalon, or the days of the Saxon Heptarchy?
Are they called upon by some irrepressible impulse to ransack the pages
of English history for a "situation," or to crib from the Chronicles of
Froissart? Cannot they let the old warriors rest in peace, without
summoning them, like the Cid, from their honoured graves, again to put
on harness and to engage in feckless combat? For oh!--weak and most
washy are the battles which our esteemed young friends describe! Their
war-horses have for the most part a general resemblance to the hacks
hired out at seven-and-sixpence for the Sunday exhibition in the Park.
Their armour is of that kind more especially in vogue at Astley's, in
the composition of which tinfoil is a principal ingredient, and
pasteboard by no means awanting. Their heroes fight, after preliminary
parley which would do credit to the chivalry of the Hippodrome; and
their lances invariably splinter as frush as the texture of the
bullrush. Their dying chiefs all imitate Bayard, as we once saw
Widdecomb do it, when struck down by the infuriated Gomersal; and the
poem generally concludes with a devout petition to "Our Ladye," not only
to vouchsafe her grace to the defunct champion, but to grant that the
living minstrel may experience the same end--a prayer which, for the
sake of several respectable young members of society, we hope may be
utterly disregarded.
The truth is, that instead of being the easiest, the ballad is
incomparably the most difficult kind of all poetical composition. Many
men, who were not poets in the highest sense of the word, because they
wanted the inventive faculty, have nevertheless, by dint of
perseverance, great accomplishment, and dexterous use of those materials
which are ready to the hand of every artificer, gained a respectable
name in the roll of British literature--but never, in any single
instance, by attempting the construction of a ballad. That is the
Shibboleth, by which you can at once distinguish the true minstrel from
mere impostor or pretender. It is the simplest, and at the same time the
sublimest form of poetry, nor can it be written except under the
influence of that strong and absorbing emotion, which bears the poet
away far from the present time, makes him an actor and a participator in
the vivid scenes which he describes, and which is, in fact, inspiration
of the very loftiest kind. The few who enjoy the glorious privilege, not
often felt, nor long conferred, of surrendering themselves to the magic
of that spell, cease for the time to be artists; they take no thought of
ornament, or of any rhetorical artifice, but throw themselves headlong
into their subject, trusting to nature for that language which is at
once the shortest and the most appropriate to the occasion; spurning all
far-fetched metaphors aside, and ringing out their verse as the iron
rings upon the anvil! It was in this way that Homer, the great old
ballad-maker of Greece, wrote--or rather chanted, for in his day pens
were scarce, wire-wove unknown, and the pride of Moseley undeveloped.
God had deprived the blind old man of sight; but in his heart still
burned the fury of the fight of Troy; and trow ye not, that to him the
silent hills of Crete many a time became resonant with the clang of
arms, and the shouts of challenging heroes, when not a breath of wind
was stirring, and the ibex stood motionless on its crag? What a
difference between Homer and Virgil! Moeonides goes straight to work,
like a marshal calling out his men. He moves through the encampment of
the ships, knowing every man by headmark, and estimating his
capabilities to a buffet. No metaphor or nonsense in the combats that
rage around the sepulchre of Ilus--good hard fighting all of it, as
befits barbarians, in whose veins the blood of the danger-seeking
demigods is seething: fierce as wild beasts they meet together, smite,
hew, and roll over in the dust. Jove may mourn for Sarpedon, or
Andromache tear her hair above the body of her slaughtered Hector; but
not one whit on that account abstain their comrades from the banquet,
and on the morrow, under other leaders, they will renew the battle--for
man is but as the leaves of the forest, whilst glory abideth for ever.
Virgil, on the contrary, had but little of the ballad-maker in his
composition. He was always thinking of himself, and of his art, and the
effect which his AEneid would produce,--nay, we are even inclined to
suspect that at times he was apt to deviate into a calculation of the
number of sestertia which he might reasonably reckon to receive from the
bounty of the Emperor. The AEneid is upon the whole a sneaking sort of a
poem. The identity of AEneas with Augustus, and the studied
personification of every leading character, is too apparent to be
denied. It is therefore less an epic than an allegory; and--without
questioning the truth of Hazlitt's profound apothegm, that allegories do
not bite--we confess that, in general, we have but small liking to that
species of composition. For in the first place, the author of an
allegory strips himself of the power of believing it. He can have no
faith in the previous existence of heroes whom he is purposely
portraying as shadows, and he must constantly be put to shifts, in order
to adapt his story, during its progress, to the circumstances which he
attempts to typify. And, in the second place, he commits the error,
equally palpable, of disenchanting the eyes of his reader. For the very
essence of that pleasure which we all derive from fiction, lies in our
overcoming to a certain extent the idea of its actual falsity, and in
our erecting within ourselves a sort of secondary belief, to which,
accordingly, our sympathies are submitted. Every thing, therefore, which
interferes with this fair and legitimate credulity is directly noxious
to the effect of the poem; it puts us back one stage further from the
point of absolute faith, and materially diminishes the interest which we
take in the progress of the piece. Spenser's Faerie Queen is a notable
example of this. Could we but think that Una was intended, though only
by the poet's fancy, to be the portraiture of a mortal virgin,
unfriended and alone amidst the snares and enchantments of the world,
would we not tremble for her sweet sake, knowing that some as innocent
and as fair as she have fallen victims to jealousy less dark than
Duessa's, and wiles less skilfully prepared than those of the hoary
Archimage? But Una never for one moment appears to us as a woman. From
the first we feel that she is there, not exposed to temptation, but as a
pure and holy spirit, in whose presence hypocrisy is unmasked, and all
sin and iniquity unveiled. Nor fear we for the Red-Cross Knight, even
when he seems to go astray, and turns from the side of her whom he had
sworn to protect and guard; for he bears a talisman upon his shield and
his bosom, expressive of his origin, and able to resist for ever the
fiery darts of the wicked. Never rode knight and lady through earthly
wilderness as these two journey together. For them we have no human
interest--not even such tears as we might shed for the lapse of an
erring angel. They have not put on mortality, nor do they meet or combat
with mortal foes. Truth will do much for us, even in poetry where the
mortal interest is most largely intermingled with the supernatural. Some
belief we have even in the wildest flights of Ariosto. Astolfo does not
cease to be one of ourselves when traversing the regions of air on his
hippogriff, or conversing on the mount of terrestial Paradise with the
beloved Apostle John. But which of us even in fancy can ride with the
Red-Cross warrior, penetrate with Guyon into the cave of Mammon, or
realise the dreary pageant that issued from the House of Pride?
Spenser's is the purer allegory--Virgil's but a secondary one. The AEneid
is a hybrid poem, wherein the real and the ideal mingle. There is
sufficient of the first to preserve for us some epic interest, and
enough of the latter at times to stagger our belief. But apart from
this, how inferior is the AEneid in interest to the masterpiece of Homer!
It consists, epically speaking, of three divisions--the landing at
Carthage, the Sicilian visit to Acestes, and the final campaign of
Italy--and the two first of these have no bearing at all upon the third,
and even that third is incomplete. Whatever homage we may be compelled
to pay to the sweetness of Virgil's muse, and his marvellous power of
melody, this at least is undeniable, that in inventive genius he falls
immeasurably short of the Greek, and that his scenes of action are at
once both tinselled and tame. One magnificent exception, it is true, we
are bound to make from such a censure. The second book of the AEneid
stands out in strong and vivid contrast from the rest; and few poets,
whether ancient or modern, have written aught like the conflagration of
Troy. Nor shall we, with the severer critics, darkly hint of works which
had gone before, but of which the substance long ago has perished--of
the Cyclic poem of Arctinus, said to have been of all others the nearest
in point of energy to the Iliad, or of the songs of Lesches and
Euphorion. Rather let us be thankful for this one episode, without which
the great tale of Ilium would have been incomplete, and the lays of
Demodocus in the Odyssey remained mere hints of the woful catastrophe of
Priam. But if you wish to see how Homer could handle a ballad, turn up
the eighth book of your Odyssey until you come to the Minstrel's son--or
if haply you are somewhat rusted in your Greek, and yearn for the aid of
Donnegan, listen to the noble version of Maginn, who alone of all late
translators has caught the true fire and spirit of Moeonides.
"The Minstrel began as the Godhead inspired:
He sang how their leaguer the Argives had fired,
And over the sea in trim barks bent their course,
While their chiefs with Odysseus were closed in the horse,
Mid the Trojans who had that fell engine of wood
Dragged on, till in Troy's inmost turret it stood;
There long did they ponder in anxious debate
What to do with the steed as around it they sate.
Then before them three several counsels were laid:
Into pieces to hew it by the edge of the blade;
Or to draw it forth thence to the brow of the rock,
And downward to fling it with shivering shock;
Or, shrined in the tower, let it there make abode
As an offering to ward off the anger of God.
The last counsel prevail'd; for the moment of doom,
When the town held the horse, upon Ilium had come.
The Argives in ambush awaited the hour
When slaughter and death on their foes they should shower.
When it came, from their hollow retreat rushing down
The sons of th' Achivi smote sorely the town.
Then, scattered, on blood and on ravaging bent,
Through all parts of the city chance-guided they went.
And he sung how Odysseus at once made his way
To where the proud towers of Deiphobus lay.
With bold Menelaus he thitherward strode,
In valour in equal to War's fiery god,
Then fierce was the fight--dread the deeds that were done,
Till, aided by Pallas, the battle he won.
So sung the rapt Minstrel the blood-stirring tale,
But the check of Odysseus waxed deadly and pale;
While the song warbled on of the days that were past,
His eyelids were wet with the tears falling fast.[54]"
If we go on twaddling thus about the Greeks and Romans, we shall lose
the thread of our discourse, and possibly be found tripping on the
subject of Wolf's _Prolegomena_. Let us, therefore, get back as fast as
we can to the Moderns.
Unless the poet is imbued with a deep sympathy for his subject, we would
not give sixpence for his chance of producing a tolerable ballad. Nay,
we go further, and aver that he ought when possible to write in the
unscrupulous character of a partisan. In historical and martial ballads,
there always must be two sides; and it is the business of the poet to
adopt one of these with as much enthusiasm and prejudice, as if his life
and fortunes depended upon the issue of the cause. For the ballad is the
reflex of keen and rapid sensation, and has nothing to do with judgment
or with calm deliberative justice. It should embody, from beginning to
end, one fiery absorbing passion, such as men feel when their blood is
up, and their souls thoroughly roused within them; and we should as soon
think of moralising in a ballad as in the midst of a charge of cavalry.
If you are a Cavalier, write with the zeal of a Cavalier combating for
his king at Naseby, and do not disgust us with melancholy whinings about
the desolate hearths of the Ironsides. Forget for a time that you are a
shareholder in a Life Assurance Company, and cleave to your immediate
business of emptying as many saddles as possible. If you are out--as
perhaps your great-grandfather was--with Prince Charles at Prestonpans,
do not, we beseech you, desert the charging column of the Camerons, to
cry the coronach over poor old Colonel Gardiner, fetched down from his
horse by the Lochaber axe of the grim Miller of Invernahyle. Let him
have the honourable burial of a brave man when the battle is over;
but--whilst the shouts of victory are ringing in our ears, and the tail
of Cope's horse is still visible over the knowe which rises upon the
Berwick road--leave the excellent Seceder upon the sod, and toss up your
bonnet decorated with the White Rose, to the glory and triumph of the
clans! If you are a Covenanter and a Whig, we need not entreat you to
pepper Claverhouse and his guardsmen to the best of your ability at
Drumclog. You are not likely to waste much of your time in lamentations
over the slaughtered Archbishop: and if you must needs try your hand at
the execution of Argyle, do not mince the matter, but make a regular
martyr of him at once. In this way should all ballads be written; and
such indeed is the true secret of the craft as transmitted to us by the
masters of old.
We have warned you against moralising: let us now say a word or two on
the subjects of description and declamation. Upon one or other of these
rocks, have most of our modern ballad-writers struck and foundered. What
can be in worse taste than the introduction of an elaborate landscape
into the midst of a poem of action, or an elaborate account of a man's
accoutrements when he is fighting for life or death? A single epithet,
if it be a choice one, can indicate the scene of action as vividly and
far more effectively than ten thousand stanzas; and, unless you are a
tailor and proud of your handiwork, what is the use of dilating upon the
complexion of a warrior's breeches, when the claymore is whistling
around his ears? Nevertheless, even our best ballad-writers, when their
soul was not in their task, have fallen into this palpable error. None
of Sir Walter's ballads commences more finely than "The Gray
Brother,"--none has been more spoiled in its progress by the
introduction of minute description. We pass from the high altar of Saint
Peter to the bank of the Eske, and there we are regaled with a catalogue
of the modern seats and villas, utterly out of place and inconsistent
with the solemn nature of the theme. But "The Gray Brother" is a mere
fragment which Scott never would complete--owing, perhaps, to a secret
consciousness, that he had already marred the unity of the poem by
sketching in a modern landscape behind his antique figures. Give him,
however, a martial subject--let his eye but once kindle, and his cheek
flush at the call of the trumpet, and we defy you to find his equal.
Read--O ye poetasters who are now hammering at Crecy--read the "Bonnets
of Dundee," and then, if you have a spark of candour left, you will
shove your foolscap into the fire. Or tell us if you really flatter
yourselves that, were your lives prolonged to the perpetuity of the
venerable Parr, you ever would produce ten stanzas worthy of being
printed in the same volume with these:--
"The Coronach's cried on Bennachie,
And down the Don and a',
And Hieland and Lawland may mournfu' be,
For the sair field of Harlaw.
They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae saddled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse's head,
And a good knight upon his back.
They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae,
Wi' twenty thousand men.
Their tartans they were waving wide,
Their glaives were glancing clear,
The pibrochs rung frae side to side,
Would deafen you to hear.
The great Earl in his stirrups stood,
That Highland host to see;
'Now here a knight that's stout and good,
May prove a jeopardie.
'What would ye do, my squire so gay,
That rides beside my rein,
Were ye Glenallan's Earl this day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?
'To turn the rein were sin and shame,
To fright were wondrous peril:
What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,
Were ye Glenallan's Earl?'
'Were I Glenallan's Earl this tide,
And ye were Roland Cheyne,
The spear should be in my horse's side,
The bridle upon his mane.
'If they hae twenty thousand blades,
And we twice ten times ten,
Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,
And we are mail-clad men.
'My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude,
As through the moorland fern,
Then ne'er let gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Hieland kerne!'"
Scott was no declaimer. Although bred a barrister, he estimated the
faculty of speech at its proper value, and never thought of making his
heroes, on the eve of battle, address their soldiery in a harangue which
would do credit to a President of the Speculative Society. In certain
positions, eloquence is not only thrown away, but is felt to be rank
impertinence. No need of rhetorical artifice to persuade the mob to the
pumping of a pickpocket, or, in case of a general row, to the assault of
an intoxicated policeman. Such things come quite naturally to their
hands without exhortation, and it is dangerous to interfere with
instinct. The Homeric heroes are, of any thing, a little too much given
to talking. You observe two hulking fellows, in all their panoply of
shield and armour, drawing nigh to one another at the fords of the
Scamander, each with a spear about the size of a moderate ash-tree
across his shoulder. The well-greaved Greek, you already know, is deep
in the confidences of Minerva; the hairy Trojan, on the contrary, is
protected by the Lady Venus. You expect an immediate onslaught; when, to
your astonishment, the Greek politely craves some information touching a
genealogical point in the history of his antagonist's family; whereat
the other, nothing loath, indulges him with a yarn about Assaracus. Tros
being out of breath, the Argive can do nothing less than proffer a
bouncer about Hercules; so that, for at least half an hour, they stand
lying like a brace of Sinbads--whilst Ajax, on the right, is spearing
his proportion of the Dardans, and Sarpedon doing equal execution among
the unfortunate Achivi on the left. Nor, until either warrior has
exhausted his patriarchal reminiscences, do they heave up the boss and
the bull-hide, or make play for a thrust at the midriff. Now, unless the
genealogy of their opponents was a point of honour with the
ancients--which it does not appear to have been--these colloquies seem a
little out of place. In the middle ages, a knight would not enter the
lists against an opponent of lesser rank; and in such a case,
explanation is intelligible. But in battle there was no distinction of
ranks, and no man cared a stiver about the birth and parentage of
another. Genealogies, in fact, are awkward things, and should be
eschewed by gentlemen in familiar discourse, as tending much less
towards edification than offence. Many people are absurdly jealous on
the subject of their coffined sires; nor is it wise in convivial moments
to strike up an ancestral ditty to the tune of--
"Green grows the grass o'er the graves of my governors."
It was an unfortunate accident of this kind which led to the battle of
the Reidswire.
"Carmichael bade him speak out plainly,
And cloke no cause for ill nor gude;
The other, answering him as vainly,
_Began to reckon kin and blude._
He rase, and raxed him, where he stude,
And bade him match him with his marrows:
Then Tynedale heard them reason rude,
And they loot off a flight of arrows."
Scott's heroes are unusually terse and taciturn. They know their
business better than to talk when they should be up and doing; and
accordingly, with them, it is just a word and a blow.
"But no whit weary did he seem,
When, dancing in the sunny beam,
He marked the crane on the Baron's crest;
For his ready spear was in its rest.
Few were the words, and stern and high,
That marked the foemen's feudal hate;
For question fierce and proud reply,
Gave signal soon of dire debate.
Their very coursers seem'd to know,
That each was other's mortal foe,
And snorted fire, when wheel'd around,
To give each knight his vantage ground.
In rapid round the Baron bent;
He sighed a sigh, and pray'd a prayer;
The prayer was to his patron saint--
The sigh was to his ladye fair.
Stout Deloraine nor sigh'd nor pray'd,
Nor saint nor ladye called to aid;
But he stoop'd his head, and couch'd his spear,
And spurr'd his stead to full career.
The meeting of these champions proud
Seem'd like the bursting thunder-cloud."
This, you observe, is practical eloquence,--the perfect pantomime of
rhetoric; and, when your eyes have recovered the dazzling shock of the
encounter, you shall see William of Deloraine lying on the green sward,
with the Baron's spear-head sunk a foot within his bosom. Nothing, in
short, can be more conclusive or satisfactory.
Let us now take an instance to the contrary. Few men have written with
more fire and energy than Mr Macaulay; and, in the heart of a battle, he
handles his falchion like a Legionary. Still, every now and then, the
rhetorician peeps out in spite of himself, and he goes through the
catalogue of the topics. Nothing can be better or more ballad-like than
the blunt declaration by Horatius of his readiness to keep the bridge:--
"Then out spoke bold Horatius,
The captain of the gate:
'To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?'"
Not one other word should stout old Cocles have uttered, of apology for
claiming to himself the post of danger and of death. No higher motive
need he have assigned than those contained in the last two lines, which
must have gone home at once to the heart of every Roman. But the poet
will not leave him there. He interpolates another stanza, which has the
effect of diluting the strength of the passage.
"'And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
Her baby at her breast;
And for the holy maidens
Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
That wrought the deed of shame?'"
The whole of this stanza is bad;--the last four lines of it simply and
purely execrable. Mr Macaulay is far too judicious a critic not to be
fully aware of the danger of any weak passage in a short poem of
incident; and we trust, in the next edition, to see this palpable
eye-sore removed. But it is in the ballad of Virginia that his besetting
tendency towards declamation becomes most thoroughly apparent. You are
to suppose yourself in the market-place of Rome;--the lictors of
Claudius have seized upon the daughter of the centurion; the people have
risen in wrath at the outrage; and, for a moment, there is hope of
deliverance. But the name of the decemvir still carries terror with it,
and the commons waver at the sound. In this crisis, Icilius, the
betrothed of the virgin, appears, and delivers a long essay of some
fifty double lines, upon the spirit and tendency of the Roman
constitution. This is a great error. Speeches, when delivered in the
midst of a popular tumult, must be pithy in order to be effective: nor
was Appius such an ass as to have lost the opportunity afforded him by
this dialectic display, of effectually securing his captive.
There is no literary legacy the people of Scotland ought to be so
thankful as for their rich inheritance of national ballads. In this
respect they stand quite unrivalled in Europe; for, although the
Scandinavian peninsula has a glorious garland of its own, and Spain and
England are both rich in traditionary story, our northern ballad poetry
is wider in its compass, and far more varied in the composition of its
material. The high and heroic war-chant, the deeds of chivalrous
emprise, the tale of unhappy love, the mystic songs of fairy-land,--all
have been handed down to us, for centuries, unmutilated and unchanged,
in a profusion which is almost marvellous, when we reflect upon the
great historic changes and revolutions which have agitated the country.
For such changes, though tending essentially towards the production of
the ballad, especially in the historical department, cannot possibly be
favourable to its preservation; and no stronger proof of the intense
nationality of the people of Scotland can be found than this--that the
songs commemorative of our earlier heroes have outlived the Reformation,
the union of the two crowns, the civil and religious wars of the
revolution, and the subsequent union of the kingdoms; and, at a
comparatively late period, were collected from the oral traditions of
the peasantry. Time had it not in its power to chill the memories which
lay warm at the nation's heart, or to efface the noble annals of its
long and eventful history. There is a spell of potency still in the
names of the Bruce and the Douglas.
By whom those ballads were written, is a question beyond solution. A
large portion of them were, we know, composed long before the Press was
in existence--some, probably, may date so far back as the reign of
Alexander the Third--and to their own intrinsic merit are they indebted
for preservation. But we are in ignorance of the authorship even of
those which are much nearer to our own immediate period. Much of the
Jacobite minstrelsy, and of the songs commemorative, of the Fifteen and
the Forty-five, is anonymous; and we cannot tell whether those ditties,
which have still the power to thrill our hearts so strangely, were
written by gentle or by simple, in the hall or by the cottage fire.
After all, it matters not. The poet of Otterbourne will be greater
without a name, than fifty modern versifiers whom it would be odious to
particularise, notwithstanding the blazon of their Christian and
patronymic prefix. Better to live for ever innominate in a song, than
to be quoted for a life-time by one's friends, as a self-marked and
immolated driveller.
"Give me," said Fletcher of Saltoun, "the making of a nation's ballads,
and I will let you make its laws." This was, in our opinion, a speech of
considerable boldness; and if Fletcher really made it, he must have had
a high estimate of his own poetical powers. Why then, in the name of
Orpheus, did he not set about it incontinently? We presume that there
was nothing whatever to have prevented him from concocting as many
ballads as he chose; or from engaging, as engines of popular
promulgation, the ancestors of those unshaven and raucous gentlemen, to
whose canorous mercies we are wont, in times of political excitement, to
intrust our own personal and patriotic ditties. Seldom, indeed, have we
experienced a keener sense of our true greatness as a poet, than when we
encountered, on one occasion, a peripatetic minstrel, deafening the
Canongate with the notes of our particular music, and surrounded by an
eager crowd demanding the halfpenny broadsheet. "This is fame!" we
exclaimed to a legal friend who was beside us; and, with a glow of
triumph on our countenance, we descended the North Bridge, to indite
another of the same. Notwithstanding this, we cannot aver from
experience that our ballads have wrought any marked effect in modifying
the laws of the country. We cannot even go the length of asserting that
they have once turned an election; and therefore it is not unnatural
that we should regard the dogma of Fletcher with distrust. The truth is,
that a nation is the maker of its own ballads. You cannot by any
possibility contrive to sway people from their purpose by a song; but
songs--ballads especially--are the imperishable records of their
purpose. And therefore it is that they survive, because they are real
and not ideal. It is no feigned passion which they convey, but the
actual reflex of that which has arisen, and wrought, and expended
itself; and each historical ballad is, in fact, a memorial of a national
impulse; and wo be to the man who would attempt to illustrate the past,
if he cannot again create within himself the sympathies and the motives
which led to the deeds he must celebrate. Wo be to him, we say--for as
sure as there is truth in the retributive justice of posterity, he will
attain an eminent position, not in the roll of beatified bards, but in
that of the British blockheads, and be elected by unanimous consent as a
proper Laureate for the Fogie Club.
It is now a good many years since Sir Walter Scott compiled his
_Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. Previous to the publication of that
work, several excellent collections of the older Scottish ballads had
been made, and industrious gleaners have since gathered up every stray
traditionary ear of corn which still lay unnoticed in the furrow. Our
excellent friend Robert Chambers, availing himself of all these labours,
has given, in a popular form, the essence and spirit of the whole; nor
does there, we believe, exist a single fragment of the least merit which
has escaped so rigorous a search. We understood that the English ballads
had long ago been collected. These were neither so numerous nor so
romantic as ours; but they had fallen at a much earlier date into the
hands of the antiquaries, and we hardly expected in our day to be told
of a considerable addition. Therefore it was with no little
astonishment, and some curiosity, that we perused the announcement of a
new work entitled, "The Minstrelsy of the English Border; being a
collection of ballads, ancient, remodelled, and original--founded on
well-known Border legends. With illustrative notes by Frederick
Sheldon."
Predisposed though we certainly were to do every justice to the original
strains of Mr Sheldon, he will forgive us when we own that the ancient
ballads were the primary objects of our quest. We were eager to discover
what kind of materials--what snatches of antique song, he had rescued
from oblivion among the wild moors of Northumberland; and his preface
gave us ample hope of the choice nature of his budget.
"No doubt," says Mr Sheldon, alluding to Sir Walter's literary
researches upon the Border--"no doubt many ballads _did_ escape, and
still remain scattered up and down the country side, existing, probably,
in the recollection of many a sun-browned shepherd, or the
weather-beaten brains of ancient hinds, or 'eldern' women; or in the
well-thumbed and nearly illegible leaves of some old book or pamphlet of
songs, snugly resting on the 'pot-head,' or sharing their rest with the
'great ha' bible,' 'Scott's Worthies,' or 'Blind Harry's' lines. The
parish dominie, or pastor of some obscure village amid the many nooks
and corners of the Borders, possesses, no doubt, treasures in the ballad
ware, that would have gladdened the heart of a Ritson, a Percy, or a
Surtees; in the libraries, too, of many an ancient descendant of a
Border family, some black-lettered volume of ballads doubtlessly
slumbers in hallowed and unbroken dust. From such sources I have
obtained many of the ballads in the present collection. Those to which I
have stood godfather, and so baptised and remodelled, I have mostly met
with in the 'broadside' ballads, as they are called; but notwithstanding
their fire and pathos, I found so much obscenity and libertinism mingled
with their beauties, that I was compelled with a rash hand to pluck the
nettles away that choked the healthy growth of the young, fresh, and
budding flowers; preserving, as nearly as I could, their ancient
simplicity and diction. Others, by local and nameless poets, I have
given as I found them. Those ballads, virtually my own, are stated to be
so in the notes, and these, with great fear and tribulation, I hang as a
votive wreath on the altar of the Muses." This is explicit and
satisfactory, and we shall now proceed to see how our author has
redeemed his promise.
We have read every one of the thirty-seven ballads contained in this
volume, and the following is our synoptical view. Of "original"
ballads--by which Mr Sheldon means those which must be attributed to his
own inspired pen, and which constitute, as aforesaid, his votive
wreath--there are no less than thirteen; four ballads are taken from the
works of Messrs Mackay, Wilson, Telfer, and Hall--bards who have
flourished during the last twenty years upon the Border; four are
"remodelled" by Mr Sheldon; and _sixteen_, having no other
distinguishing mark upon them, must be set down as "ancient"
compositions. The man who can bestow upon us at the present time sixteen
authentic and hitherto unknown ballads, is indeed a public benefactor!
Out of courtesy to Mr Sheldon, we shall, in the first instance, dispose
of his own particular garland; and as it would be a pity to dismember
such a posy, we shall merely lay before our readers the following
_morceau_ from the ballad of "Seton's Sons."
"Seton he gaspit and he girn'd,
And showed his teeth sae whyte,
His een were glaikit like a man's
That's strycken wi' affryghte.
Quo' he, 'Lorde Percy, dinna think
I speak your lugs to blaw;
But let him spare my twa brave sonnes
And at his feet I'll fa!
'And wat them wi' these happing tears
That wash my auld, auld een,--
That channel down these wrynkelets,
Gin he will list bedeen.'
'My bairnies,' quo' the mother then,
'That I have kist sae aft,
Canna we save them frae their death,
But sic a pryce we coft?
'Thare pretty necks I've slibbered sae
Ah! Percy, gentil lord,
To hae them raxed upon a tree,
And strangled wi' a cord!'"
Admirers of the ancient ballad--what do you say to that? There is the
fine old Scots dialect in all its purity with a vengeance! In what part
of the island such a jargon is spoken, we are fortunately at present
unaware. Certain we are that our fathers never heard it; and as for
ourselves, though reasonably cognizant of the varieties of speech which
are current in Gilmerton, Aberdeen, the Crosscauseway and the Gorbals,
we protest that we never yet met with any thing so cacophonous as this.
It is impossible, however, to deny Mr Sheldon the merit of pure
originality. Nobody but himself could have written the first glorious
stanza, which embodies so perfect a picture of despair, or the second,
in which the old familiar phrase of "blawing intill his lug" is so
appositely adapted to verse, and put into the mouth of a knightly
Scottish commander. Lady Seton, too, is exquisite in her way. The
"slibbering" reminiscence--which, we presume, is equivalent to
slobbering--is one of those natural touches which, once uttered, can
never be forgotten.
It will, we opine, be sufficient to quench the curiosity of our readers,
when we state that the above is a fair average specimen of Mr Sheldon's
original productions. We presume that few will thirst for another
draught from this pitcherful of the Border Helicon; and--as time
presses--we shall now push forward to the consideration of the
remodelled poetry. The first of these is called "Halidon Hill," and, as
we are informed in the notes, it dates back to the respectable antiquity
of 1827. The following magnificent stanzas will convey some idea of the
spirit and style of that production.
Glower'd the Scot down on his foe:
'Ye coof, I cam not here to ride;
But syne it is so, give me a horse,
I'll curry thee thine English hide.'
Quod Benhal, 'I cam to fight a man
And not a blude mastyff,--
Were ye a man and no a pup,
Saint Bride I had as lief.'
'Foam not, or fret, thou baby knicht,
_Put some food in thy wame_,
For thou art but the champion
Of some fond Norfolk dame.
'My dog shall shake thy silken hide,
Thy brainis prove his fee,
Gif in that bagie skull of thine
There any brainis be.'
'Thou art a bragging piece of clay,
Sae fyrst wise prove thy threat;'
Loud geckit Trummall as he cried,
'I'll mak' thee haggish meat!!'"
Yes, reader--you may well stare! but such is absolutely the rubbish
which has been shot from the Chiswick Press. Next--hear it, ye powers of
impudence!--Allan Cunningham's beautiful ballad of Lady Anne, makes its
appearance as "Lady Nell." We need scarcely add that in such hands the
virgin degenerates into a drab. The other remodelments are trash. The
"Merchant's Garland" is a new version by Sheldon of a street ditty
called the "Factor's Garland," of which we happen to have a copy in a
collection of penny histories. It is as much an ancient ballad as the
Murder of William Weare--is dear at the ransom of a brass farthing--and
commences thus:
"Behold, here's a ditty that's new, and no jest,
Concerning a young gentleman in the East,
Who, by his great gaming came to poverty,
And afterwards went many voyages to sea.
Being well educated, and one of great wit,
Three merchants of London, they all thought it fit,
To make him their captain, and factor also,
And for them to Turkey a voyage he did go."
This is sorry enough doggrel, as every one who has the capacity of
reckoning feet upon his fingers must allow; but Sheldon fairly trumps
it. In a fit of enthusiasm, he has enlisted the name of a friend in the
service, and that gentleman must doubtless feel infinitely obliged for
the honour of such immortalisation.
"Syr Carnegie's gane owre the sea,
And's plowing thro' the main,
And now must make a lang voyage,
The red gold for to gain.
Now woe befall the cogging die,
And weary the painted beuks,
A Christian curse go with all naigs,
And eke all hounds and cocks.
Three merchants of great London town,
To save the youth were bent,
And they sent him as factor to Turkish ground,
For the gaming has hym shent."
Poets of the Isle of Muck, did ye ever listen to such a strain? Now let
us take a look at the works of the ancients. The first in point of order
is the "Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh," touching which Mr Sheldon
gives us the following information. "This ballad was made by the old
mountain bard, Duncan Fraser of Cheviot, who lived A.D. 1320, and, was
first printed some years ago, from an ancient MS., by Robert Lambe,
vicar of Norham." We do not know what exact time maybe meant by the
phrase "some years ago," but the fact is that the "Laidley Worm,"--which
is neither more nor less than a very poor version of the old Scots
Ballad, "Kempion"--was, according to Sir Walter Scott, "_either entirely
composed, or rewritten_, by the Rev. Mr Lamb of Norham," and had been so
often published, that it was not thought worth while to insert it in the
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. For the same reason, and for its
inferior quality, it was kept out of Mr S. C. Hall's "Book of British
Ballads." Intrinsically it is so bad, that Mr Sheldon himself might have
written it in a moment of extraordinary inspiration; indeed the
following three verses, are in every way worthy of his pen;--
"He sprinkled her with three drops o' the well,
In her palace where she stood;
When she grovelled down upon her belly,
A foul and loathsome toad.
And on the lands, near Ida's towers,
A loathsome toad she crawls,
And venom spits on every thing,
Which cometh to the walls.
The virgins all of Bamborough town,
Will swear that they have seen
This spiteful toad of monstrous size,
Whilst walking in the green."
We are now coolly asked to believe that this stuff was written in the
fourteenth century, and reprinted, seven years ago, from an ancient
manuscript. But we must not be surprised at any thing from a gentleman
who seems impressed with the idea that the Chronicles of Roger Hoveden
are written in the English language.
We next come to a ballad entitled "The Outlandish Knight," whereof Mr
Sheldon gives us the following history. "This ballad I have copied from
a broadsheet, in the possession of a gentleman of Newcastle; it has also
been published in 'Richardson's Table Book.' _The verses with inverted
commas_, I added at the suggestion of a friend, as it was thought that
the Knight was not rendered sufficiently odious, without this new trait
of his dishonour."
So far well; but Mr Sheldon ought, at the same time, to have had the
candour to tell us the source from which he pilfered those verses. His
belief in the ignorance and gullibility of the public must indeed be
unbounded, if he expected to pass off without discovery a vamped version
of "May Collean." That fine ballad is to be found in the collections of
Herd, Sharpe, Motherwell, and Chambers; and seldom, indeed, have we met
with a case of more palpable cribbage, as the following specimen will
demonstrate:--