BALLAD STRUCTURE AND BALLAD STYLE
'Strike on, strike on, Glenkindie,
O' thy harping do not blinne,
For every stroke goes o'er thy harp,
It stounds my heart within.'
_Glenkindie._
The old ballads were made to be sung; or, at least, to be chanted. An
inquiry whether the traditional ballad airs preceded the words, or _vice
versa_, would probably lead us to no more certain conclusions than that
of whether the egg came before the fowl or the fowl before the egg. Both
ballads and ballad airs have come down to us greatly changed and
corrupted; and probably it is the airs that have suffered most from
neglect and from alteration. Notation of the simple and plaintive and
sweet old melodies appropriated in the ears and lips of the people to
the words of particular ballads came long after the transcribing of the
words themselves. There are other elements of perplexity and difficulty
in ballad music which require an expert to unravel and explain, and
which cannot be entered into here. The subject is referred to only
because, in the eyes of the original composers and singers at least, to
dissever the words from the tune would have seemed like parting soul
from body; and because no right notion can be gathered of the Scottish
ballads without bearing in mind the part which the ancient airs have
taken in framing their structure and in moulding their style.
Like the ballads themselves, the 'sets' of ballad airs vary with the
localities; and even in the same district different airs will be found
sung to the same words and different words to the same air. But of many
of the older ballads, at least, it may be affirmed that, from time
immemorial, they have been preserved in a certain musical setting which
has not altered more in transmission from place to place and from
generation to generation than have the ballads themselves, and which has
so wrought itself into the texture and essence of the tale that it is
impossible to think of them apart. The analogy of the Scottish psalmody
may, perhaps, be used in illustration. In it, also, there is a 'common
measure' that can be fitted at will to the common metre--in the psalms,
as in the ballads, the alternation of lines of four and three accented
syllables. In the one case, as in the other, there is a certain family
resemblance, in the melody as in the theme, that to the untrained and
unaccustomed ear may convey an impression of monotony. But to each
ballad, as to each psalm, there belongs a peculiar strain or lilt,
touched, as a rule, with a solemn or piercing pathos, often cast in the
plaintive minor mode, that alone can bring out the full inner meaning
of the words, and that is endeared and hallowed by centuries of
association. As easily might we explain why the words and air of the
'Old Hundredth' or the 'Old 124th' belong to each other, as analyse the
wedded harmony of the verse and music in _The Broom o' the
Cowdenknowes_, or _Barbara Allan_, or _The Bonnie House o' Airlie_.
But not all, and not all the sweetest and the best of our ballad
strains, are so firmly fixed in the memory as these; because, for one
thing, they have not all enjoyed the same popularity of print. As a
rule, and until this popularity comes, it may be taken that the greater
the variations in tune and in words the greater the age. The late Dean
Christie, of Fochabers, an enthusiastic hunter after 'Traditional Ballad
Airs,' of which he found great treasure-trove in out-of-the-way nooks of
Buchan, Enzie, and other districts of the north-eastern counties, tells
us, from his experience, that 'the differences in the versions of the
Romantic Ballads, as sung in the different counties, may be taken as a
proof of their antiquity.' He had 'seldom heard two ballad-singers sing
a ballad in the same way, either in words or music'; and he holds it
'almost impossible to find the true set of any traditional air, unless
the set can be traced genuinely to its composer,' a task, it need hardly
be said, still more difficult than that of tracing the ballad words to
the original balladist. It is also the opinion of this authority, that
it is well-nigh impossible 'to arrange the traditional melodies without
hearing them sung to the words of the ballad, the words and the air
being so interwoven.' May it not be said, with equal truth, that those
who know only the words of _Binnorie_, or _Chil' Ether_, or _The Twa
Corbies_, and have never heard the strains, sweet and sad and weird,
like the wind crooning at night round a ruined tower, to which it has
been sung for untold generations, have not yet penetrated to the inmost
soul of the ballad, or got a grasp of its formative principle?
The refrain is a venerable and characteristic feature of the ballad and
ballad melody. In its refrains, as in everything else, Scottish ballad
poetry has been peculiarly happy. Some will have it that they are of
much older date than the ballads themselves. It has been suggested that
many of them--and these the refrains that have lost, if they ever
possessed, any definite or intelligible meaning to the ear--may be
relics not merely of ancient song, but of ancient rites and
incantations, and of a forgotten speech. Attempts have been made to
interpret, for instance, the familiar 'Down, down, derry down,' as a
Celtic invocation to assemble at the hill of sacrifice--a survival of
pagan times when the altars smoked with human victims. It need only be
said that these ingenious theorists have not yet proved their case; and
that the origin of the refrain is a subject involved in still greater
obscurity than that of the ballad itself.
Like the ballad verses and the ballad airs, also, these 'owerwords' are
exceedingly variable, and are often interchangeable. Some of them are
'owerwords' literally; that is to say, they simply repeat or echo a word
or phrase of the stanza to which they are attached. A specimen is the
verse from _Johnie o' Braidislee_, quoted in the previous chapter.
Others, and these, as has been said, among the refrains of most ancient
and honourable lineage, bear the appearance of words whose meaning has
been forgotten. 'With rombelogh' has come rumbling down to us from the
days of Bannockburn; and may even then have been of such eld that the
key to its interpretation had already been lost. The 'Hey, nien-nanny'
of the Scottish ballad was, under slightly different forms, old and
quaint in Shakespeare's time, and in Chaucer's. Still others have the
effect upon us of the rhyming prattle invented by children at play. They
are cries, naive or wild, from the age of innocence--cries extracted
from the children of nature by the beauty of the world or the sharp and
relentless stroke of fate. Of such are 'The broom, the bonnie, bonnie
broom,' 'Hey wi' the rose and the lindie o',' 'Blaw, blaw, ye cauld
winds blaw,' and their congeners. These sweet and idyllic notes are
often interposed in some of the very grimmest of our ballads. They
suggest a harping interlude between lines that, without this relief,
would be weighted with an intolerable load of horror or sorrow. There
are refrain lines--'Bonnie St. Johnston stands fair upon Tay' is an
example--which seem to hint that they may have been borrowed from some
old ballad that, except for this preluding or interjected note, has
utterly 'sunk dumb.' But more noticeable are those haunting burdens
which, in certain moods, seem somehow to have absorbed more of the story
than the ballad lines they accompany--that appeal to an inner sense with
a directness and poignancy beyond the power of words to which we attach
a coherent meaning. How deeply the sense of dread, of approaching
tragedy, as well as that of colour and locality, is stimulated by the
iteration of the drear owerword, 'All alone and alonie,' or 'Binnorie, O
Binnorie!' How the horror of a monstrous crime creeps nearer with each
repetition of the cry, 'Mither, Mither!' in the wild dialogue between
mother and son in _Edward_! Like Glenkindie's harping, every stroke
'stounds the heart within'--we scarce can tell how or why.
Like the early Christians, the old balladists seem to have believed in
community of goods. They had a kind of joint-stock of ideas, epithets,
images; and freely borrowed and exchanged among themselves not merely
refrains and single lines, but whole verses, passages, and situations.
Always frugal in the employment of ornament in his text, the balladist
never troubled to invent when he found a descriptive phrase or figure
made and lying ready to his hand. Plagiarism from his brother bards was
a thing that troubled him no more than repeating himself. He lived and
sang in times before the literary conscience had been awakened or the
literary canon had been laid down--or at least in places and among
company where the fear of these, and of the critic, had never
penetrated; and he borrowed, copied, adapted, without any sense of shame
or remorse, because without any sense of sin. He has his conventional
manner of opening, and his established formula for closing his tale. In
portraiture, in scenery, in costume, he is simplicity itself. The
heroine of the ballad, and, for that matter, the hero also, as a rule,
must have 'yellow hair.' If she is not a Lady Maisry, it is a wonder if
she be not a May Margaret or a Fair Annie, although there is also a
goodly sprinkling of Janets, and Helens, and Marjories, and Barbaras in
the enchanted land of ballad poetry. Sweet William has always been the
favourite choice of the balladist, among the Christian names of the
knightly wooers. Destiny presides over their first meeting. The king's
daughters
'Cast kevils them amang,
To see who will to greenwood gang';
and the lot falls upon the youngest and fairest--the youngest is always
the fairest and most beloved in the ballad. The note of a bugle horn,
and the pair see each other, and are made blessed and undone. Like Celia
and Oliver in the Forest of Arden they no sooner look than they sigh;
they no sooner sigh than they ask the reason; and as soon as they know
the reason they apply the remedy. Or, mounted on 'high horseback,' the
lover comes suddenly upon the lady among her sisters or her
bower-maidens 'playin' at the ba'.'
'There were three ladies played at the ba',
Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O!
There cam' a knight and played o'er them a',
Where the primrose blooms so sweetly.
The knight he looted to a' the three,
Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O!
But to the youngest he bowed the knee
Where the primrose blooms so sweetly.'
He sends messages that reach his true love's ear, through the guard of
'bauld barons' and 'proud porters,' by his little footpage, who,
'When he came to broken brig,
He bent his bow and swam,
And when he came to grass growin',
Set down his feet and ran.
And when he came to the porter's yett,
Stayed neither to chap or ca',
But set his bent bow to his breast,
And lightly lap the wa'.'
Or the knight comes himself to the bower door at witching and untimely
hours--at 'the to-fa' o' the nicht,' or at the crowing of the 'red red
cock'--and 'tirles at the pin.' But always treachery, in the shape of
envious step-dame, angry brother, or false squire, is watching and
listening. Six perils may go past, but the seventh is sure to strike its
mark. Even should the course of true love run smoothly almost to the
church door, something is sure to happen. Love is hot and swift as flame
in the ballads, although it does not waste itself in honeyed phrases. It
is quick to take offence; and at a hasty word the lovers start apart,
'Lord Thomas spoke a word in jest,
Fair Annet took it ill.'
But more often the bolt comes out of the blue from another and jealous
hand. The bride sets out richly apparelled and caparisoned to the tryst
with the bridegroom. Her girdle is of gold and her skirts of the
cramoisie. Four-and-twenty comely knights ride at her side, and
four-and-twenty fair maidens in her train. The very hoofs of her steed
are 'shod in front with the yellow gold and wi' siller shod behind.' To
every teat of his mane is hung a silver bell, and,
'At every tift o' the norland win'
They tinkle ane by ane.'
If the voyage is by sea,
'The masts are a' o' the beaten gold
And the sails o' the taffetie.'
The old minstrel loved to linger over and repeat these details, and his
audience, we may feel sure, never tired of hearing them. But they knew
that calamity was coming, and would overtake bride and groom before they
had gone, by sea or land,
'A league, a league,
A league, but barely three.'
It might be in the shape of storm or flood. One ballad opens:
'Annan Water 's runnin' deep,
And my love Annie 's wondrous bonnie,'
and afar off we see what is going to happen. But greater danger than
from salt sea wave or 'frush saugh bush' is to be apprehended from the
poisoned cup of the slighted rival or the dagger of the jealous brother.
The knight had perhaps forgotten when he came courting his love to
'spier at her brither John'; and when she stoops from horseback to kiss
this sinister kinsman at parting, he thrusts his sword into her heart.
The rosy face of the bride is wan, and her white bodice is full of blood
when the gay bridegroom greets her, and he is left 'tearing his yellow
hair.' More often, death itself does not sunder these lovers dear:
'Lady Margaret was dead lang e'er midnicht,
And Lord William lang e'er day.'
And when they are buried, there springs up from their graves, as has
happened in all the ballad lore and _maerchen_ of all the Aryan nations:
'Out of the one a bonnie rose bush,
And out o' the other a brier,'
that 'met and pleat' in a true lovers' knot in emblem of the immortality
of love, as love was in the olden time.
These are all hackneyed phrases and incidents of the old balladists, the
merest counters, borrowed, worn, and passed on through bards
innumerable. But what fire and colour, what strength and pathos,
continue to live in them! They smell of 'Flora and the fresh-delved
earth'; they are redolent of the spring-time of human passion and
thought. For the most part they belong to all ballad poetry, and not to
the Scottish ballads alone. But there are other touches that seem to be
peculiar to the genius of our own land and our own ballad literature;
and, as has been said, one can with no great difficulty note the
characteristic marks of the song of a particular district and even of an
individual singer. The romantic ballads of the North, for example,
although in no way behind those of the Border in strength and in
tenderness, are commonly of rougher texture. They lack often the grace
which, in the versions sung in the South, the minstrel knew how to
combine with the manly vigour of his song; they are content with
assonance where the other must have rhyme; and in many long and popular
ballads, such as _Tiftie's Annie and Geordie_, there is scarcely so much
as a good sound rhyme from beginning to end. One sometimes fancies that
these Aberdonian ballads bear signs of being 'nirled' and toughened by
the stress of the East Wind; they are true products of a keen, sharp
climate working upon a deep and rich, but somewhat dour and stiff,
historic soil.
Whether they come from the north or the south side of Tay, whether they
use up the traditional plots and phrases, or strike out an original line
in the story and language, our ballads have all this precious quality,
that they reflect transparently the manners and morals of their time,
and human nature in all times. Their vast superiority, alike in truth
and in beauty, over those imitations of them that were put forward last
century as improvements upon the rude old lays, may best be seen,
perhaps, by laying the old and the new 'set' of _Sir James the Rose_
side by side, or comparing verse by verse David Mallet's much vaunted
_William and Margaret_, with the beautiful old ballad, _There came a
ghost to Marg'ret's door_. There is indeed no comparison. The changes
made are nearly all either tinsel ornaments or mutilations of the
traditional text, which an eighteenth century poetaster had sought to
dress up to please the modish taste of the period. Nothing can be more
out of key with the simple, direct, and graphic style of the Scottish
ballads, dealing with elemental emotions and the situations arising
therefrom, than a style founded on that of Pope, unless it be the style
of the modern poet and romancist of the analytical and introspective
school.
If there ever be matter of offence in the traditional ballad, it resides
in the theme and not in the handling and language. Whatever be its
faults, it never has the taint of the vulgar; it avoids the suggestive
with the same instinct with which it avoids the vapid adjective; it is
the antithesis of the modern music-hall ditty. The balladist and his men
and women speak straight to the point, and call a spade a spade.
'Ye lee, ye lee, ye leear loud,
Sae loud 's I hear ye lee,'
and
'O wae betide you, ill woman,
And an ill death may ye dee,'
are among the familiar courtesies of colloquy. In the telling of his
tale, the minstrel puts off no time in preluding or introductory
passages. In a single verse or couplet he has dashed into the middle of
his theme, and his characters are already in dramatic parley, exchanging
words like sword-thrusts. Take the opening of the immortal _Dowie Dens
of Yarrow_, where the place, time, circumstances, and actors in the
fatal quarrel are put swiftly before us in four lines:
'Late at e'en, drinking the wine,
And e'er they paid the lawin',
They set a combat them between,
To fight it e'er the dawin'.'
Or still better example, the not less famous:
'The king sits in Dunfermline tower,
Drinking the blood-red wine.
Oh, where shall I find a skeely skipper
To sail this ship o' mine.'
Or of _Sir James the Rose_:
'O, hae ye nae heard o' Sir James the Rose,
The young laird o' Balleichan,
How he has slain a gallant squire
Whose friends are out to take him!'
Or in yet briefer space the whole materials of tragedy are given to us,
as in that widely-known and multiform legend of the _Twa Sisters_ which
Tennyson took as the basis of his _We were two daughters of one race_:
'He courted the eldest wi' glove and wi' ring,
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
But he loved the youngest aboon a' thing,
By the bonnie mill dams o' Binnorie.'
Sometimes a brilliant or glowing picture is called up before our eyes by
a stroke or two; as--
'The boy stared wild like a grey goshawk,'
or
'The mantle that fair Annie wore
It skinkled in the sun';
or
'And in at her bower window
The moon shone like a gleed';
or
'O'er his white banes when they are bare
The wind shall sigh for evermair.'
Or, to rise to the height of pity, despair, and terror to which the
ballad strains of Scotland have reached, what master of modern realism
has surpassed in trenchant and uncompromising power the passages in
_Clerk Saunders_?--
'Then he drew forth his bright long brand,
And slait it on the strae,
And through Clerk Saunders' body
He 's gart cauld iron gae';
and,
'She looked between her and the wa',
And dull and drumly were his een.'
Has it ever happened, since the harp of Orpheus drew iron tears down
Pluto's cheek, that ruth has taken so grim a form as that of _Edom o'
Gordon_, as he turned over with his spear the body of his victim?
'O gin her breast was white;
"I might have spared that bonnie face
To be some man's delight."'
Is there in the many pages of romance a climax so surprising, so
overwhelming--a revelation that in its succinct and despairing candour
goes so straight to the quick of human feeling--as that in the ballad of
_Gil Morice_?--
'"I ance was as fu' o' Gil Morice
As the hip is wi' the stane."'
To the fountainhead of our ballad-lore the great poets and romancists,
from Chaucer to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to Wordsworth and
Swinburne, and from Gavin Douglas to Burns and Scott and Stevenson, have
gone for refreshment and new inspiration, when the world was weary and
tame and sunk in the thraldom of the vulgar, the formal, and the
commonplace; and never without receiving their rich reward and
testifying their gratitude by fresh gifts of song and story, fresh
harpings on the old lyre that moved the hearts of men to tears and
laughter long before they knew of printed books. The old wellspring of
music and poetry is still open to all, and has lost none of the old
power of thrilling and enthralling; and the present is a time when a
long and deep draught from the Scottish ballads seems specially required
for the healing of a sick literature.