[it might be the first line of a Shakespeare sonnet]
You seem to walk on air,
Birds sing their sweet songs to you,
No cloud in your skies of blue,
Sunshine all the happy day, etc.
These rhapsodies tend to become a little tedious. But one feels the warm
touch of reality in
I want to snuggle, I want to snuggle,
I know a cosy place for two.
I want to snuggle, I want to snuggle,
I want to feel that love is true.
Take me in your arms as lovers do.
Hold me very tight and kiss me too.
I want to snuggle, I want to snuggle,
I want to snuggle close to you.
This is sound; but it does not come up to the best of the popular
lyrics. The agonized passion expressed in the words and music of “You
Made Me Love You” is something one does not easily forget, though that
great song is as old as the now distant origins of ragtime.
The Poetry of Filial Devotion is almost as extensive as the Poetry of
Amour. _McGlennon_ teems with such outbursts as this:
You are a wonderful mother, dear old mother of mine.
You’ll hold a spot down deep in my heart
Till the stars no longer shine.
Your soul shall live on for ever,
On through the fields of time,
For there’ll never be another to me
Like that wonderful mother of mine.
Even Grandmamma gets a share of this devotion:
Granny, my own, I seem to hear you calling me;
Granny, my own, you are my sweetest memory ...
If up in heaven angels reign supreme,
Among the angels you must be the Queen.
Granny, my own, I miss you more and more.
The last lines are particularly rich. What a fascinating heresy, to hold
that the angels reign over their Creator!
The Poetry of Recollection and Regret owes most, both in words and
music, to the hymn. _McGlennon_ provides a choice example in “Back from
the Land of Yesterday”:
Back from the land of yesterday,
Back to the friends of yore;
Back through the dark and dreary way
Into the light once more.
Back to the heart that waits for me,
Warmed by the sunshine above;
Back from the old land of yesterday’s dreams
To a new land of life and love.
What it means, goodness only knows. But one can imagine that, sunk to a
slow music in three-four time—some rich religious waltz-tune—it would be
extremely uplifting and edifying. The decay of regular churchgoing has
inevitably led to this invasion of the music-hall by the hymn. People
still want to feel the good uplifting emotion, and they feel it with a
vengeance when they listen to songs about
the land of beginning again,
Where skies are always blue ...
Where broken dreams come true.
The great advantage of the music-hall over the church is that the
uplifting moments do not last too long.
Finally, there is the great Home motif. “I want to be,” these lyrics
always begin, “I want to be almost anywhere that is not the place where
I happen at the moment to be.” M. Louis Estève has called this longing
“Le Mal de la Province,” which in its turn is closely related to “Le Mal
de l’au-delà.” It is one of the worst symptoms of romanticism.
Steamer, balançant ta mâture,
Lève l’ancre vers une exotique nature,
exclaims Mallarmé, and the Folk, whom that most exquisite of poets
loathed and despised, echo his words in a hundred different keys. There
is not a State in America where they don’t want to go. In _McGlennon_ we
find yearnings expressed for California, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and
Georgia. Some sigh for Ireland, Devon, and the East. “Egypt! I am
calling you; oh, life is sweet and joys complete when at your feet I lay
[_sic_].” But the Southern States, the East, Devon, and Killarney are
not enough. The Mal de l’au-delà succeeds the Mal de la Province. The
Folk yearn for extra-mundane worlds. Here, for example, is an expression
of nostalgia for a mystical “Kingdom within your Eyes”:
Somewhere in somebody’s eyes
Is a place just divine,
Bounded by roses that kiss the dew
In those dear eyes that shine.
Somewhere beyond earthly dreams,
Where love’s flower never dies,
God made the world, and He gave it to me
In that kingdom within your eyes.
If there is any characteristic which distinguishes contemporary folk
poetry from the folk poetry of other times it is surely its
meaninglessness. Old folk poetry is singularly direct and to the point,
full of pregnant meaning, never vague. Modern folk poetry, as
exemplified in _McGlennon_, is almost perfectly senseless. The
Elizabethan peasant or mechanic would never have consented to sing or
listen to anything so flatulently meaningless as “Back from the Land of
Yesterday” or “The Kingdom within your Eyes.” His taste was for
something clear, definite and pregnant, like “Greensleeves”:
And every morning when you rose,
I brought you dainties orderly,
To clear your stomach from all woes—
And yet you would not love me.
Could anything be more logical and to the point? But we, instead of
logic, instead of clarity, are provided by our professional entertainers
with the drivelling imbecility of “Granny, my own.” Can it be that the
standard of intelligence is lower now than it was three hundred years
ago? Have newspapers and cinemas and now the wireless telephone
conspired to rob mankind of whatever sense of reality, whatever power of
individual questioning and criticism he once possessed? I do not venture
to answer. But the fact of _McGlennon_ has somehow got to be explained.
How? I prefer to leave the problem on a note of interrogation.