This personage, though shorn of bardic dignity, yet contrived to hold
his own with considerable success. In Provence and Germany, itinerant
minstrels who sang for pay brought up the rank and file of the
troubadours and minnesingers; in England and Italy and Northern
France they formed a class apart, which, as times went, was neither
ill-esteemed nor ill-paid. When the minstrel found no better audience
he mounted a barrel in the nearest tavern, or
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.
But his favourite sphere was the baronial hall; and to understand how
welcome he was there made, it is only needful to picture country life
in days when books were few and newspapers did not exist. He sang
before noble knights and gracious dames, who, to us--could we be
suddenly brought into their presence--would seem rough in their
manner, their speech, their modes of life; but who were far from being
dead or insensible to intellectual pleasure when they could get it. He
sang the choicest songs that had come down to him from an earlier age;
songs of the Round Table and of the great Charles; and then, as he
sat at meat, perhaps below the salt, but with his plate well heaped up
with the best that there was, he heard strange Eastern tales from
the newly-arrived pilgrim at his right hand, and many a wild story of
noble love or hate from the white-haired retainer at his left.
I have always thought that the old ballad-singer's world--the world in
which he moved, and again the ideal world of his songs--is nowhere to
be so vividly realised as in the Hofkirche at Innsbruck, among that
colossal company who watch the tomb of Kaiser Max; huge men and women
in richly wrought bronze array, ugly indeed, most of them, but with
two of their number seeming to embody every beautiful quality that was
possessed or dreamt of through well nigh a millennium: the pensive,
graceful form of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and the erect
figure whose very attitude suggests all manly worth, all gentle
valour, under which is read the quaint device, "Arthur _von England_."
If not rewarded with sufficient promptitude and liberality, the
ballad-singer was not slow to call attention to the fact. Colin Muset,
a jongleur who practised his trade in Lorraine and Champagne in the
thirteenth century, has left a charming photograph of contemporary
manners in a song which sets forth his wants and deserts.
Lord Count, I have the viol played[2]
Before yourself, within your hall,
And you my service never paid
Nor gave me any wage at all;
'T was villany:
By faith I to Saint Mary owe,
Upon such terms I serve you not,
My alms-bag sinks exceeding low,
My trunk ill-furnished is, I wot.
Lord Count, now let me understand,
What 'tis you mean to do for me,
If with free heart and open hand
Some ample guerdon you decree
Through courtesy;
For much I wish, you need not doubt,
In my own household to return,
And if full purse I am without,
Small greeting from my wife I earn.
"Sir Engele," I hear her say,
"In what poor country have you been,
That through the city all the day
You nothing have contrived to glean!
See how your wallet folds and bends,
Well stuffed with wind and nought beside;
Accursed is he who e'er intends
As your companion to abide."
When reached the house wherein I dwell,
And that my wife can clearly spy
My bag behind me bulge and swell,
And I myself clad handsomely
In a grey gown,
Know that she quickly throws away
Her distaff, nor of work doth reck,
She greets me laughing, kind and gay,
And twines both arms around my neck.
My wife soon seizes on my bag,
And empties it without delay;
My boy begins to groom my nag,
And hastes to give him drink and hay;
My maid meanwhile runs off to kill
Two capons, dressing them with skill
In garlic sauce;
My daughter in her hand doth bear,
Kind girl, a comb to smooth my hair.
Then in my house I am a king,
Great joyance and no sorrowing,
Happier than you can say or sing.
Ballad-singing suffered by the invention of printing, but it was in
England that the professional minstrel met with the cruellest blow of
all--the statute passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth which forbade
his recitations, and classed him with "rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy
beggars."
"Beggars they are with one consent,
And rogues by Act of Parliament."
On the other hand, it was also in England that the romantic ballad had
its revival, and was introduced to an entirely new phase of existence.
The publication of the _Percy Reliques_ (1765) started the modern
period in which popular ballads were not only to be accepted as
literature, but were to exercise the strongest influence on lettered
poets from Goethe and Scott, down to Dante Rossetti.
Not that popular poetry had ever been without its intelligent
admirers, here and there, among men of culture: Montaigne had said
of it, "La poesie populere et purement naturelle a des naifvetez et
graces par ou elle se compare a la principale beaute de la poesie
parfaicte selon l'art: comme il se voit es villanelles de Gascouigne
et aus chancons qu'on nous raporte des nations qui n'ont conoissance
d'acune science, ny mesme d'escripture." There were even ardent
collectors, like Samuel Pepys, who is said to have acquired copies of
two thousand ballads.[3] Still, till after the appearance of Bishop
Percy's book (as his own many faults of omission and commission
attest), the literary class at large did not take folk-songs quite
seriously. The _Percy Reliques_ was followed by Herder's _Volkslieder_
(1782), Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ (1802), Fauriel's
_Chansons Populaires de la Grece_ (1824), to mention only three of its
more immediate successors. The "return to Nature" in poetry became an
irresistible movement; the world, tired of the classical forms of
the eighteenth century, listened as gladly to the fresh voice of
the popular muse, as in his father's dreary palace Giacomo Leopardi
listened to the voice of the peasant girl over the way, who sang as
she plied the shuttle:
Sonavan le quiete
Stanze, e le vie dintorno.
Al tuo perpetuo canto,
Allor che all opre femminili intenta
Sedevi, assai contenta
Di quel vago avvenir che in mente avevi.
Era il Maggio odoroso: e tu solevi
Cosi menare il giorno.
* * * * *
Lingua mortal non dice
Quel ch' io sentiva in seno.
The hunt for ballads led the way to the search for every sort
of popular song, and with what zeal that search has since been
prosecuted, the splendid results in the hands of the public now
testify.