Nature, like music, does not initially make us think, it makes us
feel. A midnight scene in the Alps, a sunrise on the Mediterranean,
suspends at the moment of contemplating it all thought in pure
emotion. Afterwards, however, thought comes back and asks for a reason
for the emotion that has been felt. Man at an early age began to try
and explain, or give a tangible shape, to the feelings wrought in him
by Nature. In the first place he called the things that he saw gods,
"because the things are beautiful that are seen." Later on, seers and
myth-makers resigned their birthright into the hands of poets, who
became henceforth the interpreters between nature and man. A small
piece of this succession fell away from the great masters of the
world's song, and was picked up almost unconsciously by the obscure
and nameless folk-singer. Comparative folk-lore has shown that men
have everywhere the same customs, the same superstitions, the same
games. The study of folk-songs will go far to show that if they have
not likewise a complete community of taste and sentiment, yet even in
these, the finer fibres of their being, there is less of difference
and more of analogy than has been hitherto supposed. Folk-songs
prove, for instance, that the modern unschooled man is not so utterly
ignorant of natural beauty as many of us have imagined him to be. Only
we must not go from the extreme of expecting nothing to the extreme of
expecting too much; it has to be borne in mind that at best folk-poesy
is rather the stammering speech of children than a mature eloquence.
It is a common idea that, until the other day, mountains were looked
upon with positive aversion. Still we know that there were always men
who felt the power of the hills: the men who lived in the hills.
When they were kept too long in the plain without hope of return they
sickened and died; when a vivid picture of their mountains was of a
sudden brought up before them, they lost control over their actions.
By force of association the sound of the _Kuhreihen_ could doubtless
give the Switzer a vision of the white peak, the milky torrent, the
chalet with slanting roof, the cows tripping down the green Alp to
their night quarters. It is disappointing to find that the words
accompanying the famous cow-call are as a rule mere nonsense. The
first observation which the genuine folk-poet makes about mountains
is the sufficiently self-evident one, that they form a wall between
himself and the people on the further side. The old Pyrenean balladist
seized the political significance of this: "When God created those
mountains," he said, "He did not mean that men should cross them."
Very often the mountain wall is spoken of as a barrier which separates
lovers. The Gascon peasants have an adaptation of Gaston Phoebus'
romance:--
Aqueros mountines
Qui ta haoutes soun,
M'empechen de bede
Mas arnous oun soun.
In Bohemia the simple countryman poetises after much the same fashion
as the Gascon cavalier: "Mountain, mountain, thou art very high! My
friend, thou art far off, far beyond the mountains. Our love will fade
yet more and yet more; there is nothing left for me; in this world
no pleasantness remains." Another Czech singer laments that he is
not where his thought is; if only the mountains did not stand between
them, he would see his beloved walking in the garden and plucking blue
flowers. He tries what a prayer will do: "Mountains, black mountains,
step aside, so I may get my good friend for wife." In similar terms
the native of Friuli begs the dividing range to stoop so he may look
upon his love. Among Italian folk-poets the Friulian is foremost as
a lover of the greater heights; he turns to them habitually in his
moments of poetic inspiration, and, as he says, their echoes repeat
his sighs. It must be admitted that the Tuscan, on the contrary, feels
small sympathy with high mountains; if he speaks of one he is careful
to call it _aspra_, or rough and bitter. But he yields to no man
in his delight in the lesser hills, the _be' poggioli_ of his fair
birthland. Even if an intervening hillock divides him from his beloved
he speaks of the barrier tenderly rather than sadly: "O sun, thou that
goest over the hill-top, do me a kindness if thou canst--greet my
love whom I have not seen to-day. O sun, thou that goest over the
pear-trees, greet those black eyes. O sun, thou that goest over
the small ash-trees, greet those beautiful eyes!" A maiden sings
to herself, "I see what I see and I see not what I would; I see the
leaves flying in the air and I do not see my love turn back from the
hill-top. I do not see him turn back.... that beautiful face has gone
over the hill." A youth tells all his story in these few words: "As I
passed over the mountain-crest thy beautiful name came into my mind; I
fell upon my knees and I joined my hands, and to have left thee seemed
a sin. I fell upon my knees on the hard stones; may our love come back
as of yore!" These are pure love-songs; not by any means descriptions
of scenery, and yet how much of the Tuscan landscape lives in them!
Almost the only folk-song which is avowedly descriptive of a mountain,
comes from South Greenland:--
The great Koonak Mount yonder south I do behold it. The great
Koonak Mount yonder south I regard it. The shining brightness
yonder south I contemplate. Outside of Koonak it is expanding;
the same that Koonak towards the sea-side doth encompass.
Behold how yonder south they tend to beautify each other;
while from the sea-side it is enveloped in sheets still
changing; from the sea-side it is enveloped to mutual
embellishment.
At the first reading all this may seem incoherent; at the second or
third we begin to see the scene gradually rising before us; the masses
of sea-born cloud sweeping on and up at dawn or sunset, till, finding
their passage barred, they enwrap the obstacle in folds of golden
vapour. It is singular that the Eskimo is incessantly gazing
southwards; can it be that he, too, is dimly sensible of what a great
writer has called "_la fatigue du Nord_"?
Incidental mention of the varying aspects of peak and upland is common
enough in popular songs. The Bavarian peasant notices the clearness of
the heights while mist hangs over the valley:--
Im Thal ist der Nebel
Auf der Alm is schon klar ...
The Basque observes the "misty summits;" the Greek sees the cloud
hurrying to the heights "like winged messengers." There is the closest
intimacy between the Greek and his mountains. When he has won a
victory for freedom, they cry aloud, "God is great!" When he is in
sorrow he pines for them as for the society of friends: "Why am I not
near the hills? Why have I not the mountains to keep me company?" A
sick Kleft cries to the birds, "Birds, shall I ever be cured? Birds,
shall I recover my strength?" To which the birds reply just as might
a fashionable physician who recommends his patient to try Pontresina:
"If thou wouldst be cured, if thou wouldst have thy wounds close up,
go thou to the heights of Olympus, to the beautiful uplands where the
strong man never suffers, where the suffering regain their strength."
This fine figure of speech also occurs in a Kleft song: "The plains
thirst for water, the mountains thirst for snow."
The effect of light on his native ice-fields has not escaped the
Switzer: "The sun shines on the glacier, and in the heavens shine the
stars; O thou, my chiefest joy, how I love thee!" A Czech balladist
describes two chieftains travelling towards the sunrise, with
mountains to the right and to the left, on whose summit stands the
dawn. Again, he represents a band of warriors halting on the spurs of
the forest, while before them lies Prague, silent and asleep, with
the Veltava shrouded in morning mist; beyond, the mountains turn blue;
beyond the mountains the east is illuminated. In Bohemia mountains are
spoken of as blue or grey or shadowy; in Servia they are invariably
called green. Servians and Bulgarians cannot conceive a mountain that
is not a wood or a wood that is not a mountain; with them the two
words mean one and the same thing. The charm and beauty of the
combination of hill and forest are often dwelt upon in the Balkan
brigand songs; outlaws and their poets have been among the keenest
appreciators of nature. Who thinks of Robin Hood apart from the
greenwood tree? Who but has smelt the very fragrance of the woods as
he said over the lines?--
"In somer when the shawes be sheyn
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full merry in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song."
The Sclav or semi-Sclav bandit has not got the high moral qualities of
our "most gentle theefe," but, like him, he has suffered the heat, the
cold, the hunger, the fatigue of a life in the good greenwood,
and, like him, he has tasted its joys. Take the ballad called the
"Wintering of the Heidukes." Three friends sit drinking together in
the mountains under the trees; they sip the ruddy wine, and discuss
what they shall do in the coming winter, when the leaves have fallen
and only the naked forest is left. Each decides where he will go,
and the last one says: "So soon as the sad winter is passed, when the
forest is clad again in leaves and the earth in grass and flowers,
when the birds sing in the bushes on the banks of the Save and the
wolves are heard in the hills--then shall we meet as to-day." Spring
returns, the forest is decked again with leaves, the black earth with
flowers and grass, the bird sings in the bush, the wolves howl on
the rocky heights; two of the friends meet at the trysting place--the
third comes not; he has been slain. This is only one _Pesma_ out of
a hundred in which the mountain background is faithfully sketched.
Sometimes the forest figures as a personage. The Balkan mountaineer
more than half believes that as he loves it, so does it love him. The
instinct which insists that "love exempteth nothing loved from love"
has been a great myth-germinator, and when myths die out, it still
finds some niche in the mind of man wherein to abide. It may seem
foolish when applied to inanimate objects; it must seem false in its
human application: but reasoning will not kill it. Is there some truth
unperceived behind the apparent fallacy? The Balkan brigand cares
little for such speculations; all that he tells us is that when he
speaks to the greenwood, it most surely answers him in a soft low
voice. The Bulgarian "Farewell of Liben the brave" is a good specimen
of the dialogues between the forest and its wild denizens. Standing
on the top of the Hodja Balkan, Liben cries aloud, "Forest, O green
forest, and ye cool waters! dost thou remember, O forest, how often
I have roamed about thee with my following of young comrades bearing
aloft my red banner?" Many are the mothers, the wives, and the little
orphans whom Liben has made desolate so that they curse him. Now must
he bid farewell to the mountain, for he is going home to his mother
who will affiance him to the daughter of the Pope Nicholas. "The
forest speaks to no one, yet to Liben she replies." Enough has he
roamed with his braves; enough has he borne his red banner along the
summit of the old mountain, and under fresh and tufted shade, and
over moist green moss. Many are the mothers, the wives, and the little
orphans, who curse the forest for his sake. Till now he has had the
old mountain for mother; for love, the greenwood clothed in tufted
foliage and freshened by the cool breeze. The grass was his bed, the
leaves of the trees his coverlet; his drink came from the pure brook,
for him the wood-birds sang. "Rejoice," sang the wood-birds, "for thee
the wood is gay; the mountain and the cool brook!" But now Liben bids
farewell to the forest; he is going home that his mother may affiance
and wed him to the daughter of the Pope Nicholas.
Sea-views of the sea, rare in poetry of any sort, can scarcely be said
to exist in folk-poesy. Sailors' songs have generally not much to do
with the wonders of the deep; the larger part of them are known to be
picked up on land, and the few exceptions to the rule are mostly kept
from the ken of the outer and profane public. The Basque sailors have
certain songs of their own, but only a solitary fragment of one of
them has ever been set on record. Once when a Basque was asked to
repeat a song he had been heard singing, he quietly said that he only
taught it to those who sailed with him. The fragment just mentioned
speaks of the silver trumpet (the master's whistle?) sounding over
the waters at break of day, while the coast of Holland trembles in the
distance. The first glimpse of a level reach of land in the morning
haze could hardly be better described.
The sea impresses the dwellers on its shores chiefly by its depth and
vastness. In folk-songs there is a frequent recurrence of phrases such
as "the waters of the sea are vast, you cannot discern the bottom"
(Basque); "High is the starry sky, profound the abyss of ocean"
(Russian). The Greek calls the sea wicked, and watches the whitening
waves which roll over drowned sailors. For the Southern Sclav it is
simply a grey expanse. The Norseman calls it old, and blue--nature
having for him one sole chord of colour--blue sea, white sands and
snows, green pines. With Italian folk-singers it is a pretty point of
dispute whether the blue sea-and-sky colour is to be preferred to the
colour of the leaves and the grass. "Can you wear a lovelier hue than
azure?" asks one; "the waves of the sea are clothed therein and the
heavens when they are clear." The answer is that if the sky is clad in
a blue garment, green is the vesture of the earth, "E foro del verde
nasse ogni bel frutto." The arguments of the rival partisans remind
one of an amusing scene in a play of Calderon's; one character is made
to say, "Green is the earth's primal hue, the many-coloured flowers
are born out of a green cradle." "In short," says another, "it is a
mere earth-tint, while heaven is dressed in blue." "As to that," comes
the retort, "it is all an azure fiction; far to be preferred is the
veracious verdancy of the earth."
The Italian folk-poets' "castle in the air" is a castle in the sea.
From Alp to AEtna the love-sick rhymers are fain to go and dwell with
their heart's adoration "in mezzo al mar." But though agreed on
the locality where they intend setting up in life, they differ
considerably as to the manner of "castle" to be inhabited. The
Sicilian, who makes a point of wishing for something worth having
while he is about it, will only be satisfied with a palace built of
peacock's plumes, a stair of gold, and a balcony inlaid with gems. A
more modest minstrel, from the hither side of the straits of Messina,
gives no thought at all to housekeeping; a little wave-lapped garden,
full of pretty flowers, is all his desire. The Italian folk-poet sets
afloat an astonishing number of things for no particular reason; one
has planted a pear-tree, a second has heard a little wood-lark, a
third has seen a green laurel, a fourth has found a small altar "in
the sea-midst," a fifth discovers his own name "scritto all 'onne de
lu mar."
The Greek lover has no wish to leave the mainland, but he is fond of
picturing his beloved wandering by the shore at dawn to breathe the
morning air, or reclining on a little stone bench at the foot of a
hill, in the silence of solitude and the calm of the sea. For the
rest, he knows too well "the wicked sea" for it to suggest to him none
but pleasant images. If he is in despair, he likens himself to the
waves, which follow one another to their inevitable grave. If he grows
weary of waiting, he exclaims: "The sea darkens, the waves beat back
on the beach; ah! how long have I loved thee!" One or two specimens
have been already given of this particular kind of song; the
recollection of a passing moment in nature is placed text-wise to a
cry of human pain or love. A happy lover remembers in his transport
the glacier glistening in the sunshine; he who languishes from the
sickness of hope deferred, sees an affinity to his own mood in the
lowering storm.
In the South, light is loved for its own sake. "Il lume e mezza
compagnia," runs a Tuscan proverb: "Light is half company." In a
memorable passage, St Augustine unfolds and elaborates the same idea
of the companionship of light. A Tuscan countryman vows that if his
love to fly from him becomes the light, he, to be near her, will
become a butterfly. Perhaps so radiant an hyperbole would only have
occurred to one who had grown up in the air of the Tuscan hills; the
air to whose purity Michael Angelo ascribed all that his mind was
worth. Anyway, a keen poetic sensibility is argued by the mere fact of
thus joining, in a symbol of the indivisible, the least earth-clogged
of sentient things with the most impersonal of natural phenomena. It
is the more remarkable because, generally speaking, butterflies do
not attract the notice of the unlettered people, even as they did not
attract the notice of the objective and practical Greeks. It may be
that were spirits to be seen flitting noiselessly about the haunts
of men, they would, in time, be equally disregarded. To so few has it
happened to know a butterfly, to watch closely its living beauty,
to feel day by day the light feet or fluttering wings upon the hands
which minister to its unsubstantial wants. Butterflies, to most of us,
are but ethereal strangers; so by the masses they are not valued--at
least, not in Europe. A tribe of West African negroes have this
beautiful saying: "The Butterfly praises God within and without."
The folk-poet lives out of doors; he is acquainted with the home life
of the sun and stars, and day-break is his daily luxury. The Eskimo
tell a story of a stay-at-home man who dwelt in an island near the
coast of East Greenland. It was his chief joy to see the sun rising
in the morning, out of the sea, and with that he was content. But when
his son had come to years of discretion, he persuaded his father to
set out in a boat, so that he might see a little of the world. The
man started from the island; no sooner, however, had he passed Cape
Farewell than he saw the sun beginning to rise behind the land. It
was more than he could bear; and he set off at once for his home. Next
morning very early he went out of his tent; he did not come back. When
he was sought after, he was found quite dead. The joy of seeing the
sun rising again out of the sea had killed him. Most likely the story
is based on a real incident. The Aztec goes out upon his roof to see
the sunrise; it is his one religious observance. But of the cult of
the sun I must not begin to speak. It belongs to an immense subject
that cannot be touched here: the wide range of the unconscious
appreciation of nature which was worship.
There is nothing more graceful in all folk-poesy than a little Czech
star-poem:--
Star, pale star,
Didst thou know love,
Hadst thou a heart, my golden star,
Thou wouldst weep sparks.
Further north men do not willingly stay out abroad at night, but those
whose calling obliges them to do so are looked upon as wise in strange
lore. The first tidings of war coming reached the Esthonian shepherd
boy, the keeper of the lambs, "who knew the sun, and knew the moon,
and knew the stars in the sky." In Neo-Sanskrit speaking Lithuania
there abound star-legends which differ from the southern tales of the
same order, by reason of the pagan good faith that clings to them,
The Italian is aware that he is romancing when he speaks of the moon
travelling through the night to meet the morning star, or when he
describes her anger at the loss of one of her stars; the Lithuanian
has a suspicion that there may be a good deal of truth in his poets'
account of the sun's domestic arrangements--how the morning star
lights the fire for him to get up by, and the evening star makes his
bed. He will tell you that once there was a time when sun and moon
journeyed together, but the moon fell in love with the morning star,
which brought about sad mischief. "The moon went with the sun in the
early spring; the sun got up early; the moon went away from him. The
moon walked alone, fell in love with the morning star. Perkun, greatly
angered, stabbed her with a sword. 'Why wentest thou away from the
sun? Why walk alone in the night? Why fall in love with the morning
star? Your heart is full of sorrow.'" The Lithuanians have not wholly
left that stage in man's development when what is imagined seems
_prima facie_ quite as likely to be real as what is seen. The
supernatural does not strike them as either mysterious or terrifying.
It is otherwise with the Teuton. His night phantasms treat of what is,
to man, of all things the most genuinely alarming--his own shadow.
Ghosts, wild huntsmen, erl-kings take the place of an innocuous
un-mortal race. No starry radiance can rob the night of its terrors.
"The stars shine in the sky, bright shine the rays of the moon, fast
ride the dead." Such is the wailing burden to the ballad which Burgher
imitated in his _Lenore_. There is a wide gulf between this and the
tender star-idylls of Lithuania, and a gulf still wider divides it
from the neighbourly familiarity with which the southerner addresses
the heavenly bodies. We go from one world to another when we turn back
to Italy and hear the country lads singing, "La buona sera, O stella
mattutina!" "Good evening to you, O matutinal star."
The West African negroes call the sky the king of sheds, and the sun
the king of torches; the twinkling stars are the little chickens, and
the meteor is the thief-star. "When day dawns, you rejoice," say
the Yorubas; "do you not know that the day of death is so much the
nearer?" The same tribe give this vivid description of a day-break
scene: "The trader betakes himself to his trade, the spinner takes his
distaff, the warrior takes his shield, the weaver bends over his sley,
the farmer awakes, he and his hoe-handle, the hunter awakes, with his
quiver and bow." Thoughtless of toil, the Tuscan joyfully cries, "Dawn
is about to appear, bells chime, windows open, heaven and earth sing."
The Greek holds that he who has not journeyed with the moon by night,
or at dawn with the dew, has not tasted the world. Folk-poets have
widely recognised the mysterious confusion between summer nights and
days. The dispute at Juliet's window is recalled by the Venetian's
chiding of the "Rondinella Traditora;" by the Berry peasants' vexation
at the "vilaine alouette;" by the reproach of the Navarrese lover,
"You say it is day, it is not yet midnight;" and most of all by the
Servian dialogue: "Dawn whitens, the cock crows: It is not the dawn,
but the moon. The cows low round the house: It is not the cows, it is
the call to prayer. The Turks call to the mosque: It is not the Turks,
it is the wolves." The observation of the swallow's morning song is
another point at which the master poet and the obscure folk-singer
meet. This time both are natives of sunny lands; there is a clear
reason why it should be so--in the north the swallow passes almost
for a dumb bird. Very rarely in England do we hear her notes, soft yet
penetrating, like the high-pitched whisper of the AEolian harp. Some
of us may, indeed, have first got acquainted with them in Dante's
beautiful lines:--
Nell' ora che comincia i tristi lai
La Rondinella presso alia mattina ...
Little suspecting that he is committing the sin of plagiarism,
the Greek begins one of his songs, "In the hour when the swallows,
twittering, awake the dawn."
The ancient swallow myth does not seem to have anywhere crept into
folk-lore; nor is there much trace of the old Scandinavian delusion
that swallows spent the winter under the ice on lakes, or hanging up
in caves like bunches of grapes. The swallow is taken simply as
the typical bird of passage, the spring-bringer, the messenger,
the traveller _outre mer_. She is the picked bird of countries, the
African explorer, the Indian pioneer. A Servian story reports of
her in the latter capacity. The small-leafed Sweet Basil complains,
"Silent dew, why fallest thou not on me?" "For two mornings," answers
the dew, "I fell on thee; this morning I amused myself by watching a
great marvel. A vila (a mountain spirit) quarrelled with an eagle over
yonder mountain. Said the vila, 'The mountain is mine.' 'No,' said the
eagle, 'it is mine.' The vila broke the eagle's wing, and the young
eaglets moaned bitterly, for great was their peril. Then a swallow
comforted them: 'Make no moan, young eaglets, I will carry you to the
land of Ind, where the amaranth grows up to the horses' knees, where
the clover reaches their shoulders, where the sun never sets.'" How,
it may be asked, did the poet come by that notion of an Asiatic Eden?
The folk-singer seldom paints foreign scenery in these glowing tints.
There may be something of a south-ward longing in the boast--
I'll show ye how the lilies grow
On the banks o' Italie.
But this is cold and colourless beside the empire of the unsetting
sun.
Next to the swallow, the grey gull has the reputation of being the
greatest traveller. Till lately the women of Croisic met on Assumption
Day and sang a song to the gulls, imploring them to bring back their
husbands and their lovers who were out at sea. Larks are often chosen
as letter-carriers for short distances. The Greek knows that it is
spring when pair by pair the turtle-doves swoop down to the brooks. He
is an accurate observer; in April or May any retired English pool will
be found flecked over with the down of the wood-pigeons that come
to drink and bathe in it. The cooing of doves is by general consent
associated with constancy and requited love. It is not always,
however, that nations are agreed as to the sense of a bird's song. The
"merrie cuckoo" is supposed by the Sclavs to be rehearsing an endless
dirge for a murdered brother. A Czech poet lays down yet another cause
for its conjectured melancholy: "Perched upon an oak tree, a cuckoo
weeps because it is not always spring. How could the rye ripen in the
fields if it were always spring? How could the apples ripen in the
orchard if it were always summer? How could the corn harden in the
rick if it were always autumn?" In spite of the sagacious content
shown by these inquiries, it is probable that the sadness which the
Sclav attributes to the cuckoo-cry is but an echo of the sadness, deep
and wide, of his own race.
Of the nightingale the Tuscan sings, in the spirit of one greater than
he,--
Vedete la quel rusignol che canta
Col suo bel canto lamentar si vuole,--
which is not, by the by, his only Miltonic inspiration; there is a
rustling of Vallombrosian leaves through the couplet, composed perhaps
in Vallombrosia:
E quante primavera foglie adorna
Che si vaga e gentile a noi ritorna.
The Bulgarian sees a mountain _trembling_ to the song of three
nightingales. Like his Servian neighbours, he must always have a
story, and here is his nightingale story. Marika went into the garden;
she passed the pomegranate-tree and the apple-tree, and sat her down
under the red rose-tree to embroider a white handkerchief. In the
rose-tree was a nightingale, and the nightingale said: "Let us sing,
Marika; if you sing better than I, you shall cut off my wings at the
shoulders and my feet at the knee; if I sing better than you, I will
cut off your hair at the roots." They sang for two days, for three
days; Marika sang the best. Then the nightingale pleaded, "Marika,
fair young girl, do not cut off my feet, let me keep my wings, for I
have three little nightingales to rear, and of one of them I will make
you a gift." "Nightingale, sweet singer," said Marika, "I will give
thee grace of thy wings, and even of thy feet; go, tend thy little
ones, make me a gift of one to lull me to sleep, and of one to awake
me."
We may take leave of bird-lays with the pretty old Bourbonnaise
_chanson_:--
Derrier' chez nous, il y a-t-un vert bocage,
Le rossignol y chant' tous les jours;
La il y dit en son charmant langage:
Les amoreux sont malheureux toujours!
Flowers, the green leaves and the grass, are suggestive of two kinds
of pathos. The individual flower, the grass or leaf of any one day
or spring-tide, becomes the type of the transitoriness of beauty and
youth and life. "Sing whilst ye are young and fair, soon you will be
slighted, as are sere lilies," is the song even of happy Tuscany. To
the Sclav it seems a question whether it be worth while that there
should be any flowers or morning gladness, since they must be gone
so soon. "O my garden," sings the Ruthenian, "O my little garden, my
garden and my green vine, why bloomest thou in the morning? Hardly
bloomed, thou art withered, and the earth is strewn with thy leaves."
The other kind of pathos springs from a deeper well. Man passes by,
each one hurries to his tragedy; Nature smiles tranquilly on. This
moving force of contrast was known to Lywarch Hen, and to those Keltic
bards who dived so deep into Nature's secrets that scarcely a
greater depth has been fathomed by any after-comers. It was perceived
involuntarily by the English ballad-singers, who strung a burden of
"Fine flowers" upon a tale of infanticide, and bade blackbird and
mavis sing their sweetest between a murder and an execution. And it is
this that gives its key-note to an Armenian popular song of singular
power. A bishop tells how he has made himself a vineyard; he has
brought stones from the valleys and raised a wall around it; he has
planted young vines and plentifully has he watered their roots. Every
morning the nightingale sings sweetly to the rose. Every morning
Gabriel says to his soul: "Rise and come forth from this vineyard,
from this newly-built vineyard." He has not eaten the fruit of the
vine; he has built a wine-vat, but the wine he has not tasted; he has
brought cool streams from the hills, but he has not drunk the water
thereof; he has planted red and white roses, but he has not smelt
their fragrance. The turtle-dove sings to the birds, and the spring is
come. Gabriel calls to his soul, the light of his eyes grows dim; "It
is time I leave my vineyard, my beautiful vineyard." There is hardly
another poem treating of death which is so un-illuminated by one ray
from a future dawn.
In the great mass of folk-songs flowers are dealt with simply as the
accessories to all beautiful things. The folk-poet learns from them
his alphabet of beauty. Go into any English cornfield after harvest;
whilst the elder children glean wheat ears, the children of two
and three years glean small yellow hearts-eases, vervaine, and blue
scabious. They are as surely learning to distinguish the Beautiful
as the student in the courts of the Vatican. Through life, when these
children think of a beautiful thing, the thought of a flower will not
be far off. Religion and love, after all the two chief embellishments
of the life of the poor, have been hung about with flowers from the
past of Persephone and Freya till to-day. Even in England the common
people are glad if they can find a lily of the valley to carry to
church at Whitsuntide, and the first sign that a country girl has
got a sweetheart is often to be read in the transformation of the
garden-plot before her door. In Italy you will not walk far among the
vineyards and maize-fields without coming upon a shrine which bears
traces of floral decoration. Some Italian villages and country towns
have their special flower festival, or _Infiorata_; Genzano, for
instance, where, on the eighth day after Corpus Domini, innumerable
flowers are stripped of their petals, which are sorted out according
to colour and then arranged in patterns on the way to the church,
the magnificence of the effect going far to make one condone the
heartlessness of immolating so many victims to achieve an hour's
triumph. A charge of stupid indifference to beauty has been brought
against the Italian peasant--it would seem partly on the score that he
has been known to root up his anemones in order to put a stop to the
inroads of foreign marauders. There are certain persons, law-abiding
in the land which gave them birth, who when abroad, adopt the ethics
of our tribal ancestors. A piece of ground, a tree, or a plant not
enclosed by a wall, is turned by this strange public to its own uses.
A walnut tree by the wayside has a stick thrown among its branches
to fetch down the walnuts. The peasant does what he can to protect
himself. He observes that flowers attract trespassers, and so he roots
up the flowers. There are Italian folk-songs which show a delight in
flowers not to be surpassed anywhere. Flower-loving beyond all the
rest are the Tuscan poets, whose love-lyrics have been truly described
as "tutti seminati di fiori"--all sown with lilies, clove pinks, and
jessamine. The fact fits in pleasantly with the legend of the first
Florentines, who are said to have called their city after "the great
basket of flowers" in which it was built. It fits in, too, with the
sentiment attached even now to the very name of Florence. The old
_Floraja_ in the overgrown straw hat at the railway station can
reckon on something more abiding than her long-lost charms to find her
patrons; and it is curious to note how few of the passengers reject
the proffered emblems of the flower town, or fail to earn the parting
wish "Felice ritorno!"
One point may be granted; in Italy and elsewhere the common people do
not highly or permanently value scentless flowers. A flower without
fragrance is to them almost a dead flower. I put the question to a
troop of English children coming from a wood laden with spoils, "What
makes you like primroses?" "The scent of them," was the answer. A
little further along the lane came another troop, and the question was
repeated. This time the answer was, "Because they smell so nice."
No flower has been more widely reverenced than the unassuming sweet
basil, the _Basilica odorato_ of Sicilian songs, the Tulasi plant of
India, where it is well-nigh worshipped in the house of every pious
Hindu. The scale is graduated thus: the flower which has no smell is
plucked in play, but left remorselessly to wither as children leave
their daisy chains; the flower which has a purely sweet and fresh
perfume is arranged in nosegays, set in water, praised and enjoyed
for the day; the flower which has a scent of spice and incense and
aromatic gums bears off honours scarcely less than divine.
The folk-poet sings because heaven has given him a sweet voice and a
fair mistress; because the earth brings forth her increase and the sun
shines, and the spring comes back, and rest at noontide and at evening
is lovely, and work in the oil-mill and in the vineyard is lovely too:
he sings to embellish his labour and to enhance his repose. He lives
on the shield of Achilles, singing, accompanied by a viol, to the
grape-pickers; he is crowned with flowers in the golden age of
Lucretius as he raises his sweet song at the _festa_. We have seen a
little of what he says about Nature, but, in truth, he is still
her interpreter when he says nothing. All folk-poesy is sung and
folk-songs are as much one of Nature's voices as the song of the
birds, the song of the brooks, the song of the wind in the pine-tops.
So it is likewise with the rude musical instruments which the
exigencies of his life have taught the peasant how to make; they utter
tones more closely in harmony with nature than those of the finest
Stradivarius. The Greeks were right when they made Pan with his
reed-pipe rather than Apollo with his lyre the typical Nature-god.
Anyone to whom it has chanced to hear a folk-song sung in its own home
will understand what is meant. You may travel a good deal and not have
that chance. The songs, the customs, the traditions of the people form
an arcanum of which they are not always ready to lift the veil. To
those, of course, whose lives are cast among a people that still
sings, the opportunity comes oftener. But if the song be sung
consciously for your pleasure its soul will hardly remain in it. I
shall always vividly remember two occasions of hearing a folk-song
sung. Once, long ago, on the Bidassoa. The day was closing in; the
bell was tolling in the little chapel on the heathery mountain-side,
where mass is said for the peace of the brave men who fell there.
Fontarabia stood bathed in orange light. It was low water, and the
boat got almost stranded; then the boatmen, an older and a younger
man, both built like athletes, began to sing in low, wild snatches
for the tide. Once, not very long since, at the marble quarry of Sant'
Ambrogio. Here also it was towards evening and in the autumn. The
vintage was half over; all day the sweet "Prenda! Prenda!" of the
grape-gatherers had invited the stranger to share in its purple
magnificence. The blue of the more distant Veronese hills deepened
against a coralline sky; not a dark thing was in sight except here or
there the silhouette of a cypress. Only a few workmen were employed in
the quarry; one, a tall, slight lad, sang in the intervals from labour
an air full of passion and tenderness. The marble amphitheatre
gave sonority to his high voice. Each time Nature would have seemed
incomplete had it lacked the human song.