This, however, like many a scrap of battle-song, ribaldry exchanged
between two armies, and the like, has interest rather for the anti-
quarian than for the reader.
between two armies, and the like, has interest rather for the anti-
quarian than for the reader.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
2
The greeting from youth to maiden, from maiden to youth, was
doubtless a favorite bit of folk-song, whether at the dance or as
independent lyric. Readers of the 'Library' will find such a greet-
ing incorporated in 'Child Maurice'; only there it is from the son to
his mother, and with a somewhat eccentric list of comparisons by way
of detail, instead of the terse form known to German tradition:-
Soar, Lady Nightingale, soar above!
A hundred thousand times greet my love!
The variations are endless; one of the earliest is found in a charming
Latin tale of the eleventh century, 'Rudlieb,' "the oldest known ro-
mance in European literature. " A few German words are mixed with
the Latin; while after the good old ballad way the greeting is
first given to the messenger, and repeated when the messenger per-
forms his task:-"I wish thee as much joy as there are leaves on
the trees, and as much delight as birds have, so much love (minna),
-and as much honor I wish thee as there are flowers and grass! "
Competent critics regard this as a current folk-song of greeting in-
serted in the romance, and therefore as the oldest example of minne-
sang in German literature. Of the less known variations of this
1 Ibid. , page 178:
2 Ibid. , page 213:
3 Article in Ballads,' Vol. iii. , page 1340.
-
Springe wir den Reigen. '
Ich wil Trûren Varen lân. >
## p. 5859 (#447) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5859
theme, one may be given from the German of an old song where
male singers are supposed to compete for a garland presented by the
maidens; the rivals not only sing for the prize but even answer
riddles. It is a combination of game and dance, and is evidently of
communal origin. The honorable authorities of Freiburg, about 1556,
put this practice of "dancing of evenings in the streets, and singing
for a garland, and dancing in a throng" under strictest ban. The
following is a stanza of greeting in such a song:-
1
-
Maiden, thee I fain would greet,
From thy head unto thy feet.
As many times I greet thee even
As there are stars in yonder heaven,
As there shall blossom flowers gay,
From Easter to St. Michael's day! ¹
These competitive verses for the dance and the garland were, as
we shall presently see, spontaneous: composed in the throng by lad
or lassie, they are certainly entitled to the name of communal lyric.
Naturally, the greeting could ban as well as bless; and little Kirstin
(Christina) in the Danish ballad sends a greeting of double charge:-
To Denmark's King wish as oft good-night
As stars are shining in heaven bright;
To Denmark's Queen as oft bad year
As the linden hath leaves or the hind hath hair! 2
Contrast the original! -
Folk-song in the primitive stage always had a refrain or chorus.
The invocation of spring, met in so many songs of later time, is
doubtless a survival of an older communal chorus sung to deities of
summer and flooding sunshine and fertility. The well-known Latin
'Pervigilium Veneris,' artistic and elaborate as it is in eulogy of
spring and love, owes its refrain and the cadence of its trochaic
rhythm to some song of the Roman folk in festival; so that Walter
Pater is not far from the truth when he gracefully assumes that the
whole poem was suggested by this refrain "caught from the lips of
the young men, singing because they could not help it, in the streets
of Pisa," during that Indian summer of paganism under the Anto-
nines. This haunting refrain, with its throb of the spring and the
festal throng, is ruthlessly tortured into a heroic couplet in Parnell's
translation:—
Let those love now who never loved before:
Let those who always loved now love the more.
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
1 Uhland, Volkslieder,' i. 12.
'Grundtvig, 'Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,' iii. 161.
## p. 5860 (#448) ###########################################
5860
FOLK-SONG
This is the trochaic rhythm dear to the common people of Rome
and the near provinces, who as every one knows spoke a very dif-
ferent speech from the speech of the patrician, and sang their own
songs withal; a few specimens of the latter, notably the soldiers' song
about Cæsar, have come down to us. ¹
The refrain itself, of whatever metre, was imitated by classical
poets like Catullus; and the earliest traditions of Greece tell of these
refrains, with gathering verses of lyric or narrative character, sung
in the harvest-field and at the dance. In early Assyrian poetry,
even, the refrain plays an important part; while an Egyptian folk-
song, sung by the reapers, seems to have been little else than a
refrain. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, courtly poets took up
the refrain, experimented with it, refined it, and so developed those
highly artificial forms of verse known as roundel, triolet, and ballade.
The refrain, in short, is corner-stone for all poetry of the people, if
not of poetry itself; beginning with inarticulate cries of joy or sorrow,
like the eya noted above, mere emotional utterances or imitations of
various sounds, then growing in distinctness and compass, until the
separation of choral from artistic poetry, and the increasing import-
ance of the latter, reduced the refrain to a merely ancillary function,
and finally did away with it altogether. Many refrains are still used
for the dance which are mere exclamations, with just enough cohe-
rence of words added to make them pass as poetry. Frequently, as
in the French, these have a peculiar beauty. Victor Hugo has imi-
tated them with success; but to render them into English is impos-
sible.
The refrain, moreover, is closely allied to those couplets or qua-
trains composed spontaneously at the dance or other merry-making
of the people. In many parts of Germany, the dances of harvest.
1 We cannot widen our borders so as to include that solitary folk-song
rescued from ancient Greek literature, the Song of the Swallow,' sung by
children of the Island of Rhodes as they went about asking gifts from house
to house at the coming of the earliest swallow. The metre is interesting in
comparison with the rhythm of later European folk-songs, and there is evident
dramatic action. Nor can we include the fragments of communal drama
found in the favorite Debates Between Summer and Winter,- from the actual
contest, to such lyrical forms as the song at the end of Shakespeare's 'Love's
Labor's Lost. ' The reader may be reminded of a good specimen of this class
in Ivy and Holly,' printed by Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads,' Hazlitt's
edition, page 114 ff. , with the refrain:-
Nay, Ivy, nay,
Hyt shal not be, I wys;
Let Holy hafe the maystry,
As the maner ys.
## p. 5861 (#449) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5861
were until recent days enlivened by the so-called schnaderhüpfl, a
quatrain sung to a simple air, composed on the spot, and often.
inclining to the personal and the satiric. In earlier days this power
to make a quatrain off-hand seems to have been universal among the
peasants of Europe. In Scandinavia such quatrains are known as
stev. They are related, so far as their spontaneity, their universal
character, and their origin are concerned, to the coplas of Spain, the
stornelli of Italy, and the distichs of modern Greece. Of course, the
specimens of this poetry which can be found now are rude enough;
for the life has gone out of it, and to find it at its best one must go
back to conditions which brought the undivided genius of the com-
munity into play. What one finds nowadays is such motley as this,
- a so-called rundâ from Vogtland, answering to the Bavarian schna-
derhüpfl:-
-
-
I and my Hans,
We go to the dance;
And if no one will dance,
Dance I and my Hans!
A schnaderhüpfl taken down at Appenzell in 1754, and one of the
oldest known, was sung by some lively girl as she danced at the
reapers' festival:
Mine, mine, mine,- O my love is fine,
And my favor shall he plainly see;
Till the clock strike eight, till the clock strike nine,
My door, my door shall open be.
It is evident that the great mass of this poetry died with the
occasion that brought it forth, or lingered in oral tradition, exposed
to a thousand chances of oblivion. The Church made war upon these
songs, partly because of their erotic character, but mainly, one may
assume, because of the chain of tradition from heathen times which
linked them with feasts in honor of abhorred gods, and with rustic
dances at the old pagan harvest-home. A study of all this, however,
with material at a minimum, and conjecture or philological combi-
nation as the only possible method of investigation, must be relegated
to the treatise and the monograph;¹ for present purposes we must con-
fine our exposition and search to songs that shall attract readers as
well as students. Yet this can be done only by the admission into
our pages of folk-song which already bears witness, more or less, to
the touch of an artist working upon material once exclusively com-
munal and popular.
'Folk-lore, mythology, sociology even, must share in this work. The
reader may consult for indirect but valuable material such books as Frazer's
'Golden Bough,' or that admirable treatise, Tylor's Primitive Culture. )
## p. 5862 (#450) ###########################################
5862
FOLK-SONG
Returning to our English type, the 'Cuckoo Song,' we are now to
ask what other communal lyrics with this mark upon them, denoting
at once rescue and contamination at the hands of minstrel or wan-
dering clerk, have come down to us from the later Middle Ages.
Having answered this question, it will remain to deal with the dif-
ficult material accumulated in comparatively recent times. Ballads
are far easier to preserve than songs. Ballads have a narrative; and
this story in them has proved antiseptic, defying the chances of oral
transmission. A good story travels far, and the path which it wan-
ders from people to people is often easy to follow; but the more vola-
tile contents of the popular lyric we are not speaking of its tune,
which is carried in every direction are easily lost. Such a lyric
lives chiefly by its sentiment, and sentiment is a fragile burden. We
can however get some notion of this communal song by process of
inference, for the earliest lays of the Provençal troubadour, and
probably of the German minnesinger, were based upon the older
song of the country-side. Again, in England there was little distinc-
tion made between the singer who entertained court and castle and
the gleeman who sang in the villages and at rural festivals; the lat-
ter doubtless taking from the common stock more than he contrib-
uted from his own. A certain proof of more aristocratic and distinctly
artistic, that is to say, individual origin, and a conclusive reason for
refusing the name of folk-song to any one of these lyrics of love, is
the fact that it happens to address a married woman. Every one
knows that the troubadour and the minnesinger thus addressed their
lays; and only the style and general character of their earliest poetry
can be considered as borrowed from the popular muse. In other
words, however vivacious, objective, vigorous, may be the early lays.
of the troubadour, however one is tempted to call them mere modi-
fications of an older folk-song, they are excluded by this characteris-
tic from the popular lyric and belong to poetry of the schools.
Marriage, says Jeanroy, is always respected in the true folk-song.
Moreover, this is only a negative test. In Portugal, many songs
which must be referred to the individual and courtly poet are written
in praise of the unmarried girl; while in England, whether it be set
down to austere morals or to the practical turn of the native mind,
one finds little or nothing to match this troubadour and minnesinger
poetry in honor of the stately but capricious dame. ' The folk-song
1 For early times translation from language to language is out of the
question, certainly in the case of lyrics. It is very important to remember that
primitive man regarded song as a momentary and spontaneous thing.
2 Yet even rough Scandinavia took up this brilliant but doubtful love
poetry. To one of the Norse kings is attributed a song in which the royal
singer informs his "lady" by way of credentials for his wooing,-“I have
struck a blow in the Saracen's land; let thy husband do the same! »
## p. 5863 (#451) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5863
that we seek found few to record it; it sounded at the dance, it was
heard in the harvest-field; what seemed to be everywhere, growing
spontaneously like violets in spring, called upon no one to preserve
it and to give it that protection demanded by exotic poetry of the
schools. What is preserved is due mainly to the clerks and gleemen
of older times, or else to the curiosity of modern antiquarians, rescu-
ing here and there a belated survival of the species. Where the
clerk or the gleeman is in question, he is sure to add a personal ele-
ment, and thus to remove the song from its true communal setting.
Contrast the wonderful little song, admired by Alceste in Molière's
'Misanthrope,' and as impersonal, even in its first-personal guise as
any communal lyric ever made,—with a reckless bit of verse sung by
some minstrel about the famous Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Henry II.
of England. The song so highly commended by Alceste¹ runs, in
desperately inadequate translation:-
If the King had made it mine,
Paris, his city gay,
And I must the love resign
Of my bonnie may,2-
To King Henry I would say:
Take your Paris back, I pray;
Better far I love my may,—
O joy! -
Love my bonnie may!
Let us hear the reckless "clerk":-
If the whole wide world were mine,
From the ocean to the Rhine,
All I'd be denying
If the Queen of England once
In my arms were lying! ³
The tone is not directly communal, but it smacks more of the
village dance than of the troubadour's harp; for even Bernart of
Ventadour did not dare to address Eleanor save in the conventional
tone of despair. The clerks and gleemen, however, and even English
peasants of modern times, took another view of the matter. The
"clerk," that delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between
Le Misanthrope,' i. 2; he calls it a vielle chanson. M. Tiersot concedes
it to the popular muse, but thinks it is of the city, not of the country.
2
May, a favorite ballad word for “maid,» «sweetheart. »
«Wær diu werlt alliu mîn. »
3(Carm. Bur. ,' page 185:
'See Child's Ballads, vi. 257, and Grandfer Cantle's ballad in Mr. Hardy's
'Return of the Native. ' See next page.
## p. 5864 (#452) ###########################################
5864
FOLK-SONG
church and tavern, between breviary and love songs, has probably
done more for the preservation of folk-song than all other agents
known to us. In the above verses he protests a trifle or so too much
about himself; let us hear him again as mere reporter for the com-
munal lyric, in verses that he may have brought from the dance to
turn into his inevitable Latin:-
Come, my darling, come to me,
I am waiting long for thee,—
I am waiting long for thee,
Come, my darling, come to me!
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain,
Come and make me well again;-
Come and make me well again,
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain. ¹
More graceful yet are the anonymous verses quoted in certain
Latin love-letters of a manuscript at Munich; and while a few critics
rebel at the notion of a folk-song, the pretty lines surely hint more
of field and dance than of the study.
Thou art mine,
I am thine,
Of that may'st certain be;
Locked thou art
Within my heart,
And I have lost the key:
There must thou ever be!
Now it happens that this notion of heart and key recurs in later
German folk-song. A highly popular song of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries has these stanzas: 2
FOR thy dear sake I'm hither come,
Sweetheart, O hear me woo!
My hope rests evermore on thee,
I love thee well and true.
Let me but be thy servant,
Thy dear love let me win;
(Carm. Bur. ,' page 208: "Kume, Kume, geselle min. »
2 Translated from Böhme (Altdeutsches Liederbuch,' Leipzig, 1877, page 233.
Lovers of folk-song will find this book invaluable on account of the carefully
edited musical accompaniments. With it and Chappell, the musician has ample
material for English and German songs; for French, see Tiersot, 'La Chan-
son Populaire en France. ›
## p. 5865 (#453) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5865
Come, ope thy heart, my darling,
And lock me fast within!
Where my love's head is lying,
There rests a golden shrine;
And in it lies, locked hard and fast,
This fresh young heart of mine:
Oh would to God I had the key,-
I'd throw it in the Rhine;
What place on earth were more to me,
Than with my sweeting fine?
Where my love's feet are lying,
A fountain gushes cold,
And whoso tastes the fountain
Grows young and never old:
Full often at the fountain
I knelt and quenched my drouth,-
Yet tenfold rather would I kiss
My darling's rosy mouth!
And in my darling's garden¹
Is many a precious flower;
Oh, in this budding season,
Would God 'twere now the hour
To go and pluck the roses
And nevermore to part:
I think full sure to win her
Who lies within my heart!
Now who this merry roundel
Hath sung with such renown?
That have two lusty woodsmen
At Freiberg in the town,
Have sung it fresh and fairly,
And drunk the cool red wine:
And who hath sat and listened? -
Landlady's daughter fine!
What with the more modern tone, and the lusty woodsmen, one
has deserted the actual dance, the actual communal origin of song;
To pluck
¹The garden in these later songs is constantly a symbol of love.
the roses, etc. , is conventional for making love.
## p. 5866 (#454) ###########################################
5866
FOLK-SONG
but one is still amid communal influences. Another little song about
the heart and the key, this time from France, recalls one to the
dance itself, and to the simpler tone:-
Shut fast within a rose
I ween my heart must be;
No locksmith lives in France
Who can set it free,-
Only my lover Pierre,
Who took away the key! ¹
Coming back to England, and the search for her folk-song, it is
in order to begin with the refrain. A ❝clerk," in a somewhat arti-
ficial lay to his sweetheart, has preserved as refrain what seems to
be a bit of communal verse:-
Ever and aye for my love I am in sorrow sore;
I think of her I see so seldom any more,2-
rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed.
Better by far is the song of another clericus, with a lusty little re-
frain as fresh as the wind it invokes, as certainly folk-song as any-
thing left to us:-
Blow, northern wind,
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow, northern wind,
Blow, blow, blow!
The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good
movement. A stanza may be quoted:
·-
I know a maid in bower so bright
That handsome is for any sight,
Noble, gracious maid of might,
Precious to discover.
In all this wealth of women fair,
Maid of beauty to compare
With my sweeting found I ne'er
All the country over!
Old too is the lullaby used as a burden or refrain for a religious
poem printed by Thomas Wright in his 'Songs and Carols':
¹Quoted by Tiersot, page 88, from Chansons à Danser en Rond,' gathered
before 1704.
Böddeker's 'Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with notes, etc. , in
German; Berlin, 1878, page 179.
## p. 5867 (#455) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5867
Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng,
Lullay, my dere herte, myn owyn dere derlyng. ¹
The same English manuscript which has kept the refrain 'Blow,
Northern Wind,' offers another song which may be given in modern
translation and entire. All these songs were written down about the
year 1310, and probably in Herefordshire. As with the carmina
burana, the lays of German "clerks," so these English lays represent
something between actual communal verse and the poetry of the
individual artist; they owe more to folk-song than to the traditions of
literature and art. Some of the expressions in this song are taken,
if we may trust the critical insight of Ten Brink, directly from the
poetry of the people.
A MAID as white as ivory bone,
A pearl in gold that golden shone,
A turtle-dove, a love whereon
My heart must cling:
Her blitheness nevermore be gone
While I can sing!
When she is gay,
In all the world no more I pray
Than this: alone with her to stay
Withouten strife.
Could she but know the ills that slay
Her lover's life!
Was never woman nobler wrought;
And when she blithe to sleep is brought,
Well for him who guessed her thought,
Proud maid! Yet O,
Full well I know she will me nought.
My heart is woe.
And how shall I then sweetly sing
That thus am marréd with mourning?
To death, alas, she will me bring
Long ere my day.
Greet her well, the sweete thing,
With eyen gray!
1 See also Ritson,
Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3d Ed. , pages xlviii. , 202
ff. The Percy folio MS. preserved a cradle song, Balow, my Babe, ly Still
and Sleepe,' which was published as a broadside, and finally came to be known
as Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament. ' These "balow » lullabies are said by Mr.
Ebbsworth to be imitations of a pretty poem first published in 1593, and now
printed by Mr. Bullen in his 'Songs from Elizabethan Romances,' page 92.
## p. 5868 (#456) ###########################################
5868
FOLK-SONG
-
Her eyes have wounded me, i-wis.
Her arching brows that bring the bliss;
Her comely mouth whoso might kiss,
In mirth he were;
And I would change all mine for his
That is her fere. ¹
Her fere, so worthy might I be,
Her fere, so noble, stout and free,
For this one thing I would give three,
Nor haggle aught.
From hell to heaven, if one could see,
So fine is naught,
[Nor half so free;2
All lovers true, now listen unto me. ]
Now hearken to me while I tell,
In such a fume I boil and well;
There is no fire so hot in hell
As his, I trow,
Who loves unknown and dares not tell
His hidden woe.
I will her well, she wills me woe;
I am her friend, and she my foe;
Methinks my heart will break in two
For sorrow's might;
In God's own greeting may she go,
That maiden white!
I would I were a throstlecock,
A bunting, or a laverock,³
Sweet maid!
Between her kirtle and her smock
I'd then be hid!
The reader will easily note the struggle between our poet's con-
ventional and quite literary despair and the fresh communal tone in
such passages as we have ventured, despite Leigh Hunt's direful
example, to put in italics. This poet was a clerk, or perhaps not
even that,- a gleeman; and he dwells, after the manner of his kind,
¹ Fere, companion, lover. "I would give all I have to be her lover. "
2 Superfluous verses; but the MS. makes no distinction. Free means no-
ble, gracious. "If one could see everything between hell and heaven, one
would find nothing so fair and noble. "
³ Lark. The poem is translated from Böddeker, page 161 ff.
## p. 5869 (#457) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5869
upon a despair which springs from difference of station. But it is
England, not France; it is a maiden, not countess or queen, whom he
loves; and the tone of his verse is sound and communal at heart.
True, the metre, afterwards a favorite with Burns, is one used by the
oldest known troubadour of Provence, Count William, as well as by
the poets of miracle plays and of such romances as the English
'Octavian'; but like Count William himself, who built on a popular
basis, our clerk or gleeman is nearer to the people than to the schools.
Indeed, Uhland reminds us that Breton kloer ("clerks ") to this day
play a leading part as lovers and singers of love in folk-song; and
the English clerks in question were not regular priests, consecrated
and in responsible positions, but students or unattached followers of
theology. They sang with the people; they felt and suffered with
the people—as in the case of a far nobler member of the guild, Will-
iam Langland; and hence sundry political poems which deal with
wrongs and suffering endured by the commons of that day. In the
struggle of barons and people against Henry III. , indignation made
verses; and these, too, we owe to the clerks. Such a burst of indig-
nation is the song against Richard of Cornwall, with a turbulent
refrain which sounds like a direct loan from the people. One stanza,
with this refrain, will suffice. It opens with the traditional "lithe
and listen" of the ballad-singer :-
:-
Sit all now still and list to me:
The German King, by my loyalty!
Thirty thousand pound asked he
To make a peace in this country,-
And so he did and more!
REFRAIN
Richard, though thou be ever trichard,¹
Trichen shalt thou nevermore!
This, however, like many a scrap of battle-song, ribaldry exchanged
between two armies, and the like, has interest rather for the anti-
quarian than for the reader. We shall leave such fragments, and
turn in conclusion to the folk-song of later times.
The England of Elizabeth was devoted to lyric poetry, and folk-
song must have flourished along with its rival of the schools. Few
of these songs, however, have been preserved; and indeed there is
no final test for the communal quality in such survivals. Certainly
some of the songs in the drama of that time are of popular origin;
but the majority, as a glance at Mr. Bullen's several collections will
prove, are artistic and individual, like the music to which they were
2 Betray.
Traitor.
## p. 5870 (#458) ###########################################
5870
FOLK-SONG
sung. Occasionally we get a tantalizing glimpse of another lyrical
England, the folk dancing and singing their own lays; but no Autoly-
cus brings these to us in his basket. Even the miracle plays had
not despised folk-song; unfortunately the writers are content to men-
tion the songs, like our Acts of Congress, only by title. In the "com-
edy" called 'The Longer Thou Livest the More Foole Thou Art,’
there are snatches of such songs; and a famous list, known to all
scholars, is given by Laneham in a letter from Kenilworth in 1575,
where he tells of certain songs, "all ancient," owned by one Captain
Cox. Again, nobody ever praised songs of the people more sincerely
than Shakespeare has praised them; and we may be certain that he
used them for the stage. Such is the Willow Song' that Desdemona
sings, an "old thing," she calls it; and such perhaps the song in
'As You Like It,'-'It Was a Lover and His Lass. ' Nash is credited
with the use of folk-songs in his Summer's Last Will and Testa-
ment'; but while the pretty verses about spring and the tripping
lines, 'A-Maying,' have such a note, nothing could be further from
the quality of folk-song than the solemn and beautiful 'Adieu, Fare-
well, Earth's Bliss. ' In Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burn-
ing Pestle,' however, Merrythought sings some undoubted snatches of
popular lyric, just as he sings stanzas from the traditional ballad;
for example, his-
<
―
-
Go from my window, love, go;
Go from my window, my dear;
The wind and the rain
Will drive you back again,
You cannot be lodged here,—
is quoted with variations in other plays, and was a favorite of the
time,' and like many a ballad appears in religious parody. A mod-
ern variant, due to tradition, comes from Norwich; the third and
fourth lines ran:-
For the wind is in the west,
And the cuckoo's in his nest.
From the time of Henry VIII. a pretty song is preserved of this
same class:-
Westron wynde, when wyll thou blow!
The smalle rain downe doth rayne;
Oh if my love were in my armys,
Or I in my bed agayne!
This sort of song between the lovers, one without and one within,
occurs in French and German at a very early date, and is probably
much older than any records of it; as serenade, it found great favor
The music in Chappell, page 141.
## p. 5871 (#459) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5871
with poets of the city and the court, and is represented in English
by Sidney's beautiful lines, admirable for purposes of comparison
with the folk-song:-
"WHO is it that this dark night
Underneath my window plaineth ? »
"It is one who, from thy sight
Being, ah, exiled! disdaineth
Every other vulgar light. "
The zeal of modern collectors has brought together a mass of
material which passes for folk-song. None of it is absolutely com-
munal, for the conditions of primitive lyric have long since been
swept away; nevertheless, where isolated communities have retained
something of the old homogeneous and simple character, the spirit
of folk-song lingers in survival. From Great Britain, from France.
and particularly from Germany, where circumstances have favored this
survival, a few folk-songs may now be given in inadequate transla-
tion. To go further afield, to collect specimens of Italian, Russian,
Servian, modern Greek, and so on, would need a book.
The songs
which follow are sufficiently representative for the purpose.
A pretty little song, popular in Germany to this day, needs no
pompous support of literary allusion to explain its simple pathos;
still, it is possible that one meets here a distant echo of the tragedy
of obstacles told in romance of Hero and Leander. When one hears
this song, one understands where Heine found the charm of his best
lyrics:-
OVER a waste of water
The bonnie lover crossed,
A-wooing the King's daughter:
But all his love was lost.
Ah, Elsie, darling Elsie,
Fain were I now with thee;
But waters twain are flowing,
Dear love, twixt thee and me! '
Even more of a favorite is the song which represents two girls in
the harvest-field, one happy in her love, the other deserted; the noise
of the sickle makes a sort of chorus. Uhland placed with the two stan-
zas of the song a third stanza which really belongs to another tune;
the latter, however, may serve to introduce the situation:-
I HEARD a sickle rustling,
Ay, rustling through the corn:
I heard a maiden sobbing
Because her love was lorn.
1 Böhme, with music, page 94.
## p. 5872 (#460) ###########################################
5872
FOLK-SONG
"Oh let the sickle rustle!
I care not how it go;
For I have found a lover,
A lover,
Where clover and violets blow. "
"And hast thou found a lover
Where clover and violets blow?
I stand here, ah, so lonely,
So lonely,
And all my heart is woe! "
Two songs may follow, one from France, one from Scotland, be-
wailing the death of lover or husband. 'The Lowlands of Holland'
was published by Herd in his Scottish Songs. '¹ A clumsy attempt
was made to fix the authorship upon a certain young widow; but the
song belies any such origin. It has the marks of tradition: -
MY LOVE has built a bonny ship, and set her on the sea,
With sevenscore good mariners to bear her company;
There's threescore is sunk, and threescore dead at sea,
And the Lowlands of Holland has twin'd' my love and me.
My love he built another ship, and set her on the main,
And nane but twenty mariners for to bring her hame,
But the weary wind began to rise, and the sea began to rout;
My love then and his bonny ship turned withershins about.
3
There shall neither coif come on my head nor comb come in
my hair;
There shall neither coal nor candle-light come in my bower
mair;
Nor will I love another one until the day I die,
For I never loved a love but one, and he's drowned in the sea.
"O haud your tongue, my daughter dear, be still and be con-
tent;
There are mair lads in Galloway, ye neen nae sair lament. "
O there is none in Gallow, there's none at a' for me;
For I never loved a love but one, and he's drowned in the sea.
¹Quoted by Child, Ballads,' iv. 318.
2 Separated, divided.
An equivalent to upside down, "in the wrong direction. »
## p. 5873 (#461) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5873
The French song¹ has a more tender note:
Low, low he lies who holds my heart,
The sea is rolling fair above;
Go, little bird, and tell him this,-
Go, little bird, and fear no harm,-
Say I am still his faithful love,
Say that to him I stretch my arms.
Another song, widely scattered in varying versions throughout
France, is of the forsaken and too trustful maid,-'En revenant des
Noces. ' The narrative in this, as in the Scottish song, makes it ap-
proach the ballad.
BACK from the wedding-feast,
All weary by the way,
I rested by a fount
And watched the waters' play;
And at the fount I bathed,
So clear the waters' play;
And with a leaf of oak
I wiped the drops away.
Upon the highest branch
Loud sang the nightingale.
Sing, nightingale, oh sing,
Thou hast a heart so gay!
Not gay, this heart of mine:
My love has gone away,
Because I gave my rose
Too soon, too soon away.
Ah, would to God that rose
Yet on the rosebush lay,-
Would that the rosebush, even,
Unplanted yet might stay,-
Would that my lover Pierre
My favor had to pray! ?
¹ See Tiersot, 'La Chanson Populaire,' p. 103, with the music.
The final
verses, simple as they are, are not rendered even remotely well. They run: -
Que je suis sa fidèle amie,
Et que vers lui je tends les bras.
2 Tiersot, p. 90. In many versions there is further complication with king
and queen and the lover. This song is extremely popular in Canada.
X-368
## p. 5874 (#462) ###########################################
5874
FOLK-SONG
The corresponding Scottish song, beautiful enough for any land.
or age, is the well-known 'Waly, Waly':-
OH WALY, waly, up the bank,
And waly, waly, down the brae,
And waly, waly, yon burn-side,
Where I and my love wont to gae.
I lean'd my back unto an aik,
I thought it was a trusty tree;
But first it bowed and syne it brak,
Sae my true-love did lightly' me.
Oh waly, waly, but love be bonny
A little time, while it is new;
But when 'tis auld it waxeth cauld,
And fades away like morning dew.
Oh wherefore should I busk my head?
Or wherefore should I kame my hair?
For my true-love has me forsook,
And says he'll never love me mair.
Now Arthur's Seat shall be my bed,
The sheets shall ne'er be fyled by me;
Saint Anton's well shall be my drink,
Since my true-love has forsaken me.
Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw
And shake the green leaves off the tree?
O gentle Death, when wilt thou come ?
For of my life I am weary.
'Tis not the frost that freezes fell,
Nor blawing snaw's inclemency;
'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry,
But my love's heart grown cauld to me.
'Lightly (a verb) is to treat with contempt, to undervalue.
burden quoted by Chappell, p. 458, and very old:
-
The bonny broome, the well-favored broome,
The broome blooms faire on hill;
What ailed my love to lightly me,
And I working her will?
Compare the
## p. 5875 (#463) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5875
When we came in by Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in the black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.
But had I wist, before I kissed,
That love had been sae ill to win,
I'd locked my heart in a case of gold.
And pinned it with a silver pin.
Oh, oh, if my young babe were born,
And set upon the nurse's knee,
And I myself were dead and gone,
[And the green grass growing over me! ]
The same ballad touch overweighs even the lyric quality of the
verses about Yarrow:
"WILLY'S rare, and Willy's fair,
And Willy's wondrous bonny,
And Willy heght' to marry me
Gin e'er he married ony.
"Oh came you by yon water-side?
Pu'd you the rose or lily?
Or came you by yon meadow green?
Or saw you my sweet Willy? »
She sought him east, she sought him west,
She sought him brade and narrow;
Syne, in the clifting of a craig,
She found him drowned in Yarrow. 2
Returning to Germany and to pure lyric, we have a pretty bit
which is attached to many different songs.
HIGH up on yonder mountain
A mill-wheel clatters round,
And, night or day, naught else but love
Within the mill is ground.
The mill has gone to ruin,
And love has had its day;
God bless thee now, my bonnie lass,
I wander far away. ³
1 Promised.
2 Child's Ballads, vii. 179.
3 Böhme, p. 271.
## p. 5876 (#464) ###########################################
5876
FOLK-SONG
But there is a more cheerful vein in this sort of song; and the
mountain offers pleasanter views:-
-
OH YONDER on the mountain,
There stands a lofty house,
Where morning after morning,
Yes, morning,
Three maids go in and out. ¹
The first she is my sister,
The second well is known,
The third, I will not name her,
No, name her,
And she shall be my own!
Finally, that pearl of German folk-song, 'Innsprück. ' The wanderer
must leave the town and his sweetheart; but he swears to be true,
and prays that his love be kept safe till his return:-
INNSPRÜCK, I must forsake thee,
My weary way betake me
Unto a foreign shore,
And all my joy hath vanished,
And ne'er while I am banished
Shall I behold it more.
I bear a load of sorrow,
And comfort can I borrow,
Dear love, from thee alone.
Ah, let thy pity hover
About thy weary lover
When he is far from home.
My one true love! Forever
Thine will I bide, and never
Shall our dear vow be vain.
Now must our Lord God ward thee,
In peace and honor guard thee,
Until I come again.
In leaving the subject of folk-song, it is necessary for the reader
not only to consider anew the loose and unscientific way in which
this term has been employed, but also to bear in mind that few of
the above specimens can lay claim to the title in any rigid classifica-
tion. Long ago, a German critic reminded zealous collectors of his
The rhyme in German leaves even more to be desired.
## p. 5877 (#465) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5877
day that when one has dipped a pailful of water from the brook,
one has captured no brook; and that when one has written down a
folk-song, it has ceased to be that eternally changing, momentary,
spontaneous, dance-begotten thing which once flourished everywhere
as communal poetry. Always in flux, if it stopped it ceased to be
itself. Modern lyric is deliberately composed by some one, mainly to
be sung by some one else; the old communal lyric was sung by
the throng and was made in the singing. When festal excitement at
some great communal rejoicing in the life of clan or tribe "fought
its battles o'er again," the result was narrative communal song. A
disguised and baffled survival of this most ancient narrative is the
popular ballad. Still more disguised, still more baffled, is the purely
lyrical survival of that old communal and festal song; and the best
one can do is to present those few specimens found under conditions
which preserve certain qualities of a vanished world of poetry.
It may be asked why the contemporary songs found among Indian
tribes of our continent, or among remote islanders in low stages of
culture, should not reproduce for us the old type of communal verse.
The answer is simple. Tribes which have remained in low stages of
culture do not necessarily retain all the characteristics of primitive
life among races which had the germs of rapidly developing culture.
That communal poetry which gave life to the later epic of Hellenic
or of Germanic song must have differed materially, no matter in what
stage of development, from the uninteresting and monotonous chants
of the savage. Moreover, the specimens of savage verse which we
know retain the characteristics of communal verse, while they lack
its nobler and vital quality. The dance, the spontaneous production,
repetition, these are all marked characteristics of savage verse. But
savage verse cannot serve as model for our ideas of primitive folk-
song.
He
ummere.
## p. 5878 (#466) ###########################################
5878
SAMUEL FOOTE
(1720-1777)
Ge
HE name of Samuel Foote suggests a whimsical, plump little
man, with a round face, twinkling eyes, and one of the
readiest wits of the eighteenth century. This contemporary
of the elder Colman, Cumberland, Mrs. Cowley, and the great Gar-
rick, knew many famous men and women, and they admired as well
as feared his talents.
Samuel Foote was born at Truro in 1720. He was a young boy
when he first exhibited his powers of mimicry at his father's dinner-
table. At that time he did not expect to earn his living by them,
for he came of well-to-do people, and his mother, who was of aristo-
cratic birth, inherited a comfortable fortune.
Throughout his school days at Worcester and his college days at
Worcester College, Oxford, where he did not remain long enough to
take a degree, and the idle days when he was supposed to be study-
ing law at the Temple and was in reality frequenting coffee-houses
and drawing-rooms as a young man of fashion, he was establishing a
reputation for repartee, bons mots, and satiric imitation. So, when
the wasteful youth had squandered all his money, he naturally
turned to the stage as offering him the best opportunity. Like
many another amateur addicted to a mistaken ambition, Foote first
tried tragedy, and made his début as Othello. But in this and in
other tragedies he was a failure; so he soon took to writing comic
plays with parts especially adapted to himself. The Diversions of
the Morning' was the first of a long series, of which 'The Mayor of
Garratt,' 'The Lame Lover,' The Nabob,' and 'The Minor,' are
among the best known. As these were written from the actor's
rather than from the dramatist's point of view, they often seem faulty
in construction and crude in literary quality. They are farces rather
than true comedies. But they abound in witty dialogue, and in a
satire which illuminates contemporary vices and follies.
Foote seems to have been curiously lacking in conscience. He
lived his life with a gayety which no poverty, misfortune, or physical
suffering could long dampen. When he had money he spent it lav-
ishly, and when the supply ran short he racked his clever brains to
make a new hit. To accomplish this he was utterly unscrupulous,
and never spared his friends or those to whom he was indebted,
4
## p. 5879 (#467) ###########################################
SAMUEL FOOTE
5879
if he saw good material in their foibles. His victims smarted, but
his ready tongue and personal geniality usually extricated him from
consequent unpleasantness. Garrick, who aided him repeatedly, and
who dreaded ridicule above all things, was his favorite butt, yet
remained his friend. The irate members of the East India Company,
who called upon him armed with stout cudgels to administer a casti-
gation for an offensive libel in The Nabob,' were so speedily molli-
fied that they laid their cudgels aside with their hats, and accepted
his invitation to dinner.
To us, much of his charm has evaporated, for it lay in these very
personalities which held well-known people up to ridicule with a
precision which made it impossible for the originals to escape recog-
nition. Even irascible Dr. Johnson, who wished to disapprove of him,
admitted that there was no one like "that fellow Foote. " So this
"Aristophanes of the English stage" was mourned when he died at
the age of fifty-seven, and a company of his friends and fellow-actors
buried him one evening by the dim light of torches in a cloister of
Westminster Abbey.
There is often a boisterous unreserve in the plays of Foote, as in
other eighteenth-century drama, which revolts modern taste. As
they consist of character study rather than incident, mere extracts
are apt to appear incomplete and meaningless. Therefore it seems
fairer to represent the famous wit not alone by formal citation, but
also by some of his bons mots extracted from the collection of William
Cooke in his 'Memoirs of Samuel Foote' (2 vols. 1806).
HOW TO BE A LAWYER
From The Lame Lover
dent.
Enter Jack
ERJEANT-So, Jack, anybody at chambers to-day?
SERJEAL
Jack-Fieri Facias from Fetter Lane, about the bill to
be filed by Kit Crape against Will Vizard this term.
Serjeant- Praying for an equal partition of plunder?
Jack-Yes, sir.
But we
Serjeant-Strange world we live in, that even highwaymen
can't be true to each other! [Half aside to himself. ]
shall make Vizard refund; we'll show him what long hands the
law has.
Jack-Facias says that in all the books he can't hit a prece
## p. 5880 (#468) ###########################################
5880
SAMUEL FOOTE
Serjeant-Then I'll make one myself; Aut inveniam, aut
faciam, has been always my motto. The charge must be made
for partnership profit, by bartering lead and gunpowder against
money, watches, and rings, on Epping Forest, Hounslow Heath,
and other parts of the kingdom.
Jack-He says if the court should get scent of the scheme,
the parties would all stand committed.
Serjeant-Cowardly rascal! but however, the caution mayn't
prove amiss. [Aside. ] I'll not put my own name to the bill.
Jack The declaration, too, is delivered in the cause of Roger
Rapp'em against Sir Solomon Simple.
Serjeant-What, the affair of the note?
Jack-Yes.
Serjeant - Why, he is clear that his client never gave such a
note.
Jack-Defendant never saw plaintiff since the hour he was
born; but notwithstanding, they have three witnesses to prove a
consideration and signing the note.
Serjeant-They have!
Jack-He is puzzled what plea to put in.
Serjeant-Three witnesses ready, you say?
Jack-Yes.
Serjeant - Tell him Simple must acknowledge the note [Jack
starts]; and bid him against the trial comes on, to procure four
persons at least to prove the payment at the Crown and Anchor,
the 10th of December.
Jack-But then how comes the note to remain in plaintiff's
possession?
Serjeant-Well put, Jack: but we have a salvo for that;
plaintiff happened not to have the note in his pocket, but prom-
ised to deliver it up when called thereunto by defendant.
Jack-That will do rarely.
Serjeant-Let the defense be a secret; for I see we have able
people to deal with. But come, child, not to lose time, have you
carefully conned those instructions I gave you?
Jack-Yes, sir.
Serjeant - Well, that we shall see. How many points are the
great object of practice?
Jack-Two.
Serjeant-Which are they?
The greeting from youth to maiden, from maiden to youth, was
doubtless a favorite bit of folk-song, whether at the dance or as
independent lyric. Readers of the 'Library' will find such a greet-
ing incorporated in 'Child Maurice'; only there it is from the son to
his mother, and with a somewhat eccentric list of comparisons by way
of detail, instead of the terse form known to German tradition:-
Soar, Lady Nightingale, soar above!
A hundred thousand times greet my love!
The variations are endless; one of the earliest is found in a charming
Latin tale of the eleventh century, 'Rudlieb,' "the oldest known ro-
mance in European literature. " A few German words are mixed with
the Latin; while after the good old ballad way the greeting is
first given to the messenger, and repeated when the messenger per-
forms his task:-"I wish thee as much joy as there are leaves on
the trees, and as much delight as birds have, so much love (minna),
-and as much honor I wish thee as there are flowers and grass! "
Competent critics regard this as a current folk-song of greeting in-
serted in the romance, and therefore as the oldest example of minne-
sang in German literature. Of the less known variations of this
1 Ibid. , page 178:
2 Ibid. , page 213:
3 Article in Ballads,' Vol. iii. , page 1340.
-
Springe wir den Reigen. '
Ich wil Trûren Varen lân. >
## p. 5859 (#447) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5859
theme, one may be given from the German of an old song where
male singers are supposed to compete for a garland presented by the
maidens; the rivals not only sing for the prize but even answer
riddles. It is a combination of game and dance, and is evidently of
communal origin. The honorable authorities of Freiburg, about 1556,
put this practice of "dancing of evenings in the streets, and singing
for a garland, and dancing in a throng" under strictest ban. The
following is a stanza of greeting in such a song:-
1
-
Maiden, thee I fain would greet,
From thy head unto thy feet.
As many times I greet thee even
As there are stars in yonder heaven,
As there shall blossom flowers gay,
From Easter to St. Michael's day! ¹
These competitive verses for the dance and the garland were, as
we shall presently see, spontaneous: composed in the throng by lad
or lassie, they are certainly entitled to the name of communal lyric.
Naturally, the greeting could ban as well as bless; and little Kirstin
(Christina) in the Danish ballad sends a greeting of double charge:-
To Denmark's King wish as oft good-night
As stars are shining in heaven bright;
To Denmark's Queen as oft bad year
As the linden hath leaves or the hind hath hair! 2
Contrast the original! -
Folk-song in the primitive stage always had a refrain or chorus.
The invocation of spring, met in so many songs of later time, is
doubtless a survival of an older communal chorus sung to deities of
summer and flooding sunshine and fertility. The well-known Latin
'Pervigilium Veneris,' artistic and elaborate as it is in eulogy of
spring and love, owes its refrain and the cadence of its trochaic
rhythm to some song of the Roman folk in festival; so that Walter
Pater is not far from the truth when he gracefully assumes that the
whole poem was suggested by this refrain "caught from the lips of
the young men, singing because they could not help it, in the streets
of Pisa," during that Indian summer of paganism under the Anto-
nines. This haunting refrain, with its throb of the spring and the
festal throng, is ruthlessly tortured into a heroic couplet in Parnell's
translation:—
Let those love now who never loved before:
Let those who always loved now love the more.
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!
1 Uhland, Volkslieder,' i. 12.
'Grundtvig, 'Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,' iii. 161.
## p. 5860 (#448) ###########################################
5860
FOLK-SONG
This is the trochaic rhythm dear to the common people of Rome
and the near provinces, who as every one knows spoke a very dif-
ferent speech from the speech of the patrician, and sang their own
songs withal; a few specimens of the latter, notably the soldiers' song
about Cæsar, have come down to us. ¹
The refrain itself, of whatever metre, was imitated by classical
poets like Catullus; and the earliest traditions of Greece tell of these
refrains, with gathering verses of lyric or narrative character, sung
in the harvest-field and at the dance. In early Assyrian poetry,
even, the refrain plays an important part; while an Egyptian folk-
song, sung by the reapers, seems to have been little else than a
refrain. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, courtly poets took up
the refrain, experimented with it, refined it, and so developed those
highly artificial forms of verse known as roundel, triolet, and ballade.
The refrain, in short, is corner-stone for all poetry of the people, if
not of poetry itself; beginning with inarticulate cries of joy or sorrow,
like the eya noted above, mere emotional utterances or imitations of
various sounds, then growing in distinctness and compass, until the
separation of choral from artistic poetry, and the increasing import-
ance of the latter, reduced the refrain to a merely ancillary function,
and finally did away with it altogether. Many refrains are still used
for the dance which are mere exclamations, with just enough cohe-
rence of words added to make them pass as poetry. Frequently, as
in the French, these have a peculiar beauty. Victor Hugo has imi-
tated them with success; but to render them into English is impos-
sible.
The refrain, moreover, is closely allied to those couplets or qua-
trains composed spontaneously at the dance or other merry-making
of the people. In many parts of Germany, the dances of harvest.
1 We cannot widen our borders so as to include that solitary folk-song
rescued from ancient Greek literature, the Song of the Swallow,' sung by
children of the Island of Rhodes as they went about asking gifts from house
to house at the coming of the earliest swallow. The metre is interesting in
comparison with the rhythm of later European folk-songs, and there is evident
dramatic action. Nor can we include the fragments of communal drama
found in the favorite Debates Between Summer and Winter,- from the actual
contest, to such lyrical forms as the song at the end of Shakespeare's 'Love's
Labor's Lost. ' The reader may be reminded of a good specimen of this class
in Ivy and Holly,' printed by Ritson, Ancient Songs and Ballads,' Hazlitt's
edition, page 114 ff. , with the refrain:-
Nay, Ivy, nay,
Hyt shal not be, I wys;
Let Holy hafe the maystry,
As the maner ys.
## p. 5861 (#449) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5861
were until recent days enlivened by the so-called schnaderhüpfl, a
quatrain sung to a simple air, composed on the spot, and often.
inclining to the personal and the satiric. In earlier days this power
to make a quatrain off-hand seems to have been universal among the
peasants of Europe. In Scandinavia such quatrains are known as
stev. They are related, so far as their spontaneity, their universal
character, and their origin are concerned, to the coplas of Spain, the
stornelli of Italy, and the distichs of modern Greece. Of course, the
specimens of this poetry which can be found now are rude enough;
for the life has gone out of it, and to find it at its best one must go
back to conditions which brought the undivided genius of the com-
munity into play. What one finds nowadays is such motley as this,
- a so-called rundâ from Vogtland, answering to the Bavarian schna-
derhüpfl:-
-
-
I and my Hans,
We go to the dance;
And if no one will dance,
Dance I and my Hans!
A schnaderhüpfl taken down at Appenzell in 1754, and one of the
oldest known, was sung by some lively girl as she danced at the
reapers' festival:
Mine, mine, mine,- O my love is fine,
And my favor shall he plainly see;
Till the clock strike eight, till the clock strike nine,
My door, my door shall open be.
It is evident that the great mass of this poetry died with the
occasion that brought it forth, or lingered in oral tradition, exposed
to a thousand chances of oblivion. The Church made war upon these
songs, partly because of their erotic character, but mainly, one may
assume, because of the chain of tradition from heathen times which
linked them with feasts in honor of abhorred gods, and with rustic
dances at the old pagan harvest-home. A study of all this, however,
with material at a minimum, and conjecture or philological combi-
nation as the only possible method of investigation, must be relegated
to the treatise and the monograph;¹ for present purposes we must con-
fine our exposition and search to songs that shall attract readers as
well as students. Yet this can be done only by the admission into
our pages of folk-song which already bears witness, more or less, to
the touch of an artist working upon material once exclusively com-
munal and popular.
'Folk-lore, mythology, sociology even, must share in this work. The
reader may consult for indirect but valuable material such books as Frazer's
'Golden Bough,' or that admirable treatise, Tylor's Primitive Culture. )
## p. 5862 (#450) ###########################################
5862
FOLK-SONG
Returning to our English type, the 'Cuckoo Song,' we are now to
ask what other communal lyrics with this mark upon them, denoting
at once rescue and contamination at the hands of minstrel or wan-
dering clerk, have come down to us from the later Middle Ages.
Having answered this question, it will remain to deal with the dif-
ficult material accumulated in comparatively recent times. Ballads
are far easier to preserve than songs. Ballads have a narrative; and
this story in them has proved antiseptic, defying the chances of oral
transmission. A good story travels far, and the path which it wan-
ders from people to people is often easy to follow; but the more vola-
tile contents of the popular lyric we are not speaking of its tune,
which is carried in every direction are easily lost. Such a lyric
lives chiefly by its sentiment, and sentiment is a fragile burden. We
can however get some notion of this communal song by process of
inference, for the earliest lays of the Provençal troubadour, and
probably of the German minnesinger, were based upon the older
song of the country-side. Again, in England there was little distinc-
tion made between the singer who entertained court and castle and
the gleeman who sang in the villages and at rural festivals; the lat-
ter doubtless taking from the common stock more than he contrib-
uted from his own. A certain proof of more aristocratic and distinctly
artistic, that is to say, individual origin, and a conclusive reason for
refusing the name of folk-song to any one of these lyrics of love, is
the fact that it happens to address a married woman. Every one
knows that the troubadour and the minnesinger thus addressed their
lays; and only the style and general character of their earliest poetry
can be considered as borrowed from the popular muse. In other
words, however vivacious, objective, vigorous, may be the early lays.
of the troubadour, however one is tempted to call them mere modi-
fications of an older folk-song, they are excluded by this characteris-
tic from the popular lyric and belong to poetry of the schools.
Marriage, says Jeanroy, is always respected in the true folk-song.
Moreover, this is only a negative test. In Portugal, many songs
which must be referred to the individual and courtly poet are written
in praise of the unmarried girl; while in England, whether it be set
down to austere morals or to the practical turn of the native mind,
one finds little or nothing to match this troubadour and minnesinger
poetry in honor of the stately but capricious dame. ' The folk-song
1 For early times translation from language to language is out of the
question, certainly in the case of lyrics. It is very important to remember that
primitive man regarded song as a momentary and spontaneous thing.
2 Yet even rough Scandinavia took up this brilliant but doubtful love
poetry. To one of the Norse kings is attributed a song in which the royal
singer informs his "lady" by way of credentials for his wooing,-“I have
struck a blow in the Saracen's land; let thy husband do the same! »
## p. 5863 (#451) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5863
that we seek found few to record it; it sounded at the dance, it was
heard in the harvest-field; what seemed to be everywhere, growing
spontaneously like violets in spring, called upon no one to preserve
it and to give it that protection demanded by exotic poetry of the
schools. What is preserved is due mainly to the clerks and gleemen
of older times, or else to the curiosity of modern antiquarians, rescu-
ing here and there a belated survival of the species. Where the
clerk or the gleeman is in question, he is sure to add a personal ele-
ment, and thus to remove the song from its true communal setting.
Contrast the wonderful little song, admired by Alceste in Molière's
'Misanthrope,' and as impersonal, even in its first-personal guise as
any communal lyric ever made,—with a reckless bit of verse sung by
some minstrel about the famous Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Henry II.
of England. The song so highly commended by Alceste¹ runs, in
desperately inadequate translation:-
If the King had made it mine,
Paris, his city gay,
And I must the love resign
Of my bonnie may,2-
To King Henry I would say:
Take your Paris back, I pray;
Better far I love my may,—
O joy! -
Love my bonnie may!
Let us hear the reckless "clerk":-
If the whole wide world were mine,
From the ocean to the Rhine,
All I'd be denying
If the Queen of England once
In my arms were lying! ³
The tone is not directly communal, but it smacks more of the
village dance than of the troubadour's harp; for even Bernart of
Ventadour did not dare to address Eleanor save in the conventional
tone of despair. The clerks and gleemen, however, and even English
peasants of modern times, took another view of the matter. The
"clerk," that delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between
Le Misanthrope,' i. 2; he calls it a vielle chanson. M. Tiersot concedes
it to the popular muse, but thinks it is of the city, not of the country.
2
May, a favorite ballad word for “maid,» «sweetheart. »
«Wær diu werlt alliu mîn. »
3(Carm. Bur. ,' page 185:
'See Child's Ballads, vi. 257, and Grandfer Cantle's ballad in Mr. Hardy's
'Return of the Native. ' See next page.
## p. 5864 (#452) ###########################################
5864
FOLK-SONG
church and tavern, between breviary and love songs, has probably
done more for the preservation of folk-song than all other agents
known to us. In the above verses he protests a trifle or so too much
about himself; let us hear him again as mere reporter for the com-
munal lyric, in verses that he may have brought from the dance to
turn into his inevitable Latin:-
Come, my darling, come to me,
I am waiting long for thee,—
I am waiting long for thee,
Come, my darling, come to me!
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain,
Come and make me well again;-
Come and make me well again,
Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain. ¹
More graceful yet are the anonymous verses quoted in certain
Latin love-letters of a manuscript at Munich; and while a few critics
rebel at the notion of a folk-song, the pretty lines surely hint more
of field and dance than of the study.
Thou art mine,
I am thine,
Of that may'st certain be;
Locked thou art
Within my heart,
And I have lost the key:
There must thou ever be!
Now it happens that this notion of heart and key recurs in later
German folk-song. A highly popular song of the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries has these stanzas: 2
FOR thy dear sake I'm hither come,
Sweetheart, O hear me woo!
My hope rests evermore on thee,
I love thee well and true.
Let me but be thy servant,
Thy dear love let me win;
(Carm. Bur. ,' page 208: "Kume, Kume, geselle min. »
2 Translated from Böhme (Altdeutsches Liederbuch,' Leipzig, 1877, page 233.
Lovers of folk-song will find this book invaluable on account of the carefully
edited musical accompaniments. With it and Chappell, the musician has ample
material for English and German songs; for French, see Tiersot, 'La Chan-
son Populaire en France. ›
## p. 5865 (#453) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5865
Come, ope thy heart, my darling,
And lock me fast within!
Where my love's head is lying,
There rests a golden shrine;
And in it lies, locked hard and fast,
This fresh young heart of mine:
Oh would to God I had the key,-
I'd throw it in the Rhine;
What place on earth were more to me,
Than with my sweeting fine?
Where my love's feet are lying,
A fountain gushes cold,
And whoso tastes the fountain
Grows young and never old:
Full often at the fountain
I knelt and quenched my drouth,-
Yet tenfold rather would I kiss
My darling's rosy mouth!
And in my darling's garden¹
Is many a precious flower;
Oh, in this budding season,
Would God 'twere now the hour
To go and pluck the roses
And nevermore to part:
I think full sure to win her
Who lies within my heart!
Now who this merry roundel
Hath sung with such renown?
That have two lusty woodsmen
At Freiberg in the town,
Have sung it fresh and fairly,
And drunk the cool red wine:
And who hath sat and listened? -
Landlady's daughter fine!
What with the more modern tone, and the lusty woodsmen, one
has deserted the actual dance, the actual communal origin of song;
To pluck
¹The garden in these later songs is constantly a symbol of love.
the roses, etc. , is conventional for making love.
## p. 5866 (#454) ###########################################
5866
FOLK-SONG
but one is still amid communal influences. Another little song about
the heart and the key, this time from France, recalls one to the
dance itself, and to the simpler tone:-
Shut fast within a rose
I ween my heart must be;
No locksmith lives in France
Who can set it free,-
Only my lover Pierre,
Who took away the key! ¹
Coming back to England, and the search for her folk-song, it is
in order to begin with the refrain. A ❝clerk," in a somewhat arti-
ficial lay to his sweetheart, has preserved as refrain what seems to
be a bit of communal verse:-
Ever and aye for my love I am in sorrow sore;
I think of her I see so seldom any more,2-
rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed.
Better by far is the song of another clericus, with a lusty little re-
frain as fresh as the wind it invokes, as certainly folk-song as any-
thing left to us:-
Blow, northern wind,
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow, northern wind,
Blow, blow, blow!
The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good
movement. A stanza may be quoted:
·-
I know a maid in bower so bright
That handsome is for any sight,
Noble, gracious maid of might,
Precious to discover.
In all this wealth of women fair,
Maid of beauty to compare
With my sweeting found I ne'er
All the country over!
Old too is the lullaby used as a burden or refrain for a religious
poem printed by Thomas Wright in his 'Songs and Carols':
¹Quoted by Tiersot, page 88, from Chansons à Danser en Rond,' gathered
before 1704.
Böddeker's 'Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with notes, etc. , in
German; Berlin, 1878, page 179.
## p. 5867 (#455) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5867
Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng,
Lullay, my dere herte, myn owyn dere derlyng. ¹
The same English manuscript which has kept the refrain 'Blow,
Northern Wind,' offers another song which may be given in modern
translation and entire. All these songs were written down about the
year 1310, and probably in Herefordshire. As with the carmina
burana, the lays of German "clerks," so these English lays represent
something between actual communal verse and the poetry of the
individual artist; they owe more to folk-song than to the traditions of
literature and art. Some of the expressions in this song are taken,
if we may trust the critical insight of Ten Brink, directly from the
poetry of the people.
A MAID as white as ivory bone,
A pearl in gold that golden shone,
A turtle-dove, a love whereon
My heart must cling:
Her blitheness nevermore be gone
While I can sing!
When she is gay,
In all the world no more I pray
Than this: alone with her to stay
Withouten strife.
Could she but know the ills that slay
Her lover's life!
Was never woman nobler wrought;
And when she blithe to sleep is brought,
Well for him who guessed her thought,
Proud maid! Yet O,
Full well I know she will me nought.
My heart is woe.
And how shall I then sweetly sing
That thus am marréd with mourning?
To death, alas, she will me bring
Long ere my day.
Greet her well, the sweete thing,
With eyen gray!
1 See also Ritson,
Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3d Ed. , pages xlviii. , 202
ff. The Percy folio MS. preserved a cradle song, Balow, my Babe, ly Still
and Sleepe,' which was published as a broadside, and finally came to be known
as Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament. ' These "balow » lullabies are said by Mr.
Ebbsworth to be imitations of a pretty poem first published in 1593, and now
printed by Mr. Bullen in his 'Songs from Elizabethan Romances,' page 92.
## p. 5868 (#456) ###########################################
5868
FOLK-SONG
-
Her eyes have wounded me, i-wis.
Her arching brows that bring the bliss;
Her comely mouth whoso might kiss,
In mirth he were;
And I would change all mine for his
That is her fere. ¹
Her fere, so worthy might I be,
Her fere, so noble, stout and free,
For this one thing I would give three,
Nor haggle aught.
From hell to heaven, if one could see,
So fine is naught,
[Nor half so free;2
All lovers true, now listen unto me. ]
Now hearken to me while I tell,
In such a fume I boil and well;
There is no fire so hot in hell
As his, I trow,
Who loves unknown and dares not tell
His hidden woe.
I will her well, she wills me woe;
I am her friend, and she my foe;
Methinks my heart will break in two
For sorrow's might;
In God's own greeting may she go,
That maiden white!
I would I were a throstlecock,
A bunting, or a laverock,³
Sweet maid!
Between her kirtle and her smock
I'd then be hid!
The reader will easily note the struggle between our poet's con-
ventional and quite literary despair and the fresh communal tone in
such passages as we have ventured, despite Leigh Hunt's direful
example, to put in italics. This poet was a clerk, or perhaps not
even that,- a gleeman; and he dwells, after the manner of his kind,
¹ Fere, companion, lover. "I would give all I have to be her lover. "
2 Superfluous verses; but the MS. makes no distinction. Free means no-
ble, gracious. "If one could see everything between hell and heaven, one
would find nothing so fair and noble. "
³ Lark. The poem is translated from Böddeker, page 161 ff.
## p. 5869 (#457) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5869
upon a despair which springs from difference of station. But it is
England, not France; it is a maiden, not countess or queen, whom he
loves; and the tone of his verse is sound and communal at heart.
True, the metre, afterwards a favorite with Burns, is one used by the
oldest known troubadour of Provence, Count William, as well as by
the poets of miracle plays and of such romances as the English
'Octavian'; but like Count William himself, who built on a popular
basis, our clerk or gleeman is nearer to the people than to the schools.
Indeed, Uhland reminds us that Breton kloer ("clerks ") to this day
play a leading part as lovers and singers of love in folk-song; and
the English clerks in question were not regular priests, consecrated
and in responsible positions, but students or unattached followers of
theology. They sang with the people; they felt and suffered with
the people—as in the case of a far nobler member of the guild, Will-
iam Langland; and hence sundry political poems which deal with
wrongs and suffering endured by the commons of that day. In the
struggle of barons and people against Henry III. , indignation made
verses; and these, too, we owe to the clerks. Such a burst of indig-
nation is the song against Richard of Cornwall, with a turbulent
refrain which sounds like a direct loan from the people. One stanza,
with this refrain, will suffice. It opens with the traditional "lithe
and listen" of the ballad-singer :-
:-
Sit all now still and list to me:
The German King, by my loyalty!
Thirty thousand pound asked he
To make a peace in this country,-
And so he did and more!
REFRAIN
Richard, though thou be ever trichard,¹
Trichen shalt thou nevermore!
This, however, like many a scrap of battle-song, ribaldry exchanged
between two armies, and the like, has interest rather for the anti-
quarian than for the reader. We shall leave such fragments, and
turn in conclusion to the folk-song of later times.
The England of Elizabeth was devoted to lyric poetry, and folk-
song must have flourished along with its rival of the schools. Few
of these songs, however, have been preserved; and indeed there is
no final test for the communal quality in such survivals. Certainly
some of the songs in the drama of that time are of popular origin;
but the majority, as a glance at Mr. Bullen's several collections will
prove, are artistic and individual, like the music to which they were
2 Betray.
Traitor.
## p. 5870 (#458) ###########################################
5870
FOLK-SONG
sung. Occasionally we get a tantalizing glimpse of another lyrical
England, the folk dancing and singing their own lays; but no Autoly-
cus brings these to us in his basket. Even the miracle plays had
not despised folk-song; unfortunately the writers are content to men-
tion the songs, like our Acts of Congress, only by title. In the "com-
edy" called 'The Longer Thou Livest the More Foole Thou Art,’
there are snatches of such songs; and a famous list, known to all
scholars, is given by Laneham in a letter from Kenilworth in 1575,
where he tells of certain songs, "all ancient," owned by one Captain
Cox. Again, nobody ever praised songs of the people more sincerely
than Shakespeare has praised them; and we may be certain that he
used them for the stage. Such is the Willow Song' that Desdemona
sings, an "old thing," she calls it; and such perhaps the song in
'As You Like It,'-'It Was a Lover and His Lass. ' Nash is credited
with the use of folk-songs in his Summer's Last Will and Testa-
ment'; but while the pretty verses about spring and the tripping
lines, 'A-Maying,' have such a note, nothing could be further from
the quality of folk-song than the solemn and beautiful 'Adieu, Fare-
well, Earth's Bliss. ' In Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burn-
ing Pestle,' however, Merrythought sings some undoubted snatches of
popular lyric, just as he sings stanzas from the traditional ballad;
for example, his-
<
―
-
Go from my window, love, go;
Go from my window, my dear;
The wind and the rain
Will drive you back again,
You cannot be lodged here,—
is quoted with variations in other plays, and was a favorite of the
time,' and like many a ballad appears in religious parody. A mod-
ern variant, due to tradition, comes from Norwich; the third and
fourth lines ran:-
For the wind is in the west,
And the cuckoo's in his nest.
From the time of Henry VIII. a pretty song is preserved of this
same class:-
Westron wynde, when wyll thou blow!
The smalle rain downe doth rayne;
Oh if my love were in my armys,
Or I in my bed agayne!
This sort of song between the lovers, one without and one within,
occurs in French and German at a very early date, and is probably
much older than any records of it; as serenade, it found great favor
The music in Chappell, page 141.
## p. 5871 (#459) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5871
with poets of the city and the court, and is represented in English
by Sidney's beautiful lines, admirable for purposes of comparison
with the folk-song:-
"WHO is it that this dark night
Underneath my window plaineth ? »
"It is one who, from thy sight
Being, ah, exiled! disdaineth
Every other vulgar light. "
The zeal of modern collectors has brought together a mass of
material which passes for folk-song. None of it is absolutely com-
munal, for the conditions of primitive lyric have long since been
swept away; nevertheless, where isolated communities have retained
something of the old homogeneous and simple character, the spirit
of folk-song lingers in survival. From Great Britain, from France.
and particularly from Germany, where circumstances have favored this
survival, a few folk-songs may now be given in inadequate transla-
tion. To go further afield, to collect specimens of Italian, Russian,
Servian, modern Greek, and so on, would need a book.
The songs
which follow are sufficiently representative for the purpose.
A pretty little song, popular in Germany to this day, needs no
pompous support of literary allusion to explain its simple pathos;
still, it is possible that one meets here a distant echo of the tragedy
of obstacles told in romance of Hero and Leander. When one hears
this song, one understands where Heine found the charm of his best
lyrics:-
OVER a waste of water
The bonnie lover crossed,
A-wooing the King's daughter:
But all his love was lost.
Ah, Elsie, darling Elsie,
Fain were I now with thee;
But waters twain are flowing,
Dear love, twixt thee and me! '
Even more of a favorite is the song which represents two girls in
the harvest-field, one happy in her love, the other deserted; the noise
of the sickle makes a sort of chorus. Uhland placed with the two stan-
zas of the song a third stanza which really belongs to another tune;
the latter, however, may serve to introduce the situation:-
I HEARD a sickle rustling,
Ay, rustling through the corn:
I heard a maiden sobbing
Because her love was lorn.
1 Böhme, with music, page 94.
## p. 5872 (#460) ###########################################
5872
FOLK-SONG
"Oh let the sickle rustle!
I care not how it go;
For I have found a lover,
A lover,
Where clover and violets blow. "
"And hast thou found a lover
Where clover and violets blow?
I stand here, ah, so lonely,
So lonely,
And all my heart is woe! "
Two songs may follow, one from France, one from Scotland, be-
wailing the death of lover or husband. 'The Lowlands of Holland'
was published by Herd in his Scottish Songs. '¹ A clumsy attempt
was made to fix the authorship upon a certain young widow; but the
song belies any such origin. It has the marks of tradition: -
MY LOVE has built a bonny ship, and set her on the sea,
With sevenscore good mariners to bear her company;
There's threescore is sunk, and threescore dead at sea,
And the Lowlands of Holland has twin'd' my love and me.
My love he built another ship, and set her on the main,
And nane but twenty mariners for to bring her hame,
But the weary wind began to rise, and the sea began to rout;
My love then and his bonny ship turned withershins about.
3
There shall neither coif come on my head nor comb come in
my hair;
There shall neither coal nor candle-light come in my bower
mair;
Nor will I love another one until the day I die,
For I never loved a love but one, and he's drowned in the sea.
"O haud your tongue, my daughter dear, be still and be con-
tent;
There are mair lads in Galloway, ye neen nae sair lament. "
O there is none in Gallow, there's none at a' for me;
For I never loved a love but one, and he's drowned in the sea.
¹Quoted by Child, Ballads,' iv. 318.
2 Separated, divided.
An equivalent to upside down, "in the wrong direction. »
## p. 5873 (#461) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5873
The French song¹ has a more tender note:
Low, low he lies who holds my heart,
The sea is rolling fair above;
Go, little bird, and tell him this,-
Go, little bird, and fear no harm,-
Say I am still his faithful love,
Say that to him I stretch my arms.
Another song, widely scattered in varying versions throughout
France, is of the forsaken and too trustful maid,-'En revenant des
Noces. ' The narrative in this, as in the Scottish song, makes it ap-
proach the ballad.
BACK from the wedding-feast,
All weary by the way,
I rested by a fount
And watched the waters' play;
And at the fount I bathed,
So clear the waters' play;
And with a leaf of oak
I wiped the drops away.
Upon the highest branch
Loud sang the nightingale.
Sing, nightingale, oh sing,
Thou hast a heart so gay!
Not gay, this heart of mine:
My love has gone away,
Because I gave my rose
Too soon, too soon away.
Ah, would to God that rose
Yet on the rosebush lay,-
Would that the rosebush, even,
Unplanted yet might stay,-
Would that my lover Pierre
My favor had to pray! ?
¹ See Tiersot, 'La Chanson Populaire,' p. 103, with the music.
The final
verses, simple as they are, are not rendered even remotely well. They run: -
Que je suis sa fidèle amie,
Et que vers lui je tends les bras.
2 Tiersot, p. 90. In many versions there is further complication with king
and queen and the lover. This song is extremely popular in Canada.
X-368
## p. 5874 (#462) ###########################################
5874
FOLK-SONG
The corresponding Scottish song, beautiful enough for any land.
or age, is the well-known 'Waly, Waly':-
OH WALY, waly, up the bank,
And waly, waly, down the brae,
And waly, waly, yon burn-side,
Where I and my love wont to gae.
I lean'd my back unto an aik,
I thought it was a trusty tree;
But first it bowed and syne it brak,
Sae my true-love did lightly' me.
Oh waly, waly, but love be bonny
A little time, while it is new;
But when 'tis auld it waxeth cauld,
And fades away like morning dew.
Oh wherefore should I busk my head?
Or wherefore should I kame my hair?
For my true-love has me forsook,
And says he'll never love me mair.
Now Arthur's Seat shall be my bed,
The sheets shall ne'er be fyled by me;
Saint Anton's well shall be my drink,
Since my true-love has forsaken me.
Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw
And shake the green leaves off the tree?
O gentle Death, when wilt thou come ?
For of my life I am weary.
'Tis not the frost that freezes fell,
Nor blawing snaw's inclemency;
'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry,
But my love's heart grown cauld to me.
'Lightly (a verb) is to treat with contempt, to undervalue.
burden quoted by Chappell, p. 458, and very old:
-
The bonny broome, the well-favored broome,
The broome blooms faire on hill;
What ailed my love to lightly me,
And I working her will?
Compare the
## p. 5875 (#463) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5875
When we came in by Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in the black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie.
But had I wist, before I kissed,
That love had been sae ill to win,
I'd locked my heart in a case of gold.
And pinned it with a silver pin.
Oh, oh, if my young babe were born,
And set upon the nurse's knee,
And I myself were dead and gone,
[And the green grass growing over me! ]
The same ballad touch overweighs even the lyric quality of the
verses about Yarrow:
"WILLY'S rare, and Willy's fair,
And Willy's wondrous bonny,
And Willy heght' to marry me
Gin e'er he married ony.
"Oh came you by yon water-side?
Pu'd you the rose or lily?
Or came you by yon meadow green?
Or saw you my sweet Willy? »
She sought him east, she sought him west,
She sought him brade and narrow;
Syne, in the clifting of a craig,
She found him drowned in Yarrow. 2
Returning to Germany and to pure lyric, we have a pretty bit
which is attached to many different songs.
HIGH up on yonder mountain
A mill-wheel clatters round,
And, night or day, naught else but love
Within the mill is ground.
The mill has gone to ruin,
And love has had its day;
God bless thee now, my bonnie lass,
I wander far away. ³
1 Promised.
2 Child's Ballads, vii. 179.
3 Böhme, p. 271.
## p. 5876 (#464) ###########################################
5876
FOLK-SONG
But there is a more cheerful vein in this sort of song; and the
mountain offers pleasanter views:-
-
OH YONDER on the mountain,
There stands a lofty house,
Where morning after morning,
Yes, morning,
Three maids go in and out. ¹
The first she is my sister,
The second well is known,
The third, I will not name her,
No, name her,
And she shall be my own!
Finally, that pearl of German folk-song, 'Innsprück. ' The wanderer
must leave the town and his sweetheart; but he swears to be true,
and prays that his love be kept safe till his return:-
INNSPRÜCK, I must forsake thee,
My weary way betake me
Unto a foreign shore,
And all my joy hath vanished,
And ne'er while I am banished
Shall I behold it more.
I bear a load of sorrow,
And comfort can I borrow,
Dear love, from thee alone.
Ah, let thy pity hover
About thy weary lover
When he is far from home.
My one true love! Forever
Thine will I bide, and never
Shall our dear vow be vain.
Now must our Lord God ward thee,
In peace and honor guard thee,
Until I come again.
In leaving the subject of folk-song, it is necessary for the reader
not only to consider anew the loose and unscientific way in which
this term has been employed, but also to bear in mind that few of
the above specimens can lay claim to the title in any rigid classifica-
tion. Long ago, a German critic reminded zealous collectors of his
The rhyme in German leaves even more to be desired.
## p. 5877 (#465) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5877
day that when one has dipped a pailful of water from the brook,
one has captured no brook; and that when one has written down a
folk-song, it has ceased to be that eternally changing, momentary,
spontaneous, dance-begotten thing which once flourished everywhere
as communal poetry. Always in flux, if it stopped it ceased to be
itself. Modern lyric is deliberately composed by some one, mainly to
be sung by some one else; the old communal lyric was sung by
the throng and was made in the singing. When festal excitement at
some great communal rejoicing in the life of clan or tribe "fought
its battles o'er again," the result was narrative communal song. A
disguised and baffled survival of this most ancient narrative is the
popular ballad. Still more disguised, still more baffled, is the purely
lyrical survival of that old communal and festal song; and the best
one can do is to present those few specimens found under conditions
which preserve certain qualities of a vanished world of poetry.
It may be asked why the contemporary songs found among Indian
tribes of our continent, or among remote islanders in low stages of
culture, should not reproduce for us the old type of communal verse.
The answer is simple. Tribes which have remained in low stages of
culture do not necessarily retain all the characteristics of primitive
life among races which had the germs of rapidly developing culture.
That communal poetry which gave life to the later epic of Hellenic
or of Germanic song must have differed materially, no matter in what
stage of development, from the uninteresting and monotonous chants
of the savage. Moreover, the specimens of savage verse which we
know retain the characteristics of communal verse, while they lack
its nobler and vital quality. The dance, the spontaneous production,
repetition, these are all marked characteristics of savage verse. But
savage verse cannot serve as model for our ideas of primitive folk-
song.
He
ummere.
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5878
SAMUEL FOOTE
(1720-1777)
Ge
HE name of Samuel Foote suggests a whimsical, plump little
man, with a round face, twinkling eyes, and one of the
readiest wits of the eighteenth century. This contemporary
of the elder Colman, Cumberland, Mrs. Cowley, and the great Gar-
rick, knew many famous men and women, and they admired as well
as feared his talents.
Samuel Foote was born at Truro in 1720. He was a young boy
when he first exhibited his powers of mimicry at his father's dinner-
table. At that time he did not expect to earn his living by them,
for he came of well-to-do people, and his mother, who was of aristo-
cratic birth, inherited a comfortable fortune.
Throughout his school days at Worcester and his college days at
Worcester College, Oxford, where he did not remain long enough to
take a degree, and the idle days when he was supposed to be study-
ing law at the Temple and was in reality frequenting coffee-houses
and drawing-rooms as a young man of fashion, he was establishing a
reputation for repartee, bons mots, and satiric imitation. So, when
the wasteful youth had squandered all his money, he naturally
turned to the stage as offering him the best opportunity. Like
many another amateur addicted to a mistaken ambition, Foote first
tried tragedy, and made his début as Othello. But in this and in
other tragedies he was a failure; so he soon took to writing comic
plays with parts especially adapted to himself. The Diversions of
the Morning' was the first of a long series, of which 'The Mayor of
Garratt,' 'The Lame Lover,' The Nabob,' and 'The Minor,' are
among the best known. As these were written from the actor's
rather than from the dramatist's point of view, they often seem faulty
in construction and crude in literary quality. They are farces rather
than true comedies. But they abound in witty dialogue, and in a
satire which illuminates contemporary vices and follies.
Foote seems to have been curiously lacking in conscience. He
lived his life with a gayety which no poverty, misfortune, or physical
suffering could long dampen. When he had money he spent it lav-
ishly, and when the supply ran short he racked his clever brains to
make a new hit. To accomplish this he was utterly unscrupulous,
and never spared his friends or those to whom he was indebted,
4
## p. 5879 (#467) ###########################################
SAMUEL FOOTE
5879
if he saw good material in their foibles. His victims smarted, but
his ready tongue and personal geniality usually extricated him from
consequent unpleasantness. Garrick, who aided him repeatedly, and
who dreaded ridicule above all things, was his favorite butt, yet
remained his friend. The irate members of the East India Company,
who called upon him armed with stout cudgels to administer a casti-
gation for an offensive libel in The Nabob,' were so speedily molli-
fied that they laid their cudgels aside with their hats, and accepted
his invitation to dinner.
To us, much of his charm has evaporated, for it lay in these very
personalities which held well-known people up to ridicule with a
precision which made it impossible for the originals to escape recog-
nition. Even irascible Dr. Johnson, who wished to disapprove of him,
admitted that there was no one like "that fellow Foote. " So this
"Aristophanes of the English stage" was mourned when he died at
the age of fifty-seven, and a company of his friends and fellow-actors
buried him one evening by the dim light of torches in a cloister of
Westminster Abbey.
There is often a boisterous unreserve in the plays of Foote, as in
other eighteenth-century drama, which revolts modern taste. As
they consist of character study rather than incident, mere extracts
are apt to appear incomplete and meaningless. Therefore it seems
fairer to represent the famous wit not alone by formal citation, but
also by some of his bons mots extracted from the collection of William
Cooke in his 'Memoirs of Samuel Foote' (2 vols. 1806).
HOW TO BE A LAWYER
From The Lame Lover
dent.
Enter Jack
ERJEANT-So, Jack, anybody at chambers to-day?
SERJEAL
Jack-Fieri Facias from Fetter Lane, about the bill to
be filed by Kit Crape against Will Vizard this term.
Serjeant- Praying for an equal partition of plunder?
Jack-Yes, sir.
But we
Serjeant-Strange world we live in, that even highwaymen
can't be true to each other! [Half aside to himself. ]
shall make Vizard refund; we'll show him what long hands the
law has.
Jack-Facias says that in all the books he can't hit a prece
## p. 5880 (#468) ###########################################
5880
SAMUEL FOOTE
Serjeant-Then I'll make one myself; Aut inveniam, aut
faciam, has been always my motto. The charge must be made
for partnership profit, by bartering lead and gunpowder against
money, watches, and rings, on Epping Forest, Hounslow Heath,
and other parts of the kingdom.
Jack-He says if the court should get scent of the scheme,
the parties would all stand committed.
Serjeant-Cowardly rascal! but however, the caution mayn't
prove amiss. [Aside. ] I'll not put my own name to the bill.
Jack The declaration, too, is delivered in the cause of Roger
Rapp'em against Sir Solomon Simple.
Serjeant-What, the affair of the note?
Jack-Yes.
Serjeant - Why, he is clear that his client never gave such a
note.
Jack-Defendant never saw plaintiff since the hour he was
born; but notwithstanding, they have three witnesses to prove a
consideration and signing the note.
Serjeant-They have!
Jack-He is puzzled what plea to put in.
Serjeant-Three witnesses ready, you say?
Jack-Yes.
Serjeant - Tell him Simple must acknowledge the note [Jack
starts]; and bid him against the trial comes on, to procure four
persons at least to prove the payment at the Crown and Anchor,
the 10th of December.
Jack-But then how comes the note to remain in plaintiff's
possession?
Serjeant-Well put, Jack: but we have a salvo for that;
plaintiff happened not to have the note in his pocket, but prom-
ised to deliver it up when called thereunto by defendant.
Jack-That will do rarely.
Serjeant-Let the defense be a secret; for I see we have able
people to deal with. But come, child, not to lose time, have you
carefully conned those instructions I gave you?
Jack-Yes, sir.
Serjeant - Well, that we shall see. How many points are the
great object of practice?
Jack-Two.
Serjeant-Which are they?
