In
Scandinavia
such quatrains are known as
stev.
stev.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
DE FLORIAN
great popularity, and together with his
'Numa Pompilius (1786) placed him in the front rank of contempo-
rary literature. He was enrolled as a member of the Academies
of Lyons, Florence, and Madrid, and on the death of the Cardinal de
Luynes he was admitted into the Academy of Paris, the honor which
he had most coveted.
During the tyranny of Robespierre, Florian was thrown into
prison, his position with the Duc de Penthièvre and some verses in
honor of Marie Antoinette serving as pretexts for his detention; and
in spite of the ceaseless efforts of Boissy D'Anglas and Mercier he
would doubtless have been sent to the guillotine, had not the down-
fall of the tyrant procured his release.
He left his prison with shattered health, and retired to the Parc
de Scéaux, the estates of the Duc de Penthièvre, where he expired
of a fever, September 13th, 1794.
## p. 5850 (#438) ###########################################
5850
JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN
Florian's style is typical of his times, although he showed an ele-
ment of conservatism. His works were carefully written, and bear
the marks of an elegant and delicate fancy without the impression
of strength. His 'Numa Pompilius' seems to have been modeled on
the Telemachus' of Fénelon. 'Gonzalve de Cordoue,' another of
his romances, is in a more modern manner, although it opens with
an invocation to the "Chaste nymphs of the Guadalquivir. " Florian,
in fine, is best known to-day by his fables, which have become
classic side by side with those of La Fontaine.
The following translations of Florian were made for A Library of the
World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh
A
THE CONNOISSEUR
FAT and pompous paroquet,
Free from his cage by hazard set,
Established him as connoisseur
Within a grove, when he, like those
Our critics false, began to slur
At everything with stuck-up nose:
The nightingale should trim her song.
Her cadences seemed rather poor:
The linnet he could not endure;
The thrush, perhaps, would get along
Could he but teach her for a while,-
That is, if she would aim at style.
Thus, none of all could please him—none;
And when their morning songs awoke,
The paroquet whistled, for a joke,
And kept it up till day was done.
Outraged at this unruly fate,
A deputation came in state,
Requesting him with curtsies low:
"Good sir, who always whistle so,
Inform us, pray, where we offend:
We wish to have a song from you:
Come, show us how we may amend. "
The paroquet, abashed, replied,
Scratching his head on either side,
"Whistling, my friends, is all I do. "
-
## p. 5851 (#439) ###########################################
JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN
THE COURTIERS
A
PERSIAN king went out one day
To hunt with all his courtiers gay;
And growing thirsty, looked around
To see could any spring be found.
In vain; but near, an orchard stood
With ripened fruits in multitude.
"Now Lord forbid," exclaimed the King,
"That I should take a single thing;
For if my courtiers see me do't,
It means good-by to all the fruit. "
THE DYING ROSE-TREE
ROSE-TREE, rose-tree, thou wert fair
When to thy cool retreat I came,
To hear and give the promise there
Our love should ever be the same.
O
How fair, oh then how fair, thy flowers
When his dear lap they rested on:
The buds that used to deck thy bowers
Are faded and forever gone.
'Twas sweet with water from the stream
To cool thy boughs with tender fears;
Now parched and dying do they seem,
For they are watered but with tears.
O rose-tree, rose-tree, thou wilt die;
And yet my heart thirsts more than thine:
I languish-would like thee could I,
Sweet rose-tree, this sad life resign!
SERENADE
ITHDRAW thy beams, thou moon unkind:—
Sweet night, my tender secret keep;
Bear thou my sorrows, gentle wind,
And whisper them where she doth sleep.
W
All else beside, who would not know
The pain her heavenly glances make,
Sleep on, sleep on; for if you wake
Yon must be rivals in my woe!
5851
## p. 5852 (#440) ###########################################
5852
JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN
L
SONG
OVELY Idol of my soul,
Victim of a wounded heart,-
See my grief beyond control;
Live, sweet one, do not depart!
For myself do I implore:
Live, or I can live no more!
Thou hast told me o'er and o'er
That thy heart was mine alone;
Thou art all my earthly store,
And thou desirest to be gone.
For myself do I implore:
Live, or I can live no more.
My destiny is bound with thine,
But yet I cannot stay thy fate;
Oh, what a bitter lot is mine
That I must live-disconsolate!
For myself do I implore:
Live, or I can live no more!
## p. 5853 (#441) ###########################################
5853
FOLK-SONG
BY F. B. GUMMERE
S IN the case of ballads, or narrative songs, it was important
to sunder not only the popular from the artistic, but also
the ballad of the people from the ballad for the people;
precisely so in the article of communal lyric one must distinguish
songs of the folk-songs made by the folk-from those verses of
the street or the music hall which are often caught up and sung by
the crowd until they pass as genuine folk-song. For true folk-song,
as for the genuine ballad, the tests are simplicity, sincerity, mainly
oral tradition, and origin in a homogeneous community. The style of
such a poem is not only simple, but free from individual stamp; the
metaphors, employed sparingly at the best, are like the phrases which
constantly occur in narrative ballads, and belong to tradition. The
metre is not so uniform as in ballads, but must betray its origin in
song. An unsung folk-song is more than a contradiction,-it is an
impossibility. Moreover, it is to be assumed that primitive folk-songs
were an outcome of the dance, for which originally there was no music
save the singing of the dancers. A German critic declares outright
that for early times there was «<
no dance without singing, and no
song without a dance; songs for the dance were the earliest of all songs,
and melodies for the dance the oldest music of every race. " Add to
this the undoubted fact that dancing by pairs is a comparatively mod-
ern invention, and that primitive dances involved the whole able-bodied
primitive community (Jeanroy's assertion that in the early Middle
Ages only women danced, is a libel on human nature), and one begins
to see what is meant by folk-song; primarily it was made by the sing-
ing and dancing throng, at a time when no distinction of lettered and
unlettered classes divided the community. Few, if any, of these prim-
itive folk-songs have come down to us; but they exist in survival,
with more or less trace of individual and artistic influences. As we
cannot apply directly the test of such a communal origin, we must
cast about for other and more modern conditions.
When Mr. George Saintsbury deplores "the lack, notorious to this
day, of one single original English folk-song of really great beauty,"
he leaves his readers to their own devices by way of defining this
species of poetry. Probably, however, he means the communal lyric
in survival, not the ballad, not what Germans would include under
volkslied and Frenchmen under chanson populaire. This distinction, so
## p. 5854 (#442) ###########################################
5854
FOLK-SONG
often forgotten by our critics, was laid down for English usage a cen-
tury ago by no less a person than Joseph Ritson. "With us," he said,
"songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly
called Songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions,
which now denominate Ballads. "
Notwithstanding this lucid statement, we have failed to clear the
field of all possible causes for error. The song of the folk is differ-
entiated from the song of the individual poet; popular lyric is set
over against the artistic, personal lyric. But lyric is commonly as-
sumed to be the expression of individual emotion, and seems in its
very essence to exclude all that is not single, personal, and conscious
emotion. Professor Barrett Wendell, however, is fain to abandon this
time-honored notion of lyric as the subjective element in poetry, the
expression of individual emotion, and proposes a definition based
upon the essentially musical character of these songs. If we adhere
strictly to the older idea, communal lyric, or folk-song, is a contra-
diction in terms; but as a musical expression, direct and unreflective,
of communal emotion, and as offspring of the enthusiasm felt by a
festal, dancing multitude, the term is to be allowed. It means the
lyric of a throng. Unless one feels this objective note in a lyric, it
is certainly no folk-song, but merely an anonymous product of the
schools. The artistic and individual lyric, however sincere it may
be, is fairly sure to be blended with reflection; but such a subjective
tone is foreign to communal verse-whether narrative or purely
lyrical. In other words, to study the lyric of the people, one must
banish that notion of individuality, of reflection and sentiment, which
one is accustomed to associate with all lyrics. To illustrate the mat-
ter, it is evident that Shelley's 'O World, O Life, O Time,' and
Wordsworth's 'My Heart Leaps Up,' however widely sundered may
be the points of view, however varied the character of the emotion,
are of the same individual and reflective class. Contrast now with
these a third lyric, an English song of the thirteenth century, pre-
served by some happy chance from the oblivion which claimed most
of its fellows; the casual reader would unhesitatingly put it into the
same class with Wordsworth's verses as a lyric of "nature," of
"joy," or what not, — an outburst of simple and natural emotion. But
if this Cuckoo Song' be regarded critically, it will be seen that pre-
cisely those qualities of the individual and the subjective are want-
ing. The music of it is fairly clamorous; the refrain counts for as
much as the verses; while the emotion seems to spring from the
crowd and to represent a community. Written down-no one can
say when it was actually composed-not later than the middle of the
thirteenth century, along with the music and a Latin hymn interlined
in red ink, this song is justly regarded by critics as communal rather
## p. 5855 (#443) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5855
than artistic in its character; and while it is set to music in what
Chappell calls "the earliest secular composition, in parts, known to
exist in any country," yet even this elaborate music was probably
"a national song and tune, selected according to the custom of the
times as a basis for harmony," and was "not entirely a scholastic
composition. " It runs in the original:-
SUMER is icumen in.
Lhude sing cuccu.
Groweth sed
And bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth,
Bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu.
Wel singes thu cuccu,
Ne swik thu naver nu.
BURDEN
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu. ¹
The monk, whose passion for music led him to rescue this charm-
ing song, probably regretted the rustic quality of the words, and did
his best to hide the origin of the air; but behind the complicated
music is a tune of the country-side, and if the refrain is here a
burden, to be sung throughout the piece by certain voices while
others sing the words of the song, we have every right to think of
an earlier refrain which almost absorbed the poem and was sung by
¹ For facsimile of the MS. , music, and valuable remarks, see Chappell,
'Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time,' Vol. i. , frontispiece,
and pages 21 ff. For pronunciation, see A. J. Ellis, Early English Pronuncia-
tion,' ii. , 419 ff. The translation given by Mr. Ellis is:-
<
"Summer has come in; loudly sing, cuckoo! Grows seed and blossoms
mead and springs the wood now. Sing, cuckoo! Ewe bleats after lamb, lows
after (its) calf the cow; bullock leaps, buck verts (seeks the green); merrily
sing, cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo! Well singest thou, cuckoo; cease thou not
never now. Burden. - Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo, sing
cuckoo, now. "- Lhude, wde (— wude), awe, calve, bucke, are dissyllabic.
Mr. Ellis's translation of verteth is very doubtful.
## p. 5856 (#444) ###########################################
5856
FOLK-SONG
a dancing multitude. This is a most important consideration. In all
parts of Europe, songs for the dance still abound in the shape of a
welcome to spring; and a lyrical outburst in praise of the jocund
season often occurs by way of prelude to the narrative ballad: wit-
ness the beautiful opening of Robin Hood and the Monk. ' The
troubadour of Provence, like the minnesinger of Germany, imitated
these invocations to spring. A charming balada of Provence prob-
ably takes us beyond the troubadour to the domain of actual folk-
song. "At the entrance of the bright season," it runs, "in order to
begin joy and to tease the jealous, the queen will show that she is
fain to love. As far as to the sea, no maid nor youth but must join
the lusty dance which she devises. On the other hand comes the
king to break up the dancing, fearful lest some one will rob him of
his April queen. Little, however, cares she for the graybeard; a gay
young 'bachelor' is there to pleasure her. Whoso might see her as
she dances, swaying her fair body, he could say in sooth that noth-
ing in all the world peers the joyous queen! " Then, as after each
stanza, for conclusion the wild refrain-like a procul este, profani!
-"Away, ye jealous ones, away! Let us dance together, together
let us dance! " The interjectional refrain, "eya," a mere cry of joy,
is common in French and German songs for the dance, and gives a
very echo of the lusty singers. Repetition, refrain, the infectious pace
and merriment of this old song, stamp it as a genuine product of the
people. ' The brief but emphatic praise of spring with which it
opens is doubtless a survival of those older pagan hymns and songs
which greeted the return of summer and were sung by the commu-
nity in chorus to the dance, now as a religious rite, now merely as
The first stanza in the original will show the structure of this true "bal-
lad" in the primitive sense of a dance-song. There are five of these stanzas,
carrying the same rhymes throughout:
-
A l'entrada del temps clar,— eya,—
Per joja recomençar,―eya,—
E per jelos irritar,―eya,—
Vol la regina mostrar
Qu' el' est si amoroza.
REFRAIN
Alavi', alavia, jelos,
laissaz nos, laissaz nos
ballar entre nos, entre nos!
2 Games and songs of children are still to be found which preserve many
of the features of these old dance-songs. The dramatic traits met with in
the games point back now to the choral poetry of pagan times, when per-
haps a bit of myth was enacted, now to the communal dance where the
stealing of a bride may have been imitated.
## p. 5857 (#445) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5857
the expression of communal rejoicing. What the people once sang in
chorus was repeated by the individual poet. Neidhart the German is
famous on account of his rustic songs for the dance, which often
begin with this lusty welcome to spring; while the dactyls of Wal-
ther von der Vogelweide not only echo the cadence of dancing feet,
but so nearly exclude the reflective and artistic element that the "I"
of the singer counts for little. "Winter," he sings,-
Winter has left us no pleasure at all;
Leafage and heather have fled with the fall,
Bare is the forest and dumb as a thrall;
If the girls by the roadside were tossing the ball,
I could prick up my ears for the singing-birds' call! ¹
That is, "if spring were here, and the girls were going to the
village dance"; for ball-playing was not only a rival of the dance,
but was often combined with it. Walther's dactyls are one in spirit
with the fragments of communal lyric which have been preserved
for us by song-loving "clerks" or theological students, those intel-
lectual tramps of the Middle Ages, who often wrote down such a
merry song of May and then turned it more or less freely into their
barbarous but not unattractive Latin. For example:-
Now is time for holiday!
Let our singing greet the May;
Flowers in the breezes play,
Every holt and heath is gay.
Let us dance and let us spring
With merry song and crying!
Joy befits the lusty May:
Set the ball a-flying!
If I woo my lady-love,
Will she be denying ? ?
The steps of the
another song of the
dance are not remote; and the same echo haunts
sort:-
-
DANCE we now the measure,
Dance, lady mine!
May, the month of pleasure,
Comes with sweet sunshine.
1 Unless otherwise credited, translations are by the writer.
2 From Carmina Burana,' a collection of these songs in Latin and Ger-
man preserved in a MS. of the thirteenth century; edited by J. A. Schmeller,
Breslau, 1883. This song is page 181 ff. , in German, Nu Suln Wir Alle
Fröude Hân.
X-367
## p. 5858 (#446) ###########################################
5858
FOLK-SONG
Winter vexed the meadow
Many weary hours:
Fled his chill and shadow,-
Lo, the fields are laughing
Red with flowers. ¹
Or the song at the dance may set forth some of the preliminaries, as
when a girl is supposed to sing:-
CARE and sorrow, fly away!
On the green field let us play,
Playmates gentle, playmates mine,
Where we see the bright flowers shine.
I say to thee, I say to thee,
Playmate mine, O come with me!
Gracious Love, to me incline,
Make for me a garland fine,—
Garland for the man to wear
Who can please a maiden fair.
I say to thee, I say to thee,
Playmate mine, O come with me! 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.
great popularity, and together with his
'Numa Pompilius (1786) placed him in the front rank of contempo-
rary literature. He was enrolled as a member of the Academies
of Lyons, Florence, and Madrid, and on the death of the Cardinal de
Luynes he was admitted into the Academy of Paris, the honor which
he had most coveted.
During the tyranny of Robespierre, Florian was thrown into
prison, his position with the Duc de Penthièvre and some verses in
honor of Marie Antoinette serving as pretexts for his detention; and
in spite of the ceaseless efforts of Boissy D'Anglas and Mercier he
would doubtless have been sent to the guillotine, had not the down-
fall of the tyrant procured his release.
He left his prison with shattered health, and retired to the Parc
de Scéaux, the estates of the Duc de Penthièvre, where he expired
of a fever, September 13th, 1794.
## p. 5850 (#438) ###########################################
5850
JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN
Florian's style is typical of his times, although he showed an ele-
ment of conservatism. His works were carefully written, and bear
the marks of an elegant and delicate fancy without the impression
of strength. His 'Numa Pompilius' seems to have been modeled on
the Telemachus' of Fénelon. 'Gonzalve de Cordoue,' another of
his romances, is in a more modern manner, although it opens with
an invocation to the "Chaste nymphs of the Guadalquivir. " Florian,
in fine, is best known to-day by his fables, which have become
classic side by side with those of La Fontaine.
The following translations of Florian were made for A Library of the
World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh
A
THE CONNOISSEUR
FAT and pompous paroquet,
Free from his cage by hazard set,
Established him as connoisseur
Within a grove, when he, like those
Our critics false, began to slur
At everything with stuck-up nose:
The nightingale should trim her song.
Her cadences seemed rather poor:
The linnet he could not endure;
The thrush, perhaps, would get along
Could he but teach her for a while,-
That is, if she would aim at style.
Thus, none of all could please him—none;
And when their morning songs awoke,
The paroquet whistled, for a joke,
And kept it up till day was done.
Outraged at this unruly fate,
A deputation came in state,
Requesting him with curtsies low:
"Good sir, who always whistle so,
Inform us, pray, where we offend:
We wish to have a song from you:
Come, show us how we may amend. "
The paroquet, abashed, replied,
Scratching his head on either side,
"Whistling, my friends, is all I do. "
-
## p. 5851 (#439) ###########################################
JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN
THE COURTIERS
A
PERSIAN king went out one day
To hunt with all his courtiers gay;
And growing thirsty, looked around
To see could any spring be found.
In vain; but near, an orchard stood
With ripened fruits in multitude.
"Now Lord forbid," exclaimed the King,
"That I should take a single thing;
For if my courtiers see me do't,
It means good-by to all the fruit. "
THE DYING ROSE-TREE
ROSE-TREE, rose-tree, thou wert fair
When to thy cool retreat I came,
To hear and give the promise there
Our love should ever be the same.
O
How fair, oh then how fair, thy flowers
When his dear lap they rested on:
The buds that used to deck thy bowers
Are faded and forever gone.
'Twas sweet with water from the stream
To cool thy boughs with tender fears;
Now parched and dying do they seem,
For they are watered but with tears.
O rose-tree, rose-tree, thou wilt die;
And yet my heart thirsts more than thine:
I languish-would like thee could I,
Sweet rose-tree, this sad life resign!
SERENADE
ITHDRAW thy beams, thou moon unkind:—
Sweet night, my tender secret keep;
Bear thou my sorrows, gentle wind,
And whisper them where she doth sleep.
W
All else beside, who would not know
The pain her heavenly glances make,
Sleep on, sleep on; for if you wake
Yon must be rivals in my woe!
5851
## p. 5852 (#440) ###########################################
5852
JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN
L
SONG
OVELY Idol of my soul,
Victim of a wounded heart,-
See my grief beyond control;
Live, sweet one, do not depart!
For myself do I implore:
Live, or I can live no more!
Thou hast told me o'er and o'er
That thy heart was mine alone;
Thou art all my earthly store,
And thou desirest to be gone.
For myself do I implore:
Live, or I can live no more.
My destiny is bound with thine,
But yet I cannot stay thy fate;
Oh, what a bitter lot is mine
That I must live-disconsolate!
For myself do I implore:
Live, or I can live no more!
## p. 5853 (#441) ###########################################
5853
FOLK-SONG
BY F. B. GUMMERE
S IN the case of ballads, or narrative songs, it was important
to sunder not only the popular from the artistic, but also
the ballad of the people from the ballad for the people;
precisely so in the article of communal lyric one must distinguish
songs of the folk-songs made by the folk-from those verses of
the street or the music hall which are often caught up and sung by
the crowd until they pass as genuine folk-song. For true folk-song,
as for the genuine ballad, the tests are simplicity, sincerity, mainly
oral tradition, and origin in a homogeneous community. The style of
such a poem is not only simple, but free from individual stamp; the
metaphors, employed sparingly at the best, are like the phrases which
constantly occur in narrative ballads, and belong to tradition. The
metre is not so uniform as in ballads, but must betray its origin in
song. An unsung folk-song is more than a contradiction,-it is an
impossibility. Moreover, it is to be assumed that primitive folk-songs
were an outcome of the dance, for which originally there was no music
save the singing of the dancers. A German critic declares outright
that for early times there was «<
no dance without singing, and no
song without a dance; songs for the dance were the earliest of all songs,
and melodies for the dance the oldest music of every race. " Add to
this the undoubted fact that dancing by pairs is a comparatively mod-
ern invention, and that primitive dances involved the whole able-bodied
primitive community (Jeanroy's assertion that in the early Middle
Ages only women danced, is a libel on human nature), and one begins
to see what is meant by folk-song; primarily it was made by the sing-
ing and dancing throng, at a time when no distinction of lettered and
unlettered classes divided the community. Few, if any, of these prim-
itive folk-songs have come down to us; but they exist in survival,
with more or less trace of individual and artistic influences. As we
cannot apply directly the test of such a communal origin, we must
cast about for other and more modern conditions.
When Mr. George Saintsbury deplores "the lack, notorious to this
day, of one single original English folk-song of really great beauty,"
he leaves his readers to their own devices by way of defining this
species of poetry. Probably, however, he means the communal lyric
in survival, not the ballad, not what Germans would include under
volkslied and Frenchmen under chanson populaire. This distinction, so
## p. 5854 (#442) ###########################################
5854
FOLK-SONG
often forgotten by our critics, was laid down for English usage a cen-
tury ago by no less a person than Joseph Ritson. "With us," he said,
"songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly
called Songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions,
which now denominate Ballads. "
Notwithstanding this lucid statement, we have failed to clear the
field of all possible causes for error. The song of the folk is differ-
entiated from the song of the individual poet; popular lyric is set
over against the artistic, personal lyric. But lyric is commonly as-
sumed to be the expression of individual emotion, and seems in its
very essence to exclude all that is not single, personal, and conscious
emotion. Professor Barrett Wendell, however, is fain to abandon this
time-honored notion of lyric as the subjective element in poetry, the
expression of individual emotion, and proposes a definition based
upon the essentially musical character of these songs. If we adhere
strictly to the older idea, communal lyric, or folk-song, is a contra-
diction in terms; but as a musical expression, direct and unreflective,
of communal emotion, and as offspring of the enthusiasm felt by a
festal, dancing multitude, the term is to be allowed. It means the
lyric of a throng. Unless one feels this objective note in a lyric, it
is certainly no folk-song, but merely an anonymous product of the
schools. The artistic and individual lyric, however sincere it may
be, is fairly sure to be blended with reflection; but such a subjective
tone is foreign to communal verse-whether narrative or purely
lyrical. In other words, to study the lyric of the people, one must
banish that notion of individuality, of reflection and sentiment, which
one is accustomed to associate with all lyrics. To illustrate the mat-
ter, it is evident that Shelley's 'O World, O Life, O Time,' and
Wordsworth's 'My Heart Leaps Up,' however widely sundered may
be the points of view, however varied the character of the emotion,
are of the same individual and reflective class. Contrast now with
these a third lyric, an English song of the thirteenth century, pre-
served by some happy chance from the oblivion which claimed most
of its fellows; the casual reader would unhesitatingly put it into the
same class with Wordsworth's verses as a lyric of "nature," of
"joy," or what not, — an outburst of simple and natural emotion. But
if this Cuckoo Song' be regarded critically, it will be seen that pre-
cisely those qualities of the individual and the subjective are want-
ing. The music of it is fairly clamorous; the refrain counts for as
much as the verses; while the emotion seems to spring from the
crowd and to represent a community. Written down-no one can
say when it was actually composed-not later than the middle of the
thirteenth century, along with the music and a Latin hymn interlined
in red ink, this song is justly regarded by critics as communal rather
## p. 5855 (#443) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5855
than artistic in its character; and while it is set to music in what
Chappell calls "the earliest secular composition, in parts, known to
exist in any country," yet even this elaborate music was probably
"a national song and tune, selected according to the custom of the
times as a basis for harmony," and was "not entirely a scholastic
composition. " It runs in the original:-
SUMER is icumen in.
Lhude sing cuccu.
Groweth sed
And bloweth med
And springth the wde nu.
Sing cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu;
Bulluc sterteth,
Bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu.
Wel singes thu cuccu,
Ne swik thu naver nu.
BURDEN
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu. ¹
The monk, whose passion for music led him to rescue this charm-
ing song, probably regretted the rustic quality of the words, and did
his best to hide the origin of the air; but behind the complicated
music is a tune of the country-side, and if the refrain is here a
burden, to be sung throughout the piece by certain voices while
others sing the words of the song, we have every right to think of
an earlier refrain which almost absorbed the poem and was sung by
¹ For facsimile of the MS. , music, and valuable remarks, see Chappell,
'Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time,' Vol. i. , frontispiece,
and pages 21 ff. For pronunciation, see A. J. Ellis, Early English Pronuncia-
tion,' ii. , 419 ff. The translation given by Mr. Ellis is:-
<
"Summer has come in; loudly sing, cuckoo! Grows seed and blossoms
mead and springs the wood now. Sing, cuckoo! Ewe bleats after lamb, lows
after (its) calf the cow; bullock leaps, buck verts (seeks the green); merrily
sing, cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo! Well singest thou, cuckoo; cease thou not
never now. Burden. - Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo, sing
cuckoo, now. "- Lhude, wde (— wude), awe, calve, bucke, are dissyllabic.
Mr. Ellis's translation of verteth is very doubtful.
## p. 5856 (#444) ###########################################
5856
FOLK-SONG
a dancing multitude. This is a most important consideration. In all
parts of Europe, songs for the dance still abound in the shape of a
welcome to spring; and a lyrical outburst in praise of the jocund
season often occurs by way of prelude to the narrative ballad: wit-
ness the beautiful opening of Robin Hood and the Monk. ' The
troubadour of Provence, like the minnesinger of Germany, imitated
these invocations to spring. A charming balada of Provence prob-
ably takes us beyond the troubadour to the domain of actual folk-
song. "At the entrance of the bright season," it runs, "in order to
begin joy and to tease the jealous, the queen will show that she is
fain to love. As far as to the sea, no maid nor youth but must join
the lusty dance which she devises. On the other hand comes the
king to break up the dancing, fearful lest some one will rob him of
his April queen. Little, however, cares she for the graybeard; a gay
young 'bachelor' is there to pleasure her. Whoso might see her as
she dances, swaying her fair body, he could say in sooth that noth-
ing in all the world peers the joyous queen! " Then, as after each
stanza, for conclusion the wild refrain-like a procul este, profani!
-"Away, ye jealous ones, away! Let us dance together, together
let us dance! " The interjectional refrain, "eya," a mere cry of joy,
is common in French and German songs for the dance, and gives a
very echo of the lusty singers. Repetition, refrain, the infectious pace
and merriment of this old song, stamp it as a genuine product of the
people. ' The brief but emphatic praise of spring with which it
opens is doubtless a survival of those older pagan hymns and songs
which greeted the return of summer and were sung by the commu-
nity in chorus to the dance, now as a religious rite, now merely as
The first stanza in the original will show the structure of this true "bal-
lad" in the primitive sense of a dance-song. There are five of these stanzas,
carrying the same rhymes throughout:
-
A l'entrada del temps clar,— eya,—
Per joja recomençar,―eya,—
E per jelos irritar,―eya,—
Vol la regina mostrar
Qu' el' est si amoroza.
REFRAIN
Alavi', alavia, jelos,
laissaz nos, laissaz nos
ballar entre nos, entre nos!
2 Games and songs of children are still to be found which preserve many
of the features of these old dance-songs. The dramatic traits met with in
the games point back now to the choral poetry of pagan times, when per-
haps a bit of myth was enacted, now to the communal dance where the
stealing of a bride may have been imitated.
## p. 5857 (#445) ###########################################
FOLK-SONG
5857
the expression of communal rejoicing. What the people once sang in
chorus was repeated by the individual poet. Neidhart the German is
famous on account of his rustic songs for the dance, which often
begin with this lusty welcome to spring; while the dactyls of Wal-
ther von der Vogelweide not only echo the cadence of dancing feet,
but so nearly exclude the reflective and artistic element that the "I"
of the singer counts for little. "Winter," he sings,-
Winter has left us no pleasure at all;
Leafage and heather have fled with the fall,
Bare is the forest and dumb as a thrall;
If the girls by the roadside were tossing the ball,
I could prick up my ears for the singing-birds' call! ¹
That is, "if spring were here, and the girls were going to the
village dance"; for ball-playing was not only a rival of the dance,
but was often combined with it. Walther's dactyls are one in spirit
with the fragments of communal lyric which have been preserved
for us by song-loving "clerks" or theological students, those intel-
lectual tramps of the Middle Ages, who often wrote down such a
merry song of May and then turned it more or less freely into their
barbarous but not unattractive Latin. For example:-
Now is time for holiday!
Let our singing greet the May;
Flowers in the breezes play,
Every holt and heath is gay.
Let us dance and let us spring
With merry song and crying!
Joy befits the lusty May:
Set the ball a-flying!
If I woo my lady-love,
Will she be denying ? ?
The steps of the
another song of the
dance are not remote; and the same echo haunts
sort:-
-
DANCE we now the measure,
Dance, lady mine!
May, the month of pleasure,
Comes with sweet sunshine.
1 Unless otherwise credited, translations are by the writer.
2 From Carmina Burana,' a collection of these songs in Latin and Ger-
man preserved in a MS. of the thirteenth century; edited by J. A. Schmeller,
Breslau, 1883. This song is page 181 ff. , in German, Nu Suln Wir Alle
Fröude Hân.
X-367
## p. 5858 (#446) ###########################################
5858
FOLK-SONG
Winter vexed the meadow
Many weary hours:
Fled his chill and shadow,-
Lo, the fields are laughing
Red with flowers. ¹
Or the song at the dance may set forth some of the preliminaries, as
when a girl is supposed to sing:-
CARE and sorrow, fly away!
On the green field let us play,
Playmates gentle, playmates mine,
Where we see the bright flowers shine.
I say to thee, I say to thee,
Playmate mine, O come with me!
Gracious Love, to me incline,
Make for me a garland fine,—
Garland for the man to wear
Who can please a maiden fair.
I say to thee, I say to thee,
Playmate mine, O come with me! 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.
