' His
attitude is that of a humble and reverential suppliant, who, though
confessing the unworthiness of the service which he proffers, yet
relies upon the mercy of his lady to accept it.
attitude is that of a humble and reverential suppliant, who, though
confessing the unworthiness of the service which he proffers, yet
relies upon the mercy of his lady to accept it.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v02
Poet.
E.
I.
f.
34 a–Percy Society, Lxxm, 50.
; MS Sloane 2593, f. 70 -Percy Society, iv, 10; Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I.
f. 270 Percy Society, LXXIII, 38.
3 E. E. T. S. OxVII, 637.
• Add. MS 5465, f. 68 a-Herrig's Archiv, CVI, 63.
3 US Balliol 354, f. 156 6-Anglia, XXVI, 170.
& Ibid. ff. 214 a, 230 a-Anglia, XXVI, 263.
7 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 306—Percy Society, LXIM, 44.
& Ibid. f. 27b-Percy Society, LXXIII, 39.
Ibid. ff. 386, 48 a—Percy Society, LXXIII, 57, 74; MS Balliol 354, f. 1776-Anglia,
.
XXVI, 191,
10 M$ Balliol 354, ff. 194 a, 206 2–Anglia, XXVI, 207.
11 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. 1. 606-Percy Society, LXXII, 96.
12 US Balliol 354, f. 156 2–Anglia, XXVI, 169.
## p. 384 (#402) ############################################
384 Transition English Song Collections
with conventional introduction and conclusion, and a prelude,
which is commonly in Latin. In some of the songs, the allegory
is highly articulated. For example, the poet pictures himself
as sallying forth on a bright summer's morning in search of sport,
with his hawk in hand, and his spaniel leaping by his side.
A hen pheasant is flushed, and the hawk gives chase; but, while
the sport is at its height, the poet suddenly finds himself en-
tangled in a briar, on every leaf of which is written the warning
revertere:
My hart fell down ynto my to,
That was before full lykyngly;
I lett my hawke & fesavnt fare,
My spanyell fell down vnto my kne-
It toke me with a sighyng fare,
This new lessun "revertere'i.
The summer's day symbolises the period of youth; the hawk, its
fierce passions; and the briar, conscience. In the majority of the
songs, the allegory is less developed than in this.
Most often the poet represents himself as wandering through
a forest on a sunny morning. As he wanders, he hears the singing
of a bird, or of a company of birds, and the burden of their song
is some moral reflection or some exhortation. The allegory is
usually neglected after the introductory stanza. Almost invariably
the song concludes with a prayer for succour in death and deliver-
ance from the fiends. The conventionalised nature setting and the
allegory of these poems are clearly French, and the metres most
often used are the ballade stanza and the rime royal.
In the forms in which we have been considering them, these
songs were ill adapted to the ordinary audience of the minstrel,
and he, accordingly, popularised them by shortening them, intro-
ducing a refrain and substituting simple metres, in which the
rhythm is strongly marked.
These moral songs shade into another group of didactic poems, ,
which embody shrewd practical wisdom, of the type dear to
Polonius. They concern themselves with such homely advice as
to hold your tongue", to try your friends, to look out for a rainy
>
1 MS Balliol 354, f. 155 b-Anglia, xxvi, 168.
• Ibid. f. 1706-Anglia, XXVI, 180; Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 386–
Percy Society, LXXI), 57; Porkington MS, No. I-Warton Club, 11, 1.
8 Cf. MS Balliol 354, ff. 156 b, 157 a, 170 6-Anglia, XXVI, 170, 171, 180 et freq. ;
Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. ff. 24 a, 386, 606-Percy Society, LXXIII, 28, 57, 96
et freq.
• Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. ff. 22 a, 28 a—Percy Society, LXXIII, 23, 41.
5 Ibid. f. 23 6—Percy Society, LXXII, 28.
3
## p. 385 (#403) ############################################
Satires against Women 385
day and to beware of matrimony? These songs also employ the
prelude and refrain, and, incongruous as it may seem, often close
with a prayer. Some of them are distinguished by quaint and
picturesque humour, as is shown in the following stanzas :
Quan I haue in myn purs inow,
I may haue bothe hors & plow
& also frynds inow,
Throw the vertu of myn purs.
Quan my purs gynnyzt to slak
& ther is nowt in my pak,
They will seyn, 'Go, far wil, Jak,
Thou xalt non more drynke with v83. '
The songs warning young men to avoid matrimony belong to
the satires against women, a poetical tradition which was one
of the contributions of France to Buranic verse. In no class
of songs is the esprit gaulois more evident. That sly distrust
of woman which early insinuated itself into French romances,
and which grew bolder and harsher as the ideals of the renascence
encroached upon medievalism, in the poetry of the common people
found expression in blunt and broad satire. This tradition was
augmented, however, by a native English contribution, for the
satire which gives evidence of the greatest antiquity of all is
strongly alliterative, and observes the repetitions of early com-
munal verse :
Herfor & therfor & therfor I came,
And for to praysse this praty woman.
Ther wer III wylly, 3 wyly ther wer,-
A fox, a fryyr, and a woman.
Ther wer 3 angry, 3 angry ther wer,-
A wasp, a wesyll, & a woman.
Ther wer 3 cheteryng, ini cheteryng ther wer,--
A peye, a jaye, & a woman.
Ther wer 3 wold be betyn, 3 wold be betyn ther wer,-
A myll, a stoke fysche, and a woman 4.
Several different types of these satires are to be recognised,
but the style best designed to endear itself to the popular taste
was that used in little dramatic narratives of the Punch and Judy
school of comedy, in which the poet tells the story of a family
quarrel, wherein the good man is invariably worsted by his
muscular and shrewish helpmeet. This broad farce finds its
1 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 26 b.
• Ibid. f. 26 a–Percy Society, LXXIII, 34 eto.
: MS Sloane 2593, f. 56–Warton Club, iv, 14.
* Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 13 a-Percy Society, LXXII, 4.
E. L. II. CH. XVI.
25
## p. 386 (#404) ############################################
386 Transition English Song Collections
dramatic counterpart in those brawling scenes in the mystery
plays which pleased the rude populace, and, like the scenes
from the plays, the songs are not without clever and humorous
touches, as when the hen-pecked husband is sent flying from his
door, only to discover his doleful neighbour in a similar plight.
Does not such a song perpetuate a tradition of the Latin stage,
which the joculatores, with their rude performances, carried to
the Gallic provinces, and eventually bequeathed to the minstrels?
In another class of satires, women are praised ironically, the
refrain serving to turn the apparent praise to dispraise; thus :
For tell a woman all your cownsayle,
& she can kepe it wonderly well;
She had lever go quyk to hell
Than to her neyghbowr she wold it tell.
Cuius contrarium verum est.
To the tavern they will not goo,
Nor to the ale-howse neuer the moo,
For God wot ther hartes wold be woo
To sspende ther husbondes money soo.
Cuius contrarium verum est 2.
The third type of the satire against women is pretentious
and artificial. It consists in proposing impossible phenomena,
and then concluding that when such phenomena actually exist,
women will be faithful. These poems are drawn out to an in-
terminable length; a few specimen lines may suffice:
Whan sparowys bild chi[r]ches & stepalles hie,
& wrennes carry sakkes to the mylle,
& curlews cary clothes horsis for to drye,
& se mewes bryng butter to the market to sell,
& woddowes were wod knyffes theves to kyll,
And griffons to goslynges don obedyence,
Than put in a woman your trust & confidence.
These poems are scarcely more than translations of the many
French poems of the same kind'.
Of all popular poems, convivial songs, with their festivity and
their rollicking spirits, are the most engaging. For eight hundred
years students have been singing
Gaudeamus igitur,
Juvenes dum sumus,
and it is to these medieval student songs that the youth of to-day
turn as to the perennial source of convivial inspiration.
1 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 346--Percy Society, Lxxm, 51.
MS Balliol 354, ff. 228 a, 250 a-Anglia, XXVI, 275.
3 Ibid. f. 250 b-Anglia, XXVI, 277.
4 Cf. Montaiglon et Rothschild, Recueil de Poésies Françaises des xve et XVIe
siècles, Paris, 1855—78.
## p. 387 (#405) ############################################
Convivial Songs
387
Some drinking songs are daring parodies of hymns, justifications
of drinking by the Sacrament, credos of wine, women and song.
All these were already venerable in the fifteenth century.
Other songs savour of the ale-house rather than of college
halls. These look back to the folk-poetry. Drinking songs were,
assuredly, one of the early types of communal verse, and the folk-
element is apparent in many fifteenth century convivial songs, as,
indeed, in the corresponding verse of the Elizabethans. Such
well known refrains as 'Hey trolly lolly' and 'Dole the ale'
are of venerable antiquity, and the songs which consist of varia-
tions of a common phrase show an indebtedness, of course, im-
mediate or remote, to communal poetry. Thus, such a song as
the following plainly took its cue from the folk-song:
Bryng vs in good ale, & bryng vs in good alo,
For owr blyssyd lady sake, bryng vs in good ale.
Bryng vs in no browne bred, fore that is mad of brane,
Nore bryng us in no whyt bred, fore ther in is no game,
But bryng us in good ale.
Bryng vs in no befo, for ther is many bonys,
But bryng vs in good ale, etc. 1
This song, however, can hardly claim so remote an ancestry as
another, in which the repetitional phrases are, in themselves, of no
significance, and are merely used as framework. This is evidence
of remote origin, as the study of comparative literature testifies,
and the little Latin courtesy with which the song introduces itself
cannot conceal its real age:
Omnes gentes plaudite,
I saw myny bryddis setyn on a tre;
He tokyn here fleygt & flowyn away,
With ego dixi, have good day.
Many qwyte federes hazt the pye,
I may noon more syngyn, my lyppis arn so drye.
Many qwyte federes hazt the swan,
The more that I drynke, the lesse good I can.
Ley stykkys on the fer, wyl mot is brenne;
Geue vs onye drynkyn, er we gon benne.
A merry song that links the convivial poem to the satire on
women is the narrative of the gay gossips who hie them to the
tavern, and there, tucked away, discuss their husbands, though not
without many an anxious eye on the doors.
1 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 416—Percy Society, LXXIII, 63.
; MS Sloane 2593, f. 10 a-Warton Club, iv, 32.
& Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 57 6-Percy Society, LXXIII, 91; MS Balliol
354, if. 194 b, 206 6-Anglia, XXVI, 208.
25-2
## p. 388 (#406) ############################################
388
Transition English Song Collections
Hardly to be distinguished from convivial songs are the songs
of good fellowship, of 'pastyme with good companye,' which
exhort
Tyme to pas with goodly sport
Our spryts to reryve and comfort;
To pype, to synge,
To daunce, to spryng,
With pleasure and delyte
Following sensual appetytel
Such songs were especially liked by Henry VIII, when he was
a youth, and a group of them is to be found in his song-book.
The song of the death dance is represented in several manu-
scripts by a most melancholy and singularly powerful poem. The
insistent holding of the mind to one thought, with no avenue of
escape left open; the inexorableness of monotonous rimes; the
irregular combination of monosyllables, iambics and anapaests,
that strike like gusts of hail in a hurtling storm; all these aid in
compelling heavy-hearted acquiescence:
Erth owt of erth is worldly wrowght;
Erth hath goten vppon erth a dygnite of nowght;
Erth vpon erth hath set all his thowght,
How that erth vpon erth myght be hye browght.
Erth vpon erth wold be a kyng;
But how that erth shall to erth he thynkith no thyng :
When erth biddith erth his rentes home bryng,
Then shall erth for erth have a hard partyug2.
And so the poem runs for sixteen stanzas.
Love songs are varied, and they are genetically so complex that
they often baffle analysis. They range from the saucy and realistic,
though always animated, songs of the clerks, to the ornate and
figured address of the gallant, who imitates in his ruffled and
formal phrases models brought from over seas. Though some songs
have advanced little, if at all, from the rude amours of country
swains, and others are merely a transplanting of the graceful and
artificial toyings of the court-trained gallants of France, the majority
fuse traditions, so that a single song must sometimes look for its
ancestry not merely to direct antecedents in English folk-song and
French polite verse, but, ultimately, to French folk-poetry and the
troubadour lays of which this polite verse of France was com-
pounded. Indeed, English verse itself may hạve been directly
influenced by the troubadours.
The French types which were translated or imitated without
i Flügel, Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 148.
9 MS Balliol 354, f. 207 6—Anglia, XXVI, 217.
## p. 389 (#407) ############################################
Love Songs
389
material modification include the address, the debat, the pastourelle
and the ballade.
The address is a poem in stately and formal language wherein
the poet addresses his lady, his 'life's souereign pleasaunce.
' His
attitude is that of a humble and reverential suppliant, who, though
confessing the unworthiness of the service which he proffers, yet
relies upon the mercy of his lady to accept it. Not uncommonly
the poem is a New Year's letter, in which, failing a better gift, the
poet offers his mistress his heart—to her a little thing, to him
his all'.
Though the débat has a variety of themes in French lyrics, in
English it is restricted-save for the song of holly and ivy-to
contentions between the lover and his heartless lady. These
songs are as unfeeling as the vapid French verse of which they are
but echoes.
Of the type of pastourelle in which a gallant makes love to a
rustic maiden there are two examples. One of these pastourelles
was sung by Henry VIII and his companions, and, in somewhat
revised form, is still popular to-day:
'Hey, troly, loly, lo; made, whether go you? '
the medowe to mylke my cowe,' etc. ;
In the other, a gallant urges a maid to visit the wildwood with
him, that they may gather flowers, and at length she yields to
his importunity:
*Come oner the woodes fair & grene,
The goodly mayde, that lustye wenche;
To sbadoo yow from the sonne
Vnder the woode ther ys a benche. '
'Sir, I pray yow doo, non offence
To me a mayde, thys I make my mone;
But as I came lett me goo hens,
For I am here my selfe alone,' etc.
The more primitive type of pastourelle in which one shepherd
laments to another the treatment of an indifferent shepherdens
survives in a song attributed to Wyatt, but which he can hardly
more than have revised :
'I go
6
A! Robyn, joly Robyn,
Tell me how thy leman doeth, etc. 5
1 E. E. T. S. xv, 66- Padelford, Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, XXXIV.
3 MS Sloane 1710, f. 164 a.
3 Add. MS 31922, f. 124b-Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 84.
* MS Rawlinson, C. 813, f. 58 6. This MS is being edited by the writer for Anglia.
5 Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 10.
## p. 390 (#408) ############################################
390 Transition English Song Collections
Transferred to the religious lyric, it has also survived in a
shepherd's complaint of the indifference of the clergy to the
welfare of their flocks.
Of all forms of French amatory verse, the ballade enjoyed the
greatest popularity in England. It was the form in which the
gallant most often essayed to ease his bosom of the torments of
love. Every phase of the conventional love complaint, every
chapter in the cycle of the lover's history, is treated in these
ballades precisely as in the corresponding verse in France? .
Light-foot measures, such as the lai and the descort, exerted
a noteworthy influence upon late Transition lyrics, though English
poets were content merely to adopt the characteristic common
to all the species—the long stanza of very short verses—and
did not observe the metrical peculiarities that differentiate one
species from another. This light-foot verse was cultivated to good
effect, and furnishes some of the best songs. They are rapid,
musical and enthusiastic. Any phase of the lover's experience
may be treated in this verse, but it seems to have been most
employed in those songs which deal with the parting, the absence,
or the reunion of lovers. The following verses, which open one of
these songs, will illustrate their grace and spirit:
Can I chuse
But refuce
All thought of mourning,
Now I see
Thus close by me
My love returning?
If I should not joy
When I behould
Such glory shining,
Sith her tyme of stay
Made me to decay
With sorrow pining,
Silly birds might seem
To laugh at me,
Which, at day peering,
With a merry voyce
Sing 'O doo rejoyce! '
Themselves still cheering.
Absence darke
Thou dost marke,
No cause but fearing,
And like night
Turnst thy sight
All into hearing.
1 MS Balliol 354, f. 156 a—Anglia, XXVI, 169.
* MS Rawlinson, C. 813, contains a large number of the ballades,
3 MS Harleian 367, f. 183–Herrig's Archiv, cvii, 56.
## p. 391 (#409) ############################################
Love Songs
391
6
A French type, which, while having no complete exponent,
has yet influenced several English songs, is the aube, or complaint
of the lover at the envious approach of morn, a motive which
Chaucer used with effect in Troilus and Criseydet, and which
Shakespeare immortalised in Romeo and Juliet. In one of the
songs, the refrain of an aube is put into the mouth of a 'comely
queen' (Elizabeth of York? ) who, in a 'glorious garden,' is
gathering roses
This day dawes,
This gentill day dawes,
And I must home gone.
The aube motive is also used as the introduction to another song,
in which a lover complains of an inconstant mistress:
Mornyng, mornyng,
Thus may I synge,
Adew, my dere, adew;
Be God alone
My love ys gon,
Now may I go seke a new%.
One of the earliest phases of the aube tradition, that the
approach of day is announced by the crowing of the cock, is the
theme of a festive little song, which, in other respects, is not at
all like the conventional type. Indeed, the light-hearted spirit
of this merry song is a direct violation of the aube tradition:
I haue a gentil cook
orowyt me day,
He doth me rysyn erly
my matying for to say.
I hane a gentil cook,
comyn he is of gret,
His comb is of reed corel,
his tayil is of get.
I have a gentyl cook,
comyn he is of kynde,
His comb is of red scorel,
his tayl is of inde;
His legges ben of asoor,
80 geintil & 80 smele,
His spores arn of sylver quyt
in to the wortewale;
His eyuyn arn of cristal,
lokyn al in aunbyr;
& euery nygt he perchit hym
in myn ladyis chaumbyr.
The repetitions in this song show that it is of considerable
antiquity.
1 1466, 1702. 9 Add. MS 5465, f. 108 6-Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 159.
8 Ritson, Ancient Songs, III, 4, from Harleian MS 2252.
• MS Sloane 2593, f. 10 –Warton Club, iv, 81.
## p. 392 (#410) ############################################
392 Transition English Song Collections
A more apparent influence is observable in the case of the
chanson à personnages. This type of poem finds its germ in the
spring rites attending the pre-Christian worship of Venus, when
maidens, escaped from the tutelage of their mothers, and young
wives, from the exacting authority of their husbands, rushed
to the meadows, joined hands and danced and sang of their
liberty. In the opinion of Jeanroy, such festivities had become
an almost liturgical convention. By the twelfth century, these
songs had been incorporated into semi-polite poetry, and the
resultant genre enjoyed two centuries of popularity. In the earlier
form of the genre, the poet represents himself as listening to a
young woman who complains of her tyrannical mother or of her
cruel husband, and, sometimes, as even protecting her in an ensuing
quarrel. In the later and more refined form, the mother or
husband is not present, and the poet consoles the young woman,
or even makes love to her, the emphasis thus having shifted from
the narrative and dramatic elements to the lyrical The open-
ing words of the chanson are the conventional L'autre jour or
L'autrier, and the opening verses contain a description of May,
the scene being placed in a bower or a garden.
Though English songs furnish no complete example of the
chanson à personnages as it existed in France, there are a score
of songs in which the poet represents himself as chancing upon a
maiden or a man who is lamenting an unrequited love, or the
treachery of a false lover. As in the chansons, these poems open
a
with the words "This other day' and a description of May-time,
and place the scene in the 'wilderness,' the wild wood supplanting
the French bower, through the influence of the native English
songs of the spring to which reference was made in a previous
chapter of this work? .
Whether this modification of the theme of the chanson began
in France, or whether it was strictly an English development, I
have not been able to determine.
Just as other types of love songs were taken over and employed
in religious lyrics, so this type of song was transferred. In one
song the poet comes upon a maiden deep in the wood, and she is
great with child. This maiden does not lament her condition,
however, but rather sings for joy, since it is given her to bear a
Child in whom verbum caro factum est.
The chansons à personnages shade into the English May poems,
1 See Vol. 1, pp. 360 ff.
Bodleian MS, Engl. Poet. E. I. f. 476. Cf. also Anglia, xn, 236, 254, 263 ;
Herrig's Archiv, ovi, 63, 279, 282, 283; Early Sixteenth Century Poems, 12, 83.
## p. 393 (#411) ############################################
Miscellaneous Songs
393
the refrain of a chanson sometimes being taken from popular
English verse, as the well-known refrain:
Colle to me the rysshys grene, colle to mel.
The May poems that follow the English tradition all breathe
that blithe, out-of-doors spirit, that vernal enthusiasm for the
greenwood and the fields, which consistently characterises spring
songs from 'Sumer is i-cumen in' and 'Blou northerne wynd'
to 'It was a lover and his lass,' and Herrick's sweet summons to
Corinna. Every wisp of a spring poem has this odour of green
things about it, this contagion of happy abandon. One little
song has only this to say,
Trolly, lolly, loly, lo,
Syng troly, lolo, lo.
My love is to the grene wode gone,
Now [af]ter wyll I go;
Syng trolly, loly, lo, lo, ly, lo,
yet how completely it expresses the mood !
Of kindred spirit are hunting songs, songs of the ‘joly
fosters' who love the forest, the bow and the horn and the keen-
ness of the chase. Who would not fain be present, when
Talbot, my hounde, with a mery taste
All about the grene wode he gan cast.
I toke my horne and blew him a blast,
With “Tro, ro, ro, ro; tro, ro, ro, ro! '
With hey go bet, hey go bet, how!
There he gothe, there he goth! (Hey go howe ! )
We shall haue sport and game ynowo3.
It is to be regretted that, for the most part, hunting songs
have only survived in the more or less modified forms in which they
were adapted to pageants, for they were usually marred in the
effort to accommodate them to some allegory, as when the aged
foster hangs his bow and arrows upon the 'greenwood bough'
and, at the command of Lady Venus, leaves her court in disgrace
because his 'hard' beard repels maidens' kisses“.
The best of the songs written by official musicians of the court
are those in praise of members of the royal family. One of these
is a spirited recital of the prowess shown by Henry VIII in the
1 Royal MS, App. 58, f. 24-Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 83.
. Add. MS 31922, f. 43 6. For the licentions love songs of clerks, of. Anglia,
XXVI, 273, 278; Warton Club, rv, 35; Herrig's Archiv, ovII, 58 etc.
• Wynkyn de Worde's Christmasse Carolles, Douce Fragment, 94 6—Early Sixteenth
Century Lyrics, 75.
* Add. MS 31922, f. 65 6-Anglia, XII, 244. Cf. also Letters and Papers of Henry
VIII, 1, 718, 4622—Jan. 6, 1514—for the pageant in which the song probably occurred.
## p. 394 (#412) ############################################
394 Transition English Song Collections
tourney? ; a second is in praise of Katherine and 'le infant
rosary? '; a third is an animated trio in which each singer pro-
fesses to love some flower, the praise of which he sings, the last
stanza making the disclosure that all three love the same, the rose
which unites both the red and the whites; and a fourth is a prayer
with the refrain:
From stormy wyndis & grevous wethir
Good Lord preserve the estryge fethir4.
A few songs that do not come under any of the above classes
at least deserve to be mentioned. Thus there are a few riddles,
which perpetuate a style of poem popular in the Old English
period ; a poem in light-foot verse descriptive of a market-day
or a fair, where there is a bewilderment of goods for sale,
a multitude running here and there, a fisticuff, a swaggering
drunkard and a noisy auctioneer; a fragment of a spinning or
knitting song (? )? ; a pedlar's song8; and a swaggering soldier's
songº.
Such, in brief outline, are the types of songs that constitute
these late Transition collections. These songs are all but un-
known to readers of English verse, and they have as yet been
all but ignored by scholars; yet they constitute an important
chapter in the history of our literature. When they are made
more accessible, they can hardly fail of appreciation, for they will
be enjoyed for what they are, and the student of literary move-
ments will recognise in them one of the two great streams that
unite to form the Elizabethan lyric.
1 Add. MS 31922, f. 54 6—Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 90.
2 Ibid. f. 74 6- Anglia, XII, 247.
3 Add. MS 5465, f. 41 a; Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 91.
• Ibid. f. 104 6-Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 159.
* MS Balliol 354, f. 218 b-Anglia, XXVI, 228; MS Sloane 2593, f. 11 a-Warton
Club, rv, 33.
6 Harleian MS 7578, f. 106 a–Herrig's Archiv, cvii, 69.
7 Ibid. 109 6—Herrig's Archiv, OVII, 61.
8 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 26 a—Warton Club, iv, 76.
• Add. MS 5165, f. 1016-Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 147.
## p. 395 (#413) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
BALLADS
THE subject of this chapter needs careful definition. Sundry
shorter poems, lyrics of whatever purpose, hymns, 'flytings,'
political satires, mawkish stories in verse, sensational journalism
of Elizabethan days and even the translation of Solomon's Song,
have gone by the name of ballad. Ballad societies have published
a vast amount of street-songs, broadsides and ditties such as
Mme de Sévigné knew in Paris under the name of Pont-neuf;
for many readers, unfortunately, there is no difference between
these 'ballads' and Chevy Chace or Sir Patrick Spens. The
popular ballad, however, now in question, is a narrative poem
without any known author or any marks of individual authorship
such as sentiment and reflection, meant, in the first instance, for
singing, and connected, as its name implies, with the communal
dance, but submitted to a process of oral tradition among people
free from literary influences and fairly homogeneous. Conditions
favourable to the making of such poetry ceased to be general after
the fifteenth century; and, while it was both composed and pre-
served in isolated rural communities long after that date, the instinct
which produced it and the habit which handed it down by word
of mouth were, alike, a heritage of the past. Seen in critical
and historical perspective, balladry takes its distinguishing marks
mainly from this process of oral tradition. Owing to this process,
the ballad has lost its dramatic or mimetic and choral character
and become distinctly epic; it has, in many cases, even forfeited its
refrain, once indispensable; but it has kept its impersonal note,
lacks, last as first, all trace of deliberate composition and appeals
to the modern reader with a charm of simplicity quite its own.
Nearly all critics are agreed that no verse of this sort is produced
under the conditions of modern life; and the three hundred and five
individual ballads, represented by some thirteen hundred versions,
printed in the great collection of Child, may be regarded, practically,
## p. 396 (#414) ############################################
396
Ballads
as a closed account in English literature. Diligent gleaning of the
field in the ten years following the completion of that work has
brought little or nothing that is new; and little more can be
expected. Here and there a forgotten manuscript may come
to light; but, in all probability, it will contain only a version
of some ballad already known. The sources of tradition have,
apparently, at last run dry. Sir George Douglas notes that the
Scottish border shepherds, at their annual dinners, no longer sing
their old or their own ballads; what are known as 'songs of the
day,' mainly of music-hall origin, now rule without any rivals
from the past. Remote and isolated districts in the United States
keep a few traditional versions alive; such is The Hangman's
Tree, a version of The Maid Freed from the Gallows, still sung,
with traces of Yorkshire dialect, after generations of purely
oral tradition, as it was brought over to Virginia 'before the
revolution. But these recovered versions have revealed little
that is both good and new.
Yet another line of demarcation must be drawn. English and
Scottish ballads as a distinct species of poetry, and as a body,
can be followed back through the fifteenth century, occur spora-
dically, or find chance mention, for a century or so before
and then altogether cease. Owing to the deplorably loose way in
which the word 'ballad' is applied, not only the references of
early historians, like William of Malmesbury, to the 'popular
songs,' the cantilenae, the carmina vulgaria, from which they
draw for occasional narrative, but also the passages of older epic
that tell a particular deed or celebrate a popular hero, are, alike,
assumed to indicate a body of ballads, similar to those of the
collections, extending back to the Norman conquest, back even
to the Germanic conquest of Britain, but lost for modern readers
by the chances of time and the lack of written record. Such a
body of ballads may, indeed, be conjectured; but conjecture should
not pass into inference. Not a single specimen is preserved. It
is, to be sure, unlikely that the primary instinct of song, the
tendency to celebrate heroes and events in immediate verse, and
the habit of epic tradition, main constituents of balladry, should
cease as we cross the marches of the Transition period and pass
from the modern speech and modern metres, in which our ballads
are composed, into that more inflected language, that wholly
different form of rhythm, which prevailed in Old English and,
with some modifications, in all Germanic verse. To claim for
this older period, however, ballads of the kind common since
## p. 397 (#415) ############################################
The Canute Song
397
the fifteenth century in England, Scandinavia and Germany, is
an assertion impossible to prove. The Old English folk must
have had popular ballads of some sort; but it cannot be said what
they were. Singing, to be sure, implies a poem in stanzas; and that
is precisely what one cannot find in recorded Old English verse
the one exception, Deor's song, being very remote from balladry.
It is true that the subject of a popular ballad can often be traced
far back; Scandinavian ballads still sing the epic heroes of
‘Old Norse. ' Community of theme, however, does not imply a
common poetical form; and it is the structure, the style, the
metrical arrangement, the general spirit of English and Scottish
ballads, which must set them apart in our literature and give them
their title as an independent species. We find a relative plenty
of 'popular' verse in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries—songs by a political minstrel of some sort, which had
their immediate vogue, were recorded here and there, and soon
forgotten—but this sort of thing should not be confused with songs
made among the people, passed down by oral tradition and marked
with those peculiarities of structure and style which are inseparable
from the genuine ballad of the collections. In the absence of
texts, conjecture is useless. The earliest recorded piece of English
verse which agrees with balladry in all these important charac-
teristics is the famous song of Canute, preserved in the chronicles
of Ely'. The king's actual part in the case is doubtful, and
unimportant. Coming by boat, it is said, with his queen and
sundry great nobles to Ely, Canute stood up, bade his men row
slowly, 'called all who were with him in the boats to make a
circle about him . . . and to join him in song; and composed in
English a ballad (cantilenam) which begins as follows:
Merie sunge the munechës binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut ching rew ther by.
Roweth, cnihtës, noer the land,
And herë we these munechës sung. . . . '
The verses are familiar; but their significance is not always
noted. The chronicler turns them into Latin, and, with clear
reference to popular tradition, adds—and so the rest of the
song] as it is sung in these days by the people in their dances,
and handed down as proverbial. . .
; MS Sloane 2593, f. 70 -Percy Society, iv, 10; Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I.
f. 270 Percy Society, LXXIII, 38.
3 E. E. T. S. OxVII, 637.
• Add. MS 5465, f. 68 a-Herrig's Archiv, CVI, 63.
3 US Balliol 354, f. 156 6-Anglia, XXVI, 170.
& Ibid. ff. 214 a, 230 a-Anglia, XXVI, 263.
7 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 306—Percy Society, LXIM, 44.
& Ibid. f. 27b-Percy Society, LXXIII, 39.
Ibid. ff. 386, 48 a—Percy Society, LXXIII, 57, 74; MS Balliol 354, f. 1776-Anglia,
.
XXVI, 191,
10 M$ Balliol 354, ff. 194 a, 206 2–Anglia, XXVI, 207.
11 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. 1. 606-Percy Society, LXXII, 96.
12 US Balliol 354, f. 156 2–Anglia, XXVI, 169.
## p. 384 (#402) ############################################
384 Transition English Song Collections
with conventional introduction and conclusion, and a prelude,
which is commonly in Latin. In some of the songs, the allegory
is highly articulated. For example, the poet pictures himself
as sallying forth on a bright summer's morning in search of sport,
with his hawk in hand, and his spaniel leaping by his side.
A hen pheasant is flushed, and the hawk gives chase; but, while
the sport is at its height, the poet suddenly finds himself en-
tangled in a briar, on every leaf of which is written the warning
revertere:
My hart fell down ynto my to,
That was before full lykyngly;
I lett my hawke & fesavnt fare,
My spanyell fell down vnto my kne-
It toke me with a sighyng fare,
This new lessun "revertere'i.
The summer's day symbolises the period of youth; the hawk, its
fierce passions; and the briar, conscience. In the majority of the
songs, the allegory is less developed than in this.
Most often the poet represents himself as wandering through
a forest on a sunny morning. As he wanders, he hears the singing
of a bird, or of a company of birds, and the burden of their song
is some moral reflection or some exhortation. The allegory is
usually neglected after the introductory stanza. Almost invariably
the song concludes with a prayer for succour in death and deliver-
ance from the fiends. The conventionalised nature setting and the
allegory of these poems are clearly French, and the metres most
often used are the ballade stanza and the rime royal.
In the forms in which we have been considering them, these
songs were ill adapted to the ordinary audience of the minstrel,
and he, accordingly, popularised them by shortening them, intro-
ducing a refrain and substituting simple metres, in which the
rhythm is strongly marked.
These moral songs shade into another group of didactic poems, ,
which embody shrewd practical wisdom, of the type dear to
Polonius. They concern themselves with such homely advice as
to hold your tongue", to try your friends, to look out for a rainy
>
1 MS Balliol 354, f. 155 b-Anglia, xxvi, 168.
• Ibid. f. 1706-Anglia, XXVI, 180; Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 386–
Percy Society, LXXI), 57; Porkington MS, No. I-Warton Club, 11, 1.
8 Cf. MS Balliol 354, ff. 156 b, 157 a, 170 6-Anglia, XXVI, 170, 171, 180 et freq. ;
Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. ff. 24 a, 386, 606-Percy Society, LXXIII, 28, 57, 96
et freq.
• Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. ff. 22 a, 28 a—Percy Society, LXXIII, 23, 41.
5 Ibid. f. 23 6—Percy Society, LXXII, 28.
3
## p. 385 (#403) ############################################
Satires against Women 385
day and to beware of matrimony? These songs also employ the
prelude and refrain, and, incongruous as it may seem, often close
with a prayer. Some of them are distinguished by quaint and
picturesque humour, as is shown in the following stanzas :
Quan I haue in myn purs inow,
I may haue bothe hors & plow
& also frynds inow,
Throw the vertu of myn purs.
Quan my purs gynnyzt to slak
& ther is nowt in my pak,
They will seyn, 'Go, far wil, Jak,
Thou xalt non more drynke with v83. '
The songs warning young men to avoid matrimony belong to
the satires against women, a poetical tradition which was one
of the contributions of France to Buranic verse. In no class
of songs is the esprit gaulois more evident. That sly distrust
of woman which early insinuated itself into French romances,
and which grew bolder and harsher as the ideals of the renascence
encroached upon medievalism, in the poetry of the common people
found expression in blunt and broad satire. This tradition was
augmented, however, by a native English contribution, for the
satire which gives evidence of the greatest antiquity of all is
strongly alliterative, and observes the repetitions of early com-
munal verse :
Herfor & therfor & therfor I came,
And for to praysse this praty woman.
Ther wer III wylly, 3 wyly ther wer,-
A fox, a fryyr, and a woman.
Ther wer 3 angry, 3 angry ther wer,-
A wasp, a wesyll, & a woman.
Ther wer 3 cheteryng, ini cheteryng ther wer,--
A peye, a jaye, & a woman.
Ther wer 3 wold be betyn, 3 wold be betyn ther wer,-
A myll, a stoke fysche, and a woman 4.
Several different types of these satires are to be recognised,
but the style best designed to endear itself to the popular taste
was that used in little dramatic narratives of the Punch and Judy
school of comedy, in which the poet tells the story of a family
quarrel, wherein the good man is invariably worsted by his
muscular and shrewish helpmeet. This broad farce finds its
1 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 26 b.
• Ibid. f. 26 a–Percy Society, LXXIII, 34 eto.
: MS Sloane 2593, f. 56–Warton Club, iv, 14.
* Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 13 a-Percy Society, LXXII, 4.
E. L. II. CH. XVI.
25
## p. 386 (#404) ############################################
386 Transition English Song Collections
dramatic counterpart in those brawling scenes in the mystery
plays which pleased the rude populace, and, like the scenes
from the plays, the songs are not without clever and humorous
touches, as when the hen-pecked husband is sent flying from his
door, only to discover his doleful neighbour in a similar plight.
Does not such a song perpetuate a tradition of the Latin stage,
which the joculatores, with their rude performances, carried to
the Gallic provinces, and eventually bequeathed to the minstrels?
In another class of satires, women are praised ironically, the
refrain serving to turn the apparent praise to dispraise; thus :
For tell a woman all your cownsayle,
& she can kepe it wonderly well;
She had lever go quyk to hell
Than to her neyghbowr she wold it tell.
Cuius contrarium verum est.
To the tavern they will not goo,
Nor to the ale-howse neuer the moo,
For God wot ther hartes wold be woo
To sspende ther husbondes money soo.
Cuius contrarium verum est 2.
The third type of the satire against women is pretentious
and artificial. It consists in proposing impossible phenomena,
and then concluding that when such phenomena actually exist,
women will be faithful. These poems are drawn out to an in-
terminable length; a few specimen lines may suffice:
Whan sparowys bild chi[r]ches & stepalles hie,
& wrennes carry sakkes to the mylle,
& curlews cary clothes horsis for to drye,
& se mewes bryng butter to the market to sell,
& woddowes were wod knyffes theves to kyll,
And griffons to goslynges don obedyence,
Than put in a woman your trust & confidence.
These poems are scarcely more than translations of the many
French poems of the same kind'.
Of all popular poems, convivial songs, with their festivity and
their rollicking spirits, are the most engaging. For eight hundred
years students have been singing
Gaudeamus igitur,
Juvenes dum sumus,
and it is to these medieval student songs that the youth of to-day
turn as to the perennial source of convivial inspiration.
1 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 346--Percy Society, Lxxm, 51.
MS Balliol 354, ff. 228 a, 250 a-Anglia, XXVI, 275.
3 Ibid. f. 250 b-Anglia, XXVI, 277.
4 Cf. Montaiglon et Rothschild, Recueil de Poésies Françaises des xve et XVIe
siècles, Paris, 1855—78.
## p. 387 (#405) ############################################
Convivial Songs
387
Some drinking songs are daring parodies of hymns, justifications
of drinking by the Sacrament, credos of wine, women and song.
All these were already venerable in the fifteenth century.
Other songs savour of the ale-house rather than of college
halls. These look back to the folk-poetry. Drinking songs were,
assuredly, one of the early types of communal verse, and the folk-
element is apparent in many fifteenth century convivial songs, as,
indeed, in the corresponding verse of the Elizabethans. Such
well known refrains as 'Hey trolly lolly' and 'Dole the ale'
are of venerable antiquity, and the songs which consist of varia-
tions of a common phrase show an indebtedness, of course, im-
mediate or remote, to communal poetry. Thus, such a song as
the following plainly took its cue from the folk-song:
Bryng vs in good ale, & bryng vs in good alo,
For owr blyssyd lady sake, bryng vs in good ale.
Bryng vs in no browne bred, fore that is mad of brane,
Nore bryng us in no whyt bred, fore ther in is no game,
But bryng us in good ale.
Bryng vs in no befo, for ther is many bonys,
But bryng vs in good ale, etc. 1
This song, however, can hardly claim so remote an ancestry as
another, in which the repetitional phrases are, in themselves, of no
significance, and are merely used as framework. This is evidence
of remote origin, as the study of comparative literature testifies,
and the little Latin courtesy with which the song introduces itself
cannot conceal its real age:
Omnes gentes plaudite,
I saw myny bryddis setyn on a tre;
He tokyn here fleygt & flowyn away,
With ego dixi, have good day.
Many qwyte federes hazt the pye,
I may noon more syngyn, my lyppis arn so drye.
Many qwyte federes hazt the swan,
The more that I drynke, the lesse good I can.
Ley stykkys on the fer, wyl mot is brenne;
Geue vs onye drynkyn, er we gon benne.
A merry song that links the convivial poem to the satire on
women is the narrative of the gay gossips who hie them to the
tavern, and there, tucked away, discuss their husbands, though not
without many an anxious eye on the doors.
1 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 416—Percy Society, LXXIII, 63.
; MS Sloane 2593, f. 10 a-Warton Club, iv, 32.
& Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 57 6-Percy Society, LXXIII, 91; MS Balliol
354, if. 194 b, 206 6-Anglia, XXVI, 208.
25-2
## p. 388 (#406) ############################################
388
Transition English Song Collections
Hardly to be distinguished from convivial songs are the songs
of good fellowship, of 'pastyme with good companye,' which
exhort
Tyme to pas with goodly sport
Our spryts to reryve and comfort;
To pype, to synge,
To daunce, to spryng,
With pleasure and delyte
Following sensual appetytel
Such songs were especially liked by Henry VIII, when he was
a youth, and a group of them is to be found in his song-book.
The song of the death dance is represented in several manu-
scripts by a most melancholy and singularly powerful poem. The
insistent holding of the mind to one thought, with no avenue of
escape left open; the inexorableness of monotonous rimes; the
irregular combination of monosyllables, iambics and anapaests,
that strike like gusts of hail in a hurtling storm; all these aid in
compelling heavy-hearted acquiescence:
Erth owt of erth is worldly wrowght;
Erth hath goten vppon erth a dygnite of nowght;
Erth vpon erth hath set all his thowght,
How that erth vpon erth myght be hye browght.
Erth vpon erth wold be a kyng;
But how that erth shall to erth he thynkith no thyng :
When erth biddith erth his rentes home bryng,
Then shall erth for erth have a hard partyug2.
And so the poem runs for sixteen stanzas.
Love songs are varied, and they are genetically so complex that
they often baffle analysis. They range from the saucy and realistic,
though always animated, songs of the clerks, to the ornate and
figured address of the gallant, who imitates in his ruffled and
formal phrases models brought from over seas. Though some songs
have advanced little, if at all, from the rude amours of country
swains, and others are merely a transplanting of the graceful and
artificial toyings of the court-trained gallants of France, the majority
fuse traditions, so that a single song must sometimes look for its
ancestry not merely to direct antecedents in English folk-song and
French polite verse, but, ultimately, to French folk-poetry and the
troubadour lays of which this polite verse of France was com-
pounded. Indeed, English verse itself may hạve been directly
influenced by the troubadours.
The French types which were translated or imitated without
i Flügel, Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 148.
9 MS Balliol 354, f. 207 6—Anglia, XXVI, 217.
## p. 389 (#407) ############################################
Love Songs
389
material modification include the address, the debat, the pastourelle
and the ballade.
The address is a poem in stately and formal language wherein
the poet addresses his lady, his 'life's souereign pleasaunce.
' His
attitude is that of a humble and reverential suppliant, who, though
confessing the unworthiness of the service which he proffers, yet
relies upon the mercy of his lady to accept it. Not uncommonly
the poem is a New Year's letter, in which, failing a better gift, the
poet offers his mistress his heart—to her a little thing, to him
his all'.
Though the débat has a variety of themes in French lyrics, in
English it is restricted-save for the song of holly and ivy-to
contentions between the lover and his heartless lady. These
songs are as unfeeling as the vapid French verse of which they are
but echoes.
Of the type of pastourelle in which a gallant makes love to a
rustic maiden there are two examples. One of these pastourelles
was sung by Henry VIII and his companions, and, in somewhat
revised form, is still popular to-day:
'Hey, troly, loly, lo; made, whether go you? '
the medowe to mylke my cowe,' etc. ;
In the other, a gallant urges a maid to visit the wildwood with
him, that they may gather flowers, and at length she yields to
his importunity:
*Come oner the woodes fair & grene,
The goodly mayde, that lustye wenche;
To sbadoo yow from the sonne
Vnder the woode ther ys a benche. '
'Sir, I pray yow doo, non offence
To me a mayde, thys I make my mone;
But as I came lett me goo hens,
For I am here my selfe alone,' etc.
The more primitive type of pastourelle in which one shepherd
laments to another the treatment of an indifferent shepherdens
survives in a song attributed to Wyatt, but which he can hardly
more than have revised :
'I go
6
A! Robyn, joly Robyn,
Tell me how thy leman doeth, etc. 5
1 E. E. T. S. xv, 66- Padelford, Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, XXXIV.
3 MS Sloane 1710, f. 164 a.
3 Add. MS 31922, f. 124b-Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 84.
* MS Rawlinson, C. 813, f. 58 6. This MS is being edited by the writer for Anglia.
5 Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 10.
## p. 390 (#408) ############################################
390 Transition English Song Collections
Transferred to the religious lyric, it has also survived in a
shepherd's complaint of the indifference of the clergy to the
welfare of their flocks.
Of all forms of French amatory verse, the ballade enjoyed the
greatest popularity in England. It was the form in which the
gallant most often essayed to ease his bosom of the torments of
love. Every phase of the conventional love complaint, every
chapter in the cycle of the lover's history, is treated in these
ballades precisely as in the corresponding verse in France? .
Light-foot measures, such as the lai and the descort, exerted
a noteworthy influence upon late Transition lyrics, though English
poets were content merely to adopt the characteristic common
to all the species—the long stanza of very short verses—and
did not observe the metrical peculiarities that differentiate one
species from another. This light-foot verse was cultivated to good
effect, and furnishes some of the best songs. They are rapid,
musical and enthusiastic. Any phase of the lover's experience
may be treated in this verse, but it seems to have been most
employed in those songs which deal with the parting, the absence,
or the reunion of lovers. The following verses, which open one of
these songs, will illustrate their grace and spirit:
Can I chuse
But refuce
All thought of mourning,
Now I see
Thus close by me
My love returning?
If I should not joy
When I behould
Such glory shining,
Sith her tyme of stay
Made me to decay
With sorrow pining,
Silly birds might seem
To laugh at me,
Which, at day peering,
With a merry voyce
Sing 'O doo rejoyce! '
Themselves still cheering.
Absence darke
Thou dost marke,
No cause but fearing,
And like night
Turnst thy sight
All into hearing.
1 MS Balliol 354, f. 156 a—Anglia, XXVI, 169.
* MS Rawlinson, C. 813, contains a large number of the ballades,
3 MS Harleian 367, f. 183–Herrig's Archiv, cvii, 56.
## p. 391 (#409) ############################################
Love Songs
391
6
A French type, which, while having no complete exponent,
has yet influenced several English songs, is the aube, or complaint
of the lover at the envious approach of morn, a motive which
Chaucer used with effect in Troilus and Criseydet, and which
Shakespeare immortalised in Romeo and Juliet. In one of the
songs, the refrain of an aube is put into the mouth of a 'comely
queen' (Elizabeth of York? ) who, in a 'glorious garden,' is
gathering roses
This day dawes,
This gentill day dawes,
And I must home gone.
The aube motive is also used as the introduction to another song,
in which a lover complains of an inconstant mistress:
Mornyng, mornyng,
Thus may I synge,
Adew, my dere, adew;
Be God alone
My love ys gon,
Now may I go seke a new%.
One of the earliest phases of the aube tradition, that the
approach of day is announced by the crowing of the cock, is the
theme of a festive little song, which, in other respects, is not at
all like the conventional type. Indeed, the light-hearted spirit
of this merry song is a direct violation of the aube tradition:
I haue a gentil cook
orowyt me day,
He doth me rysyn erly
my matying for to say.
I hane a gentil cook,
comyn he is of gret,
His comb is of reed corel,
his tayil is of get.
I have a gentyl cook,
comyn he is of kynde,
His comb is of red scorel,
his tayl is of inde;
His legges ben of asoor,
80 geintil & 80 smele,
His spores arn of sylver quyt
in to the wortewale;
His eyuyn arn of cristal,
lokyn al in aunbyr;
& euery nygt he perchit hym
in myn ladyis chaumbyr.
The repetitions in this song show that it is of considerable
antiquity.
1 1466, 1702. 9 Add. MS 5465, f. 108 6-Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 159.
8 Ritson, Ancient Songs, III, 4, from Harleian MS 2252.
• MS Sloane 2593, f. 10 –Warton Club, iv, 81.
## p. 392 (#410) ############################################
392 Transition English Song Collections
A more apparent influence is observable in the case of the
chanson à personnages. This type of poem finds its germ in the
spring rites attending the pre-Christian worship of Venus, when
maidens, escaped from the tutelage of their mothers, and young
wives, from the exacting authority of their husbands, rushed
to the meadows, joined hands and danced and sang of their
liberty. In the opinion of Jeanroy, such festivities had become
an almost liturgical convention. By the twelfth century, these
songs had been incorporated into semi-polite poetry, and the
resultant genre enjoyed two centuries of popularity. In the earlier
form of the genre, the poet represents himself as listening to a
young woman who complains of her tyrannical mother or of her
cruel husband, and, sometimes, as even protecting her in an ensuing
quarrel. In the later and more refined form, the mother or
husband is not present, and the poet consoles the young woman,
or even makes love to her, the emphasis thus having shifted from
the narrative and dramatic elements to the lyrical The open-
ing words of the chanson are the conventional L'autre jour or
L'autrier, and the opening verses contain a description of May,
the scene being placed in a bower or a garden.
Though English songs furnish no complete example of the
chanson à personnages as it existed in France, there are a score
of songs in which the poet represents himself as chancing upon a
maiden or a man who is lamenting an unrequited love, or the
treachery of a false lover. As in the chansons, these poems open
a
with the words "This other day' and a description of May-time,
and place the scene in the 'wilderness,' the wild wood supplanting
the French bower, through the influence of the native English
songs of the spring to which reference was made in a previous
chapter of this work? .
Whether this modification of the theme of the chanson began
in France, or whether it was strictly an English development, I
have not been able to determine.
Just as other types of love songs were taken over and employed
in religious lyrics, so this type of song was transferred. In one
song the poet comes upon a maiden deep in the wood, and she is
great with child. This maiden does not lament her condition,
however, but rather sings for joy, since it is given her to bear a
Child in whom verbum caro factum est.
The chansons à personnages shade into the English May poems,
1 See Vol. 1, pp. 360 ff.
Bodleian MS, Engl. Poet. E. I. f. 476. Cf. also Anglia, xn, 236, 254, 263 ;
Herrig's Archiv, ovi, 63, 279, 282, 283; Early Sixteenth Century Poems, 12, 83.
## p. 393 (#411) ############################################
Miscellaneous Songs
393
the refrain of a chanson sometimes being taken from popular
English verse, as the well-known refrain:
Colle to me the rysshys grene, colle to mel.
The May poems that follow the English tradition all breathe
that blithe, out-of-doors spirit, that vernal enthusiasm for the
greenwood and the fields, which consistently characterises spring
songs from 'Sumer is i-cumen in' and 'Blou northerne wynd'
to 'It was a lover and his lass,' and Herrick's sweet summons to
Corinna. Every wisp of a spring poem has this odour of green
things about it, this contagion of happy abandon. One little
song has only this to say,
Trolly, lolly, loly, lo,
Syng troly, lolo, lo.
My love is to the grene wode gone,
Now [af]ter wyll I go;
Syng trolly, loly, lo, lo, ly, lo,
yet how completely it expresses the mood !
Of kindred spirit are hunting songs, songs of the ‘joly
fosters' who love the forest, the bow and the horn and the keen-
ness of the chase. Who would not fain be present, when
Talbot, my hounde, with a mery taste
All about the grene wode he gan cast.
I toke my horne and blew him a blast,
With “Tro, ro, ro, ro; tro, ro, ro, ro! '
With hey go bet, hey go bet, how!
There he gothe, there he goth! (Hey go howe ! )
We shall haue sport and game ynowo3.
It is to be regretted that, for the most part, hunting songs
have only survived in the more or less modified forms in which they
were adapted to pageants, for they were usually marred in the
effort to accommodate them to some allegory, as when the aged
foster hangs his bow and arrows upon the 'greenwood bough'
and, at the command of Lady Venus, leaves her court in disgrace
because his 'hard' beard repels maidens' kisses“.
The best of the songs written by official musicians of the court
are those in praise of members of the royal family. One of these
is a spirited recital of the prowess shown by Henry VIII in the
1 Royal MS, App. 58, f. 24-Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 83.
. Add. MS 31922, f. 43 6. For the licentions love songs of clerks, of. Anglia,
XXVI, 273, 278; Warton Club, rv, 35; Herrig's Archiv, ovII, 58 etc.
• Wynkyn de Worde's Christmasse Carolles, Douce Fragment, 94 6—Early Sixteenth
Century Lyrics, 75.
* Add. MS 31922, f. 65 6-Anglia, XII, 244. Cf. also Letters and Papers of Henry
VIII, 1, 718, 4622—Jan. 6, 1514—for the pageant in which the song probably occurred.
## p. 394 (#412) ############################################
394 Transition English Song Collections
tourney? ; a second is in praise of Katherine and 'le infant
rosary? '; a third is an animated trio in which each singer pro-
fesses to love some flower, the praise of which he sings, the last
stanza making the disclosure that all three love the same, the rose
which unites both the red and the whites; and a fourth is a prayer
with the refrain:
From stormy wyndis & grevous wethir
Good Lord preserve the estryge fethir4.
A few songs that do not come under any of the above classes
at least deserve to be mentioned. Thus there are a few riddles,
which perpetuate a style of poem popular in the Old English
period ; a poem in light-foot verse descriptive of a market-day
or a fair, where there is a bewilderment of goods for sale,
a multitude running here and there, a fisticuff, a swaggering
drunkard and a noisy auctioneer; a fragment of a spinning or
knitting song (? )? ; a pedlar's song8; and a swaggering soldier's
songº.
Such, in brief outline, are the types of songs that constitute
these late Transition collections. These songs are all but un-
known to readers of English verse, and they have as yet been
all but ignored by scholars; yet they constitute an important
chapter in the history of our literature. When they are made
more accessible, they can hardly fail of appreciation, for they will
be enjoyed for what they are, and the student of literary move-
ments will recognise in them one of the two great streams that
unite to form the Elizabethan lyric.
1 Add. MS 31922, f. 54 6—Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 90.
2 Ibid. f. 74 6- Anglia, XII, 247.
3 Add. MS 5465, f. 41 a; Early Sixteenth Century Lyrics, 91.
• Ibid. f. 104 6-Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 159.
* MS Balliol 354, f. 218 b-Anglia, XXVI, 228; MS Sloane 2593, f. 11 a-Warton
Club, rv, 33.
6 Harleian MS 7578, f. 106 a–Herrig's Archiv, cvii, 69.
7 Ibid. 109 6—Herrig's Archiv, OVII, 61.
8 Bodleian MS, Eng. Poet. E. I. f. 26 a—Warton Club, iv, 76.
• Add. MS 5165, f. 1016-Neuenglisches Lesebuch, 147.
## p. 395 (#413) ############################################
CHAPTER XVII
BALLADS
THE subject of this chapter needs careful definition. Sundry
shorter poems, lyrics of whatever purpose, hymns, 'flytings,'
political satires, mawkish stories in verse, sensational journalism
of Elizabethan days and even the translation of Solomon's Song,
have gone by the name of ballad. Ballad societies have published
a vast amount of street-songs, broadsides and ditties such as
Mme de Sévigné knew in Paris under the name of Pont-neuf;
for many readers, unfortunately, there is no difference between
these 'ballads' and Chevy Chace or Sir Patrick Spens. The
popular ballad, however, now in question, is a narrative poem
without any known author or any marks of individual authorship
such as sentiment and reflection, meant, in the first instance, for
singing, and connected, as its name implies, with the communal
dance, but submitted to a process of oral tradition among people
free from literary influences and fairly homogeneous. Conditions
favourable to the making of such poetry ceased to be general after
the fifteenth century; and, while it was both composed and pre-
served in isolated rural communities long after that date, the instinct
which produced it and the habit which handed it down by word
of mouth were, alike, a heritage of the past. Seen in critical
and historical perspective, balladry takes its distinguishing marks
mainly from this process of oral tradition. Owing to this process,
the ballad has lost its dramatic or mimetic and choral character
and become distinctly epic; it has, in many cases, even forfeited its
refrain, once indispensable; but it has kept its impersonal note,
lacks, last as first, all trace of deliberate composition and appeals
to the modern reader with a charm of simplicity quite its own.
Nearly all critics are agreed that no verse of this sort is produced
under the conditions of modern life; and the three hundred and five
individual ballads, represented by some thirteen hundred versions,
printed in the great collection of Child, may be regarded, practically,
## p. 396 (#414) ############################################
396
Ballads
as a closed account in English literature. Diligent gleaning of the
field in the ten years following the completion of that work has
brought little or nothing that is new; and little more can be
expected. Here and there a forgotten manuscript may come
to light; but, in all probability, it will contain only a version
of some ballad already known. The sources of tradition have,
apparently, at last run dry. Sir George Douglas notes that the
Scottish border shepherds, at their annual dinners, no longer sing
their old or their own ballads; what are known as 'songs of the
day,' mainly of music-hall origin, now rule without any rivals
from the past. Remote and isolated districts in the United States
keep a few traditional versions alive; such is The Hangman's
Tree, a version of The Maid Freed from the Gallows, still sung,
with traces of Yorkshire dialect, after generations of purely
oral tradition, as it was brought over to Virginia 'before the
revolution. But these recovered versions have revealed little
that is both good and new.
Yet another line of demarcation must be drawn. English and
Scottish ballads as a distinct species of poetry, and as a body,
can be followed back through the fifteenth century, occur spora-
dically, or find chance mention, for a century or so before
and then altogether cease. Owing to the deplorably loose way in
which the word 'ballad' is applied, not only the references of
early historians, like William of Malmesbury, to the 'popular
songs,' the cantilenae, the carmina vulgaria, from which they
draw for occasional narrative, but also the passages of older epic
that tell a particular deed or celebrate a popular hero, are, alike,
assumed to indicate a body of ballads, similar to those of the
collections, extending back to the Norman conquest, back even
to the Germanic conquest of Britain, but lost for modern readers
by the chances of time and the lack of written record. Such a
body of ballads may, indeed, be conjectured; but conjecture should
not pass into inference. Not a single specimen is preserved. It
is, to be sure, unlikely that the primary instinct of song, the
tendency to celebrate heroes and events in immediate verse, and
the habit of epic tradition, main constituents of balladry, should
cease as we cross the marches of the Transition period and pass
from the modern speech and modern metres, in which our ballads
are composed, into that more inflected language, that wholly
different form of rhythm, which prevailed in Old English and,
with some modifications, in all Germanic verse. To claim for
this older period, however, ballads of the kind common since
## p. 397 (#415) ############################################
The Canute Song
397
the fifteenth century in England, Scandinavia and Germany, is
an assertion impossible to prove. The Old English folk must
have had popular ballads of some sort; but it cannot be said what
they were. Singing, to be sure, implies a poem in stanzas; and that
is precisely what one cannot find in recorded Old English verse
the one exception, Deor's song, being very remote from balladry.
It is true that the subject of a popular ballad can often be traced
far back; Scandinavian ballads still sing the epic heroes of
‘Old Norse. ' Community of theme, however, does not imply a
common poetical form; and it is the structure, the style, the
metrical arrangement, the general spirit of English and Scottish
ballads, which must set them apart in our literature and give them
their title as an independent species. We find a relative plenty
of 'popular' verse in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries—songs by a political minstrel of some sort, which had
their immediate vogue, were recorded here and there, and soon
forgotten—but this sort of thing should not be confused with songs
made among the people, passed down by oral tradition and marked
with those peculiarities of structure and style which are inseparable
from the genuine ballad of the collections. In the absence of
texts, conjecture is useless. The earliest recorded piece of English
verse which agrees with balladry in all these important charac-
teristics is the famous song of Canute, preserved in the chronicles
of Ely'. The king's actual part in the case is doubtful, and
unimportant. Coming by boat, it is said, with his queen and
sundry great nobles to Ely, Canute stood up, bade his men row
slowly, 'called all who were with him in the boats to make a
circle about him . . . and to join him in song; and composed in
English a ballad (cantilenam) which begins as follows:
Merie sunge the munechës binnen Ely,
Tha Cnut ching rew ther by.
Roweth, cnihtës, noer the land,
And herë we these munechës sung. . . . '
The verses are familiar; but their significance is not always
noted. The chronicler turns them into Latin, and, with clear
reference to popular tradition, adds—and so the rest of the
song] as it is sung in these days by the people in their dances,
and handed down as proverbial. . .
