of one wholly in protest, and lifelong unsurrendering battle, against the worldAffection all Converted into indignation; an implacable indignation; slow, equable, silent, like that of a god! The eye too, it looks out as in a kind of surprise, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was of such a sort? This is Dante: so he looks, this voice of ten silent centuries,' and sings us' his mystic unfathomable song.' ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892) Poet. Chief works: Idylls of the King, In Memoriam, Princess, Maud, Harold, Becket, Queen Mary, &c. Stanzas from In Memoriam I held it truth, with him who sings But who shall so forecast the years And find in loss a gain to match ? Or teach a hand thro' time to catch The far-off interest of tears? Let love clasp grief lest both be drowned, I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel: For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. I hold it true, whate'er befall, I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Poetess. Chief works: Translation of Prometheus Bound, Casa Guidi Windows, Aurora Leigh, Cowper's Grave, The cry of the Children, The Seraphim, &c. Prometheus "Under earth, under Hades, Where the home of the shade is, All into the deep, deep Tartarus, I would he had hurled me adown. I would he had plunged me, fastened thus In the knotted chain with the savage clang, All into the dark where there should be none, Neither god nor another, to laugh and see. But now the winds sing thro' and shake The hurtling chains wherein I hang, And I, in my naked sorrows, make Much mirth for my enemy." From Aurora Leigh "And verily many thinkers of this age, Aye, many Christian teachers, half in heaven, Are wrong in just my sense, who under stood Our natural world too insularly, as if WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Novelist, &c. Chief works: Vanity Fair, The Newcomes, Pendennis, Esmond, Philip, The Virginians, The Book of Snobs, The Yellowplush Papers, History of the Four Georges, &c. Respect paid to Riches From Vanity Fair "What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at her bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative (and may every reader have a score of such), what a kind good-natured old creature we find her! "How the junior partner of Hobbs and Dobbs leads her smiling to the carriage with the lozenge upon it, and the fat wheezy coachman How when she comes to pay us a visit, we generally find an opportunity to let our friends know her station in the world! We say (and with perfect truth) I wish I had Miss MacWhirter's signature to a cheque for five thousand pounds. She wouldn't miss it, says your wife. She is my aunt, say you, in an easy careless way, when your friend asks if Miss MacWhirter is any relative. Your wife is perpetually sending her little testimonies of affection, your little girls work endless worsted baskets, cushions and footstools for her. What a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay you a visit, although your wife laces her stays without one! The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance not visible at other seasons. You yourself, dear Sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find yourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a rubber. What good dinners you have-game every day, Malmsey, Madeira, and no end of fish from London. Even the servants in the kitchen share in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of Miss MacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery (where her maid takes her meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? I appeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me an old aunt-a maiden aunt-an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured hair-how my children should work bags for her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable! Sweet-sweet vision! Foolish-foolish dream!" "One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton-a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck-when, Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. "Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the tablecloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various other topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But none of these taunts producing the desired effect of making Oliver cry, Noah attempted to be more facetious still; and in this attempt, did what many small wits, with far greater reputations than Noah, sometimes do to this day, when they want to be funny. He got rather personal. Of a broken heart, some of our old nurses told me,' replied Oliver; more as if he was talking to himself than answering Noah. I think I know what it must be to die of that.' "Tol - de - rol-lol- lol, right fol- lairy, Work'us,' said Noah, as a tear rolled down Oliver's cheek. 'What's set you a snivelling now?' 'Not you,' replied Oliver, hastily brushing the tear away. Don't think it.' "Oh, not me, eh ?' sneered Noah. "No, not you,' replied Oliver sharply. There; that's enough. Don't say anything more to me about her; you'd better not!' Better not !' exclaimed Noah. Well! Better not! Work'us, don't be impudent. Your mother, too! She was a nice 'un, she was. Oh Lor!' And here Noah nodded his head expressively; and curled up as much of his small red nose as muscular action could collect together, for the occasion. "Yer know, Work'us,' continued Noah, emboldened by Oliver's silence, and speaking in a jeering tone of affected pity; of all tones the most annoying; yer know, Work'us, it can't be helped now; and of course you couldn't help it then: I'm very sorry for it; and I'm sure we all are, and pity you very much. But yer must know, Work'us, yer mother was a regular rightdown bad 'un.' "What did you say?' inquired Oliver, looking up very quickly. A regular right-down bad 'un, Work'us,' replied Noah coolly. And it's a great deal better, Work'us, that she died when she did, or she'd have been hard-labouring in Bridewell, or transported, or hung; which is more likely than either, isn't it?' "Crimson with fury, Oliver started up; overthrew the chair and table; seized Noah by the throat; shook him in the violence of his rage, till his teeth chattered in his head; and, collecting his whole force into one heavy blow, felled him to the ground." FOLK-SONGS CHAPTER IV FOLK POETRY IN early civilisation poetry and song are communal-that is, they spring from the people. Some one must have composed the song, but he was forgotten; it was handed down orally, and no doubt changed in transmission. This would account for the different extant versions of ballads and songs. The old folk-song is fast dying out. Fifty years ago the rustics sang old ballads and songs now they whistle the latest musichall ditty. Only among the children does the folk-song persist. Scientists tell us that the young of animals tend to resemble the ancestors they evolved from. The theory applies to children's songs and games. In his stories the boy keeps alive the ancient tales of Jack the Giant-Killer, in her rhymes the girl preserves the folk-story of Little Bo-Peep. In their games children copy the doings of their elders, hence we find games dealing with matrimony, hunting, and war. There is much to be learned from these games. The present writer remembers a rhyme used by schoolgirls in Forfarshire, Scotland, in playing a "matrimony" game. It ran thus: "The wind and the wind and the wind blows high, The rain comes pattering from the sky; For the lad with the rolling eye. Obviously the two versions are from the same source. The rhyme may have been carried either north or south in later years, but there is a probability that the two versions are descended from a common ancestor known to the folk. It should be remembered that the non-Celtic people in Scotland spoke a Northern English dialect in early times. Doggerel rhymes for counting out-that is, finding out who is "it" in a game, seem to be communal. One of them runs : "Eenitie, feenitie, fickity feg, Black pudden, white troot, This jumble is found in varying forms in North-East Scotland. Snatches like this suggest that early folk-song was more concerned with a good rattling rhythm than with sense. The songs of the West African negroes seem to be rhythmical and nothing more; one man beats a tom-tom monotonously, and the others dance clumsily and mutter what may be sense, but what sounds like jargon. We may conclude that our own Teutonic and Celtic ancestors had their folk-songs. One man in the tribe would be famous for his voice, and he would sing to the others. This man would become the minstrel of the tribe. In We know that the Saxons before they invaded Britain had their minstrels. Beowulf we find minstrels telling stories in song, and accompanying themselves on the harp. The hero Beowulf hears in song of the doings of the monster Grendal. The minstrel does not appear in Teutonic history until war began to take the predominant Now, in Staffordshire, England, the girls place in the fourth century; then he resing this rhyme : "The wind wind blows and the rain rain goes, And the clouds come gathering from the sky. (Girl's name) is very pretty; She is a girl of a noble city; She is the girl of one, two, three; Pray come tell me who's she'll be. (They pause, and she chooses a boy's name.) (Boy's name) says he loves her; All the boys are fighting for her; Let the boys say what they will, (Boy's name)'s got her still." counted the doings of the tribe's heroes. But singing was by no means confined to the minstrel; in Beowulf we find the king taking the harp and singing. Much later we have the story of King Alfred, disguised as a minstrel entering the Danish camp. Alfred possibly used to amuse his soldiers at leisure moments. In the Norse sagas the minstrel goes into battle and sings to the men. The chief point about the early minstrel was that he played the part of the modern newspaper; he carried tales from place to Ꮓ place. He did not express his own individuality. Sometimes, as in Beowulf, minstrel phrases, “I saw,” "" I know," " "I know not whither,' appear, but they were stock terms that meant nothing. In later history the minstrel degenerates; after the closing of the Roman theatres he becomes a sort of travelling acrobat or clown. Whether the minstrel composed his own songs or sang the folk-songs is a question often debated. The main consideration is that all over Europe folk-song flourished from the earliest times. In the Middle Ages we find the troubadours of Provence, the trouvères of North France, and the minnesingers of Germany, singing their songs. The minnesingers were of aristocratic descent and sang of love (German, minne), composing and setting to music their own verses. Contests were frequent. In time the minnesingers degenerated and their songs became coarse. The knights ceased to write, and the craftsmen took their place. These craftsmen were the meistersingers. Wagner's opera, The Meistersingers, gives one an excellent impression of the singing contests of the time. We see the same kind of contest in the opera Tannhäuser. The songs of the trouvères and the meistersingers were not exactly folk-songs, for the chief characteristic of a folk-song is its lack of conscious art. But both trouvères and meistersingers borrowed from the folksongs. Much later Robert Burns borrowed the folk-songs of Scotland and made them perfect works of conscious art. We have advanced the theory that folksongs began with rhythmical jargon. In old folk-songs we find series of interjections (cf. Shakespeare's songs with their "Hey nonny nonny"), just as we find the meaningless jumble of words in children's rhymes. Jargon formed the refrain, another characteristic of the folk-song. The third characteristic of the early folk-songs is repetition. In the early ballads, verses are repeated again and again, e.g. in Baby Lon, but many refrains were in Latin. The first folk-songs were always connected with the dance. The call to the dance and the interchange of crude satire by rustics are common features. In the early Middle Ages Latin hymns were sung in the English churches, and the metre of the hymns must have affected the rustic's sense of rhythm. Travelling minstrels brought the folk-song nearer to the hymns in form, and the cultured AngloFrench verse of the aristocracy lent to and borrowed from the folk-song. Of great importance are the carols. Carols were religious and therefore popular Many were in Latin and English combined It is here that lyrical movement comes in almost for the first time. In the carol we see the repetition common to early folksongs: "Of a rose, a lovely rose, of a rose I sing, I sing, Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, Save us all thro' thy virtu." The folk-song enters into the mystery plays, the lyrical stanzas being almost perfect in these songs. Here we have dialogue in verse, and dialogue was common in folk-song. The early folk-song did not set out to teach anything; it was only later that it became didactic. We have songs that gave simple advice on morals. Late also are the songs that satire women and the songs of drinking. These two are sometimes combined-the women gossip while they drink. Dunbar's Twa Merrit Wemen and the Wedo is of this type. Then there were huntingsongs and love-songs. The exquisite songs of the Elizabethan dramatists and their successors do not concern us here. They are art songs made by individuals; the folk-song proper has no known author. The art song has practically killed the folk-song. In country districts ballads and folk-songs are sometimes heard, but the competition of the town songs is too strong. Quick travelling, printing of music, cinema shows, and other means, carry the latest London music-hall ditty to the North of Scotland and the West of Ireland in a few weeks. BALLADS A ballad is a story told in song. No one knows how the ballad arose, but various theories have been put forth. The ballad was originally associated with a ring-dance or ring-sang. We have all heard the rhymes sung by schoolgirls in their jing-a-rings: "Water, water, wallflower, Growing up so high. We are all ladies, And we must all die," &c. This is a common school-game, but it is not a ballad, for there is no story in it. Possibly the story was added to a jingling rhyme as an excuse for prolonging the game. But where did the story come from? Many English and Scots ballad stories are simply variants of continental or Eastern folk-tales, and it is certain that such stories sprang from a primitive stock. The Old English epic Beowulf was composed long before the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons invaded free, With a hey lillelu and a how lo lan." One dancer possibly recited the first line, and the others sang the second line as a chorus. The ring carole still exists in the Faroe Islands, and the inhabitants recite spun-out ballads that keep them dancing for a long time. The ballad King Orfeo has a curious history. In the nineteenth century an old man in the Shetland Islands was heard to sing this ballad. It begins: "Der lived a king inta da aste, The old man could not tell the meaning of the second line-the refrain-for the simple reason that it is Norse. The ballad must have come from a Norse saga, and it is quite easily traced, for it is the old story of Orpheus and Eurydice, with a happy ending. It did not come straight from the classical story; there must have been many intermediate stages. There is an old Breton lay, Sir Orfeo, also with the happy ending. In neither version is anything said about Orpheus being forbidden to look back. The romances were not, as a rule, tragical; they preferred the happy ending. But the best ballads refuse the happy ending. Chevy Chase, The Death of Robin Hood, The Death of Parcy Reed, Helen of Kirconnell, all end gloomily. Pos It is doubtful whether ballads were sung to dances during the fifteenth century. sibly travelling minstrels sung their ballads to seated audiences, and these minstrels would naturally try to prolong their stories. This may account for the Robin Hood group of ballads, and for Adam Beel, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley, a ballad of 170 stanzas. A Little Geste of Robin Hood and His Meiny resembles an epic; it has 456 stanzas. Yet the ballad is never quite the same as the romance; it is more compressed. The bald outline of the story is given, without irrelevant incidents, and it has a song-quality not found in the romance. The early ballads were probably made by the folk, but the later ones are not part of communal poetry. The Battle of Otterburn was very likely the work of one man, and the same applies to ballads like Sir Patrick Spens, Chevy Chase, The Queen's Marie, and other stories of later history. It is generally conceded that Scottish ballads are better than English ballads. A probable explanation of this fact is that in England the printing-press was early at work, and English ballads became stereotyped. In Scotland printing was later in appearing, and by the time ballads were printed they had passed from mouth to mouth, and had been touched up in the transmission. Theories about ballads and their origin are interesting enough, but a poem is more important than its history, and it is better to read four ballads than to read four books about ballads. The most striking characteristic about the ballad is its easy simplicity: the story is told as a child tells a fairy-tale. And as a child indulges in repetition, interjection, and refrain, so does the early type of ballad. Originality is not sought after; nearly every ballad shows stock epithets similar to those in Old English epic. A horse is always "milk-white," hair is "yellow," a penknife is always is always "wee." The setting is usually sumptuous; common articles are made of gold or silver, and gems of all kinds are constantly being referred to. There is nothing individual about the ballad, no personal reflection or sentiment. The story is given without comment. Professor Child held the riddle-ballads to be the earliest, and in his great collection the first ballad is Riddles Wisely Expounded. The riddle was sometimes worked in as follows: a knight meets three sisters and propounds a few riddles. The one who answers correctly-the youngest one usually becomes the knight's bride. A good number of ballads deal with kinship. Fair Annie is the tale of a husband who brings home a young bride to supplant his wife Annie. In the night-time the new-come Bride" hears Annie weeping, and, going to console her, discovers that Annie is her sister. In Childe Maurice we have the tale of Maurice, a youth who sees John Steward's wife. He calls to his man, saying: "I think I see the woman yonder, " |