FROM THE MONARCHIE' Christ, efter his glorious Ascentioun, Tyll his Disciplis send the Holy Spreit, In toungis of fyre, to that intentioun, Thay, beand of all languages repleit, Throuch all the warld, with wordis fair and sweit, Tyll every man the faith thay suld furth schaw In thare owin leid', delyverand thame the Law. Tharefore I thynk one gret dirisioun, To heir thir Nunnis and Systeris nycht and day Syngand and sayand Psalmes and Orisoun, Nocht understandyng quhat thay syng nor say. Rycht so childreyng and ladyis of honouris Prayis in Latyne, to thame ane uncuth' leid, Sanct Jerome in his propir toung Romane Had Sanct Jerome bene borne in tyll Argyle Twycheyng the divers leid of every land, In fyve wordis that folk doith understand, In strange langage, sine wait not quhat it menis: THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. All creature that ever God creat, As wryttis Paull, thay wys to se that day Sall do appeir in thare new fresche array; And, moreattour, all dede thyngis corporall, Sone, mone, and sterris, erth, walter, air, and fyre, We sé the gret Globe of the Firmament And all the Angellis of the Ordouris Nyne, I end. cleaned. ■ known ENGLISH BALLADS. In treating of the Ballads, or old popular poetry of England, it is impossible to follow the plan generally adopted in this collection. We cannot arrange them by date of composition, for, while the plots and situations are often of immemorial age, the language is sometimes that of the last century. They are therefore inserted here, as they were first committed to the press and sold as broad-sheets not much later than the period at which we have arrived. About the authors of the ballads, and their historical date, we know nothing. Like the Volks-lieder of other European countries, the popular poems of England were composed by the people for the people. Again, the English ballads, and those of the Lowland Scotch, deal with topics common to the peasant singers of Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, and the Slavonic countries. The wide distribution of these topics is, like the distribution of märchen or popular tales, a mark of great antiquity. We cannot say when they originated, or where, or how; we only know that, in one shape or other, the themes of romantic ballads are very ancient. There are certain incidents, like that of the return of the dead mother to her oppressed children; like the sudden recovery of a fickle bridegroom's heart by the patient affection of his first love; like the adventure of May Colvin with a lover who has slain seven women, and tries to slay her; like the story of the bride who pretends to be dead that she may escape from a detested marriage, which are in all European countries the theme of popular song. Again, the pastimes and labours of the husbandmen and shepherd were, long ago, a kind of natural opera. Each task had its old song,-ploughing, harvest, seed-time, marriage, burial, had appropriate ballads or dirges Aubrey, the antiquary, mentions a song sung in the ox-house when they wassel the oxen.' A similar chant survives in Berry. Further, each of the rural dance-tunes had its ballad-accompani ment, and the dance was sometimes a rude dramatic representation of the action described in the poem. Many of the surviving volks-lieder are echoes from the music of this idyllic world of dance and song from the pleasant England in which Other European ballads are echoes from the same stage of social life, but they are clearer, sweeter, more full and unbroken in tone than the lays of rural England. Our ballads speak of adventures known to Romaic, Danish, and Italian peasants; but in listening to them we hear the drawl of the dull rustic, and catch the snivelling drone of the provincial moralist. Unlike the Provençal, or Romaic, or Lowland Scotch ballads, the English remains are too often flat, garrulous, spiritless, and didactic. They lack the picturesqueness, the simplicity, the felicitous choice of expression, the fire, the speed of the best European volks-lieder. The probable reason of this flatness and languor will be stated presently; in the meantime we must note that the ballads of the Lowland Scotch, recovered from oral tradition, have the fire which we miss in English popular poems. It is for this reason that many of our selected ballads are chosen from the northern Border. The poets were none the less English in blood and language. Before attempting to assign the causes of the poverty of English ballads, it may be as well to prove the fact. The death of Douglas in the English ballad of Chevy Chase is a passage that has won the praise of Addison. It runs thus : With that there came an arrow keene Out of an English bow, Which struck Erle Douglas on the breast, Who never said more words than these, "Fight on, my merrymen all! For why, my life is at an end, Lord Pearcy sees my fall."' In the Scotca ballad this event is prepared for by a dream which visits Dougias, a dream singularly impressive and romantic But I hae dreamed a dreary dream, Beyond the Isle of Sky; I saw a dead man win a fight. This supernatural effect is repeated at the moment of Douglas's fall, and thus a new charm is won for the poem, which is missed in Chevy Chase. The supernatural is almost invariably treated in a gross and flat style by the English balladist. He never thrills the reader with that shudder of awe which is caused by Clerk Saunders, the Wife of Usher's Well, the Demon Lover, and Sir Roland. To give another example: the story of the Dead Man's Ride is common in European popular poetry. The German popular version has been lost in the fame of Bürger's Lenore. Everywhere the ballad tells how a dead lover (in Greece it is a dead brother), is roused from the sleep of death by the grief of a mistress or a mother, how the dead man carries his bride, or his sister, behind him on the saddle in a swift night ride, while the birds in the roadside cry, 'who is the fair girl that rides with the corpse?' 'who is the lover, perfumed with the incense of the dead?' The Romaic version is perhaps the most moving of all. The dead brother gallops with the living sister to the house of the bereaved mother; she hears his knock, and comes to the door, thinking that he is Charon, the emissary of death-Charon, who need not visit her, for she has already given him all her children but one daughter, and she is in a distant land, Αν ἦσα Χαρός διάβαινε. καὶ ἄλλα παιδιὰ δὲν ἔχω; Thus she speaks; and even as she speaks, she recognises the ghost of her son, and dies of terror in the presence of the living and the dead. In England this ballad becomes The Suffolk Miracle (Child, English and Scotch Ballads, vol. i. p. 217); ‘a relation of a young man, who, two months after his death, appeared to his sweetheart, and carried her on horse-back behind him for forty miles in two hours, and was never seen after but in her grave.' The ballad tells us how the young people loved each other, and how the father of the girl disapproved of the engagement : Forty miles distant was she sent Unto his brother, with intent That she should there so long remain, Till she had changed her mind again.' The lover dies of grief, and his ghost pays a morning visit to the house where the lady is living, 'Which, when her uncle understood, He hoped it would be for her good;' |