Strange Survivals

Another is “John Dory”: —

“As it fell on a hole day
And upon a hole tide,
John Dory bought him an ambling nag,
Ambling nag to Paris for to ride.”

Another: —

“Who liveth so merry in all the land
As doth the poor widow that selleth sand,
And ever she singeth as I can guess,
Will you buy my sand, my sand, mistress?”

Also: —

“The Flye she sat in the shamble row,
And shambled with her heels, I trow,
And then came Sir Cranion
With legs so long and many a one.”

A few – but only a few, unspoiled ballads have found their way into print in broadsides. Such are, “The Baffled Knight,” “The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter,” “Lord Thomas and the fair Eleanor,” “Barbara Allen,” “The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington,” “The Brown Girl.” They are miserably few, but they are all that remain to us of the ballad poetry of England, except what has been preserved to us by the Scotch, who knew better than ourselves what was good, and had a finer poetic sense.

Moreover, our English ballad collectors never went to the right sources. There were to be had black and white letter broadsides, more or less scarce, and they set their booksellers to work to gather for them the drifting sheets, and fondly thought that they were collecting the ballad poetry of England. They were collecting make-shifts, the wretched stuff which had ousted the old ballad poetry. It occurred to none of them to go to the people. What would have been the result had Motherwell, Kinloch, Buchan, and Herd set to work in the same fashion? There is to be found in the British Museum a volume of Scottish Broadside Ballads printed at Aberdeen, and Glasgow, and Edinburgh. What do these sheet ballads contain? As great rubbish as do the English broadsides? Herd, Motherwell, and Buchan had more sense than our Ritson, Phillips, and Evans; they sat at the feet of the shepherds, listened beside the wheels of the old spinners, sat at the tavern table and over the peat fires with the peasants, and collected orally. Percy went to his MS. folio, Ritson to his booksellers, and passed over the great living wellspring of traditional poetry. Now it is too late. The utmost that can be gleaned is fragments. But enough does remain either in MS. or in black letter broadside, or in allusion and quotation by our early dramatists, to show that we in England had a mass of ballad poetry, one in kind and merit with the Scottish.

The first collection of scattered ballads and songs in a garland was made in the reign of James I., by Thomas Delony and Richard Johnson, and from that time forward these little assemblages of fugitive pieces were issued from the press. They rarely contain much that is good; they are stuffed with recent compositions. Everyone knew the traditional ballads, and it was not thought worth while reprinting them. A new ballad had to be entered at Stationers’ Hall, and composer as well as publisher reaped a profit from the sale, as a novelty.

The old tunes remained after that the words to which they had been wedded were forgotten; and it may be said that in the majority of cases the music is all that does remain to us of the old ballad song of England.

This is the sort of balderdash that was substituted by a degraded taste for the swinging musical poetry of the minstrel epoch —

“In searching ancient chronicles
It was my chance to finde
A story worth the writing out
In my conceit and mind,” etc.

or: —

“Of two constant lovers, as I understand,
Were born near Appleby, in Westmoreland;
The lad’s name Anthony, Constance the lass;
To sea they both went, and great dangers did pass.”

or: —

“I reade in ancient times of yore,
That men of worthy calling
Built almeshouses and spittles store,
Which now are all downfalling,” etc.

Compare the following with such beginnings as these: —

“In summer-time, when leaves grow green,
And blossoms bedecke the tree,
King Edward wold a hunting ryde,
Some pastime for to see.”

or: —

“There came a bird out o’ a bush,
On water for to dine;
An’ sicking sair, says the King’s dochter,
O wae’s this heart o’ mine,” etc.

or: —

“There was a pretty shepherd boy
That lived upon a hill,
He laid aside his bag o’ pipes
And then he slept his fill.”

or: —

“O! blow away, ye mountain breezes,
Blow the winds, heigh-ho!
And clear away the morning kisses,
Blow the winds, heigh-ho!” etc.

The ring of the latter is fresh and pleasant; the former have no ring at all. The first articles are manufactured in a garret by a publisher’s poetaster, the latter have sprung spontaneously from the hearts of the people in the merry month of May.

Of black-letter printed ballads, the earliest we have are, “The Nut-brown Maid,” which was discovered in a book of customs, dues, etc., published at Antwerp, about 1502, and “The Ballade of the Scottish King,” written by John Skelton, poet laureate to King Henry VIII., and of the date 1513. This was found within the binding of an old book that was knocking about on the floor of a garret in a farmhouse at Whaddon, in Dorset. Mr. Arber’s Transcripts of the entries in Stationers’ Hall give us the list of ballads issued from the press, with their dates.

The list begins in the year 1557. We will take a few extracts only.

1588, 4th March. John Wolfe obtained leave to print three ballads; one was, “Goe from my window, goe.” Now this no longer exists as a ballad, but as a folk-tale, in which occur snatches of rhyme, with a certain melody attached to them; and this air, with the snatches of rhyme, has been preserved. Both are printed by Mr. Chappell in his “Popular Music of the Olden Time.” What the subject of the ballad was the writer learned from a blacksmith, who told him that he was in a village inn about 1860, when a very old man came in, and standing by the fire, recited and sang the following story: —

“Two men courted a pretty maid; the one was rich, the other was poor; and the rich man was old, but the poor man she loved; he was young. Her father forced her to marry the rich man, but still she loved the poor man; and sometimes he came under her window and tapped, and when the husband was away she let him in.

“So passed a twelvemonth and a day, and she had a little child.

“Then one night the lover came under the window, thinking her goodman was from home. With his tapping the husband woke, and asked what the sound was. She said an ivy leaf was caught in a cobweb, and fluttered against the pane. Then the lover began to call, and her husband asked what that sound was. She said the owls were hooting in the night. But fearing lest her lover should continue to call and tap, she began to sing, as she rocked the cradle: —

“‘Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the wind, and O the rain,
They have sent him back again,
So thou can’st not have a lodging here.’

“Again the lover tapped, and the husband asked what that meant. She said it was a flittermouse that had flown against the pane. Then she sang: —