Strange Survivals

Every accident, every murder, every battle was turned into doggerel and printed as a new ballad. Fourpence was the cost of a license.

In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Philastes,” Megra threatens the King —

“By all those gods you swore by, and as many
More of mine own —
The princess, your daughter, shall stand by me
On walls, and sung in ballads.”

She refers to the manner in which every bit of court scandal was converted into rhythmic jingle, and also to the custom of pasting the ballads on the walls. The least acquaintance with the old black-letter ballads will make the reader understand the allusion to the two figures heading the broadside, in rude woodcut, standing side by side.

A large proportion of the black-letter ballads were of moral and religious import. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s “The Coxcomb,” the tinker refers to these, when he finds poor Viola wandering in the streets at night, and listens to her doleful words. He says: —

“What’s this? a prayer or a homily, or a ballad of good counsel?”

If we compare the black-letter issues of the sixteenth century with the snatches of ballads that come to us through the playwrights, we find that they do not wholly agree.

The dramatists made their characters sing the folk-ballads, the same that are described in “A Defence for Milksmaydes” in 1563.

“They rise in the morning to hear the larke sing,
And welcome with balletts the somer’s coming.

In going to milking, or coming away,
They sing merry balletts, or storeys they say.
Their mouth is as pure and as white as their milk;
– You can not say that of your velvett and silke.”

So the mad jailor’s daughter in Fletcher’s and Shakespeare’s “The Two Noble Kinsmen.”

She says: “Is not this a fine song?”
Brother: “Oh, a very fine one!”
Daughter: “I can say twenty more, I can sing The Broom and Bonny Robin.”

And she begins to troll “Oh fair! oh sweet!” etc.

Unhappily the authors of this play did not write out the song, as it was too well known to require transcription, and now it is lost. So also are those she sings in another scene.

“The George alow came from the South,
From the Coast of Barbary-a!
And there we met with brave gallants of war,
By one, by two, by three-a!

“Well hail’d, well hail’d, you jolly gallants!
And whither now are you bound-a?
Or let me have your company
Till I come to the Sound-a!”

This sounds as though a part of the “Henry Martyn” (Andrew Barton) already given. Another of the mad girl’s songs is: —

“There were three fools fell out about an howlet.
The one said ’twas an owl;
The other said nay.
The third he said it was a hawk,
And her bells were cut away.”

So also with some of the songs and ballads of Ophelia. They were too well known to be printed, and now they are irrecoverably gone.

We have lost nearly the whole of our earliest ballad poetry, and only a tithe of that which took its place has come down to us.

“Our earliest ballads,” says the editor of Percy’s folio, “though highly popular in the Elizabethan age, were yet never collected into any collections, save in Garlands, till the year 1723. They wandered up and down the country without even sheepskins or goatskins to protect them; they flew about like the birds of the air, and sung songs dear to the hearts of the common people – songs whose power was sometimes confessed by the higher classes, but not so thoroughly appreciated as to conduce them to exert themselves for their preservation.”

In the reign of Queen Anne and through the early Hanoverian period, sheets of copperplate were issued with engraved songs and ballads, together with their music. Among them may be found a few – but only a very few – of the old favourites. Most are compositions of Arne, Carey, Berg, Dunn, etc., and the words are quite unsuited to hold the attention of the peasantry. Hardly any of these found their way into broadsides and garlands, and none can now be heard by the cottage fire or in the village ale-house.

In 1808, John Catnach of Newcastle settled in London, and began to print broadsides. He was quickly followed by others in London and in country towns. Catnach kept a number of ballad-mongers in his pay, who either composed verses for him or swept up such traditional ballads as they chanced to hear. They were paid half-a-crown for a copy, whether original or adulterate. If one of these poetasters chanced to hear an ancient ballad, he added to it some of his own verses, so as to be able to call it his property, and then disposed of it to one of the broadside publishers.

If these men had been sent round the country to collect from cottages and village hostelries, in the way in which Wardour Street Jews send about into every part of England to pick up old oak, then a great amount of our traditional ballad poetry might have been recovered. It was not too late in the first ten or twenty years of this century. But this was not done. These pot-poets loafed about in the low London public-houses, where it was only by the rarest chance that a country man, fresh from the fields, and woods, and downs, with his memory laden with the fragrance of the rustic music, was to be found. Moreover, these fellows were overweening in their opinion of their own powers. They had neither taste, nor ear, nor genius. They poured forth floods of atrocious rhymes, and of utter balderdash, as was required, as an occasion offered, and as they stood in need of half-crowns. Consequently the broadside “white-letter” ballad no more represents the folk ballad of the English people than does the black-letter ballad.

Who that has a sprinkling of grey on his head does not remember the ballad-singer at a fair, with his or her yards of verse for sale? The ballad-seller, who vended his broadsheets, did much to corrupt the taste of the peasant. He had begun to read, and he read the ha’penny broadside, and learned by heart what he had bought; then he set it to some fine old melody as ancient as the Wars of the Roses, and sang it; and what is unfortunate, discarded the old words for the sake of the vile stuff composed by the half-tipsy, wholly-stupid band, in the pay of Ryle, Catnach, Harkness of Preston, Williams of Portsea, Snidall of Manchester, etc.

Mr. Hindley, in his “History of the Catnach Press,” 1886, gives an amusing account of his acquaintance with John Morgan, the last surviving of Catnach’s poets: – “Mr. John Morgan, full of bows and scrapes, was ushered into our presence. ‘Take a seat, sir.’ ‘Yes, sir, and thank you too,’ he replied, at the same time sitting down, and then very carefully depositing his somewhat dilapidated hat under – far under – the chair. We then inquired whether he would have anything to eat, or have a cup of coffee. No! it was a little too early for eating, and coffee did not agree with him. Or, a drop of good ‘Old Tom,’ we somewhat significantly suggested. Mr. John Morgan would very much like to have a little drop of gin, for it was a nasty, raw, cold morning. In answer to our inquiry whether he would prefer hot or cold water, elected to have it neat, if it made no difference to us.

“Mr. John Morgan, at our suggestion, having ‘wet the other eye,’ i. e., taken the second glass, the real business commenced thus: – ‘We have been informed that you were acquainted with, and used to write for, the late James Catnach, who formerly lived in Seven Dials, and that you can give us much information that we require towards perfecting a work we have in hand, treating on street literature.’ … Here Mr. Morgan expressed his willingness to give all the information he could on the subject, and leave it to our generosity to pay him what we pleased, and adding that he had no doubt that we should not fall out on that score. Mr. Morgan talked and took gin. Mr. Morgan got warm – warmer, and warmer, – and very entertaining. We continued to talk and take notes, and Mr. Morgan talked and took gin, until he emulated the little old woman who sold ‘Hot Codlings,’ for of her it is related that, ‘The glass she filled, and the bottle she shrunk, And this little old woman in the end got – ’

“At last it became very manifest that we should not be able to get any more information out of Mr. John Morgan on that day, so proposed for him to call again on the morrow morning. Then having presented him with a portrait of Her Most Gracious Majesty, set in gold, we endeavoured to see him downstairs, which, we observed, were very crooked; Mr. Morgan thought they were very old and funny ones…

“At length the wishful morrow came, also ten of the clock, the hour appointed, but not so Mr. John Morgan, nor did he call at any hour during the day. But soon after eleven o’clock the next day he made his appearance; but being so stupidly drunk we gave him some money and told him to call again tomorrow. And he did, but still so muddled that we could make nothing out of him, and so curtly dismissed him.”

Here are specimens of the sort of stuff turned out for Catnach by John Morgan and the like. The first is on the birth of the Princess Royal.

“Of course you’ve heard the welcome news,
Or you must be a gaby,
That England’s glorious queen has got
At last a little baby.

“A boy we wanted – ’tis a girl!
Thus all our hopes that were
To have an heir unto the Throne
Are all thrown to the air.”

Here is a ballad on a policeman of the old style when the new regulations came in, in 1829: —

“Upon his beat he stood to take a last farewell
Of his lantern and his little box wherein he oft did dwell.
He listen’d to the clock, so familiar to his ear,
And with the tail of his drab coat he wiped away a tear.

“Beside that watchhouse door a girl was standing close,
Who held a pocket handkerchief, with which she blew her nose.
She rated well the policeman, which made poor Charley queer,