Old Country Life

"Sixteen. Ask Voysey; he paid for'n."

Now this Voysey is a man working for me, so I did ask him. He laughed and said, "Sure enough, I had to pay for sixteen quarts that evening."

Another of my old singers is James Olver, a fine, hale old man, with a face fresh as a rose, and silver hair, a grand old patriarchal man, who has been all his life a tanner. He is a Cornishman, a native of St. Kewe. His father was musical, but a Methodist, and so strict that he would never allow his children to sing a ballad or any profane song in his hearing, and fondly fancied that they grew up in ignorance of such things. But the very fact that they were tabooed gave young Olver and his sister a great thirst to learn, digest, and sing them. He acquired them from itinerant ballad-singers, from miners, and from the village song-men.

Olver was apprenticed to a tanner at Liskeard. "Tell'y," said he, "at Liskeard, sixty years ago, all the youngsters on summer evenings used to meet in a field outside the town called Gurt Lane, and the ground were strewed wi' tan, and there every evening us had wrastling (wrestling), and single-stick, and boxing. Look'y here," – he put his white head near me and raised the hair, – "do'y see now how my head be a cut about? and look to my forehead and cheek as was cut open wi' single-stick. I wor a famous player in them days; and the gentlefolks and ladies 'ud come out and see us at our sports, just as they goes now to cricket-matches."

Whilst the games went on, or between the intervals, songs were sung. "I'll sing'y one," said Olver, "was a favourite, and were sung to encourage the youngsters."

1. "I sing of champions bold,
That wrestled – not for gold;
And all the cry
Was 'Will Trefry,'
That he would win the day.
So Will Trefry, huzzah!
The ladies clap their hands and cry,
'Trefry! Trefry! huzzah!'

2. Then up sprang little Jan,
A lad scarce grown a man.
He said, 'Trefry,
I wot I'll try
A hitch with you this day.'
So little Jan, huzzah!
The ladies clap their hands and cry,
'O little Jan, huzzah!'

3. He stript him to the waist,
He boldly Trefry faced;
'I'll let him know
That I can throw
As well as he to-day.'
So little Jan, huzzah!
And some said so; but others,'No,
Trefry! Trefry! huzzah!'

4. They wrestled on the ground,
His match Trefry had found;
And back he bore
In struggle sore,
And felt his force give way.
So little Jan, huzzah!
So some did say; but others, 'Nay,
Trefry! Trefry! huzzah!'

5. Then with a desperate toss,
Will showed the flying hoss,[Footnote_8_8 - The Flying Horse is a peculiarly dangerous throw over the head, and usually breaks or severely injures the spine of the wrestler thus thrown.]
And little Jan
Fell on the tan,
And never more he spake.
O! little Jan, alack!
The ladies say, 'Oh, woe's the day!
O! little Jan, alack!'

6. Now little Jan, I ween,
That day had married been;
Had he not died,
A gentle bride
That day he home had led.
The ladies sigh – the ladies cry,
'O! little Jan is dead.'"

At Halwell, in North Devon, lives a fine old man named Roger Luxton, aged seventy-six, a great-grandfather, with bright eyes and an intelligent face. He stays about among his grandchildren, but is usually found at the picturesque farm-house of a daughter at Halwell, called Croft. This old man was once very famous as a song-man, but his memory fails him as to a good number of the ballads he was wont to sing. "Ah, your honour," said he, "in old times us used to be welcome in every farm-house, at all shearing and haysel and harvest feasts; but, bless'y! now the farmers' da'ters all learn the pianny, and zing nort but twittery sort of pieces that have nother music nor sense in them; and they don't care to hear us, and any decent sort of music. And there be now no more shearing and haysel and harvest feasts. All them things be given up. 'Tain't the same world as used to be – 'taint so cheerful. Folks don't zing over their work, and laugh after it. There be no dances for the youngsters as there used to was. The farmers be too grand to care to talk to us old chaps, and for certain don't care to hear us zing. Why for nigh on forty years us old zinging-fellows have been drove to the public-houses to zing, and to a different quality of hearers too. And now I reckon the labouring folk be so tree-mendious edicated that they don't care to hear our old songs nother. 'Tis all Pop goes the Weasel and Ehren on the Rhine now. I reckon folks now have got different ears from what they used to have, and different hearts too. More's the pity."

In the very heart of Dartmoor lives a very aged blind man, by name Jonas Coaker, himself a poet, after an illiterate fashion. He is only able to leave his bed for a few hours in the day. He has a retentive memory, and recalls many very old ballads. From being blind he is thrown in on himself, and works on his memory till he digs out some of the old treasures buried there long ago. Unhappily his voice is completely gone, so that melodies cannot be recovered through him.

There is a Cornishman whose name I will give as Elias Keate – a pseudonym – a thatcher, a very fine, big-built, florid man, with big, sturdy sons. This man goes round to all sheep-shearings, harvest homes, fairs, etc., and sings. He has a round, rich voice, a splendid pair of bellows; but he has an infirmity, he is liable to become the worse for the liquor he freely imbibes, and to be quarrelsome over his cups. He belongs to a family of hereditary singers and drinkers. In his possession is a pewter spirit-bottle – a pint bottle – that belonged to his great-grandfather in the latter part of the last century. That old fellow used to drink his pint of raw spirit every day; so did the grandfather of Elias; so did the father of Elias; so would Elias – if he had it; but so do not his sons, for they are teetotalers.

Another minstrel is a little blacksmith; he is a younger man than the others, but he is, to me, a valuable man. He was one of fourteen children, and so his mother sent him, when he was four years old, to his grandmother, and he remained with his grandmother till he was ten. From his grandmother he acquired a considerable number of old dames' songs and ballads. His father was a singer; he had inherited both the hereditary faculty and the stock-in-trade. Thus my little blacksmith learned a whole series which were different from those acquired from the grandmother. At the age of sixteen he left home, finding he was a burden, and since that age has shifted for himself. This man tells me that he can generally pick up a melody and retain it, if he has heard it sung once; that of a song twice sung, he knows words and music, and rarely, if ever, requires to have it sung a third time to perfect him.

On the south of Dartmoor live two men also remarkable in their way – Richard Hard and John Helmore. The latter is an old miller, with a fine intelligent face and a retentive memory. He can read, and his songs have to be accepted with caution. Some are very old, others have been picked up from song-books. Hard is a poor cripple, walking only with the aid of two sticks, with sharply-chiselled features, – he must have been a handsome man in his youth, – bright eyes, a gentle, courteous manner, and a marvellous store of old words and tunes in his head. He is now past stone-breaking on the roadside, and lives on £4 per annum. He has a charming old wife; and he and the old woman sing together in parts their quaint ancient ballads. That man has yielded up something like eighty distinct melodies. His memory, however, is failing; for when the first lines of a ballad in some published collection is read to him, he will sometimes say, "I did know that some forty years ago, but I can't sing it through now." However, he can very generally "put the tune to it."

The days of these old singers is over. What festive gatherings there are now are altered in character. The harvest home is no more. We have instead harvest festivals, tea and cake at sixpence a head in the school-room, and a choral service and a sermon in the church. Village weddings are now quiet enough, no feasting, no dancing. There are no more shearing feasts; what remain are shorn of all their festive character. Instead, we have cottage garden produce shows. The old village "revels" linger on in the most emaciated and expiring semblance of the old feast. The old ballad-seller no more appears in the fair. I wrote to a famous broadside house in the west the other day, to ask if they still produced sheet-ballads, and the answer was, "We abandoned that line thirty years ago;" and no one else took it up.

"I love a ballad but even too well," says the Clown in Winter's Tale, and "I love a ballad in print, a'-life!" sighs Mopsa; but there are no Clowns and Mopsas now. Clever Board School scholars and misses who despise ballads, and love dear as life your coarse, vulgar, music-hall buffoonery.

"I reckon the days is departed
When folks 'ud 'a listened to me;
I feels like as one broken-hearted,
A thinking of what used to be.
And I dun' know as much is amended
Than was in them merry old times,
When, wi' pipes and good ale, folks attended
To me and my purty old rhymes.
To me and my purty old rhymes.

'Tes true, I be cruel asthmatic,
I've lost ivry tooth i' my head,
And my limbs be crim'd up wi' rheumatic —
D'rsay I were better in bed.
But Lor'! wi' that dratted blue ribbon,
Tay-totals and chapels – the lot!
A leckturing, canting and fibbin',
The old zinging man is forgot.
The old zinging man is forgot.

I reckon, that wi' my brown fiddle,
I'd go from this cottage to that,