Part 4

A Servian _pesma_ illustrates the same idea. Young Toevo has the misfortune to break his arm. A doctor is fetched--no other than a Vila of the mountain. The wily sprite demands in guerdon for the cure the right hand of the mother, the sister's long hair, with the ribbons that bind it, the pearl necklace of the wife. Quickly the mother sacrifices her right hand, quickly the sister cuts off her much-prized braid, but the wife says, "Give up my white pearls that my father gave me? Not I!" The Vila waxes angry and poisons Toevo's blood. When he is dead three women fall "a-kookooing"--one groans without ceasing; one sobs at dawn and dusk; one weeps just now and then when it comes into her head so to do. As the cuckoo is supposed to be a sister mourning for her brother, kookooing has come to mean lamenting. The Servian girl who has lately lost her brother cannot hear the cuckoo's note without weeping. In popular poetry the love of sister for brother takes precedence even of the love of mother for child. Not only does Gudrun in the Elder Edda esteem the murder of her first lord, the god-like Sigurd, to be of less importance than that of her brothers, but also to avenge their deaths, she has no scruple in slaying both her second husband and her own sons. A Bulgarian ballad shows in still more striking light the relative value set on the lives of child and brother. There was a certain man named Negul, whose head was in danger. The folk-poet is careful to express no sort of censure upon his hero, but the boasts he is made to utter are sufficient guides to his character. Great numbers of Turks has he put to flight, and yet more women has he killed of those who would not follow him meekly as his wives. "And now," he adds plaintively, "a misfortune has befallen me which I have done nothing at all to deserve." His sister Milenka hears him bemoaning his fate, and at once she says to him, "Brother Negul, Negul, my brother, do not disturb yourself, do not distress yourself; I have nine sons, nine sons and one daughter; the youngest of all is Lalo; him will I sacrifice to save you; I will sacrifice him so that you may remain to me." This was the promise of Milenka. Then she hastened to her own home and prepared hot meats and set flasks of golden wine wherewith to feast her sons. "Eat and drink together," she said, "and kiss one another's hands, for Lalo is going away to be groomsman to his Uncle Negul. Let your mother see you all assembled, and serve you each in turn with ruddy wine and with smoking viands." For the others she did not wholly fill the glass, but Lalo's glass she filled to the brim. Meanwhile Elka, Lalo's sister, made ready his clothes for the journey; and as she busied about it, the little girl cried because Lalo was going to be groomsman, and they had not asked her to be bridesmaid. Lalo said to Elka, "Elka, my little only sister, do not cry so, sister; do not be so vexed; we are nine brothers, and one of these days you will surely act as bridesmaid." The words were hardly spoken when the headsmen reached the door. They took Lalo, the groomsman, and they chopped off his head in place of his Uncle Negul's.

A new and different world is entered when we follow the folk-poet upon the wrestling-ground of Death and Love. If I have judged rightly, there were songs of death before there were any other love songs than those of the nightingale; but the folk-poet was still young when he learnt to sing of love, and the love poet found out early that his lyre was incomplete without the string of death. In all folk-poetry can be plainly heard that music of love and death which may be said almost to have been the dominant note that sounded through the literature of the ages of romance. Sometimes the victory is given to death, sometimes to love; in one song love, while yielding, conquers. Folk-poetry has not anything more instinct with the quality of intensity than is this "Last Request" of a Greek robber-lover--

When thou shalt hear that I am ill, O my well-beloved! he said, O come to me, and quickly come, Or thou wilt find me dead. And when that thou hast reached the house, And the great gates passed through, Then, O my well-beloved, the braids Of thy bright hair undo. And to my mother say straightway, Tell me, where is your son? My son is lying on his bed In his chamber all alone. Then mount the stairs, O my well-beloved, And come your lover anigh, And smooth my pillow that I may Raise me a little high, And hold my head up in thy hands Till flies away my soul. And when thou seest the priest arrive, And dress him in his stole, Then place, my well-beloved, a kiss On my lips pale and cold; And when four youths shall lift me up, And on their shoulders hold, Then shalt thou, O my well-beloved, Cast at them many a stone. And when they reach thy neighbourhood And by thy house pass on, Then, O my well-beloved, thy hair, Thy golden tresses cut; And when they reach the church's gate, And there my coffin put, Then as the hen her feathers plucks, So pluck thy hair for me. And when my dirges all are done, And lights extinguished be, Then shall my heart, O well-beloved, Still be possessed of thee.

We hardly notice the adventitious part of it--the ancient custom of tearing off the hair, the strange stone-casting at the youths who represent Charon; our attention is absorbed by what is the essence of the song: passion which has burned itself into pure fire. Greek folk-poetry shows a blending together of southern emotions with an imaginative fervour, a prophetic power that is rather of the East than of the South. No Tuscan ploughman, for instance, could seize the idea of the Greek folk-poet of possessing his living love in death. If the Tuscan thinks of a union in the grave, it can only be attained by the one who remains joining the one who is gone--

O friendly soil, Soil that doth hold my love in thine embrace, Soon as for me shall end life's war and toil Beneath thy sod I too would have a place; Where my love is, there do I long to be, Where now my heart is buried far from me-- Yes, where my love is gone I long to go, Robbed of my heart I bear too deep a woe.

This stringer of pretty conceits fails to convince us that he is very much in earnest in his wish to die. Speaking in the sincerity of prose, the Tuscan says, "Ogni cosa e meglio che la morte." He does not believe in the nothingness of life. In his worst troubles he still feels that all his faculties, all his senses, are made for pleasure. Death is to him the affair of a not cheerful religious ceremony--a cross borne before a black draped bier, and bells tolling dolefully.

I hear Death's step, I see him at my side, I feel his bony fingers clasp me round; I see the church's door is open wide, And for the dead I hear the knell resound. I see the cross and the black pall outspread; Love, thou dost lead me whither lie the dead! I see the cross, the winding-sheet I see; Love, to the graveyard thou art leading me!

Going further south, a stage further is reached in crude externality of vision. People of the South are the only born realists. To them that comes natural which in others is either affectation or the fruits of what the French call _l'amour du laid_--a morbid love of the hideous, such as marred the fine genius of Baudelaire. At Naples death is a matter of corruption naked in the sunlight. When the Neapolitan takes his mandoline amongst the tombs he unveils their sorry secrets, not because he gloats over them, but because the habit of a reserve of speech is entirely undeveloped in him. He dares to sing thus of his lost love--

Her lattice ever lit no light displays. My Nella! can it be that you are ill? Her sister from the window looks and says: "Your Nella in the grave lies cold and still. Ofttimes she wept to waste her life unwed, And now, poor child, she sleeps beside the dead." Go to the church and lift the winding-sheet, Gaze on my Nella's face--how changed, alas! See 'twixt those lips whence issued flowers so sweet Now loathsome worms (ah! piteous sight!) do pass. Priest, let it be your care, and promise me, That evermore her lamp shall lighted be.

The song beats with the pulses of the people's life--the life of a people swift in gesture, in action, in living, in dying: always in a hurry, as if one must be quick for the catastrophe is coming. They are all here: the lover waiting in the street for some sign or word; the girl leaning out of window to tell her piece of news; the "poor child" who had drunk of the lava stream of love; the dead lying uncoffined in the church to be gazed upon by who will; the priest to whom are given those final instructions: pious, and yet how uncomforting, how unilluminated by hope or even aspiration! Here there is no thought of reunion. A kind-hearted German woman once tried to console a young Neapolitan whose lover was dead, by saying that they might meet in Paradise. "In Paradise?" she answered, opening her large black eyes; "Ah! signora, in Paradise people do not marry."

The coming back or reappearance of a lover, in whose absence his beloved has died, is a subject that has been made use of by the folk-poets of every country, and nothing can be more characteristic of the nationalities to which they belong than the divergences which mark their treatment of it. Northern singers turn the narrative of the event into half a fairy tale. On the banks of the Moldau we are introduced to a joyous youth, returning with glad steps to his native village. "My pretty girls, my doves, is my friend cutting oats with you?" he asks of a group of girls working in the fields near his home. "Only yesterday," they reply, "his friend was buried." He begs them to tell him by which path they bore her away. It is a road edged with rosemary; everybody knows it--it leads to the new cemetery. Thither he goes, thrice he wanders round the place, the third time he hears a voice crying, "Who is it treads on my grave and breaks the rest of the dead?" "It is I, thy friend," he says, and he bids her rise up and look on him. She says she cannot, she is too weak, her heart is lifeless, her hands and feet are like stones. But the gravedigger has left his spade hard by; with it her friend can shovel away the earth that holds her down. He does what she tells him; when the earth is lifted he beholds her stretched out at full length, a frozen maiden crowned with rosemary. He asks to whom has she bequeathed his gifts. She answers that her mother has them; he must go and beg them of her. Then shall he throw the little scarf upon a bush, and there will be an end to his love. And the silver ring he shall cast into the sea, and there will be an end to his grief. On the shores of the Wener it is Lord Malmstein who wakes before dawn from a dream that his beloved's heart is breaking. "Up, up, my little page, saddle the grey; I must know how it fares with my love." He mounts the horse and gallops into the forests. Of a sudden two little maids stand in his path; one wears a dress of blue, and hails him with the words: "God keep you, Lord Malmstein; what bale awaits you!" The other is dight in red, and of her Lord Malmstein asks, "Who is ill, and who is dead?" "No one is ill, no one is dead, save only the betrothed of Malmstein." He makes haste to reach the village; on the way he meets the bier of his betrothed. Swiftly he leaps from the saddle; he pulls from off his finger rings of fine gold, and throws them to the gravedigger--"Delve a grave deep and wide, for therein we will walk together." His face turns red and white, and he deals a mortal blow at his heart. This Swedish Malmstein not only figures as the reappearing lover; he is also one of that familiar pair whom death unites. In an ancient Romansch ballad the story is simply an episode of peasant life. A young Engadiner girl is forced by her father to marry a man of the village of Surselva, but all the while her troth is plighted to a youth from the village of Schams. On the road to Surselva the lover joins the bride and bridegroom unknown to the latter. When they reach the place the people declare that they have never seen so fair a woman as the youthful bride. Her husband's father and mother greet her saying, "Daughter, be thou welcome to our house!" But she answers, "No, I have never been your daughter, nor do I hope ever to be; for the time is near when I must die." Then her brothers and sisters greet her saying, "O sister, be thou welcome to our house!" "No," she says, "I have never been your sister, nor do I ever hope to be; for the time comes when I must die. Only one kindness I ask of you, give me a room where I may rest." They lead her to her chamber, they try to comfort her with sweet words; but the more they would befriend her, the more does the young bride turn her mind away from this world. Her lover is by her side, and to him she says, "O my beloved, greet my father and my mother; tell them that perhaps they have rejoiced their hearts, but sure it is they have broken mine." She turns her face to the wall and her soul returns to God. "O my beloved," cries the lover, "as thou diest, and diest for me, for thee will I gladly die." He throws himself upon the bed, and his soul follows hers. As the clock struck two they carried her to the grave, as the clock struck three they came for him; the marriage bells rang them to their rest; the chimes of Schams answering back the chimes of Surselva. From the grave mound of the girl grew a camomile plant, from the grave mound of the youth a plant of musk; and for the great love they bore one another even the flowers twined together and embraced.

Uoi, i suel toembel da quella bella Craschiva sue uena flur da chiaminella; Uoi, i suel toembel da que bel mat Craschiva sue uena flur nusch muschiat; Per tant grond bain cha queus dus as leivan, Parfin las fluors insemmel as brancleivan.

It is a sign of a natural talent for democracy when the people like better to tell stories about themselves than to discuss the fortunes of prince or princess. The devoted lovers are more often to be looked for in the immediate neighbourhood of a court. So it is in the ballad of Count Nello of Portugal. Count Nello brings his horse to bathe; while the horse drinks, the Count sings. It was already very dark--the King could not recognise him. The poor Infanta knew not whether to laugh or to cry. "Be quiet, my daughter; listen and thou wilt hear a beautiful song. It is an angel singing, or the siren in the sea." "No, it is no angel in heaven, nor is it the siren of the sea; it is Count Nello, my father, he who fain would wed me." "Who speaks of Count Nella who dare name him, the rebel vassal whom I have exiled?" "My Lord, mine only is the fault; you should punish me alone; I cannot live without him; it is I who have made him come." "Hold thy peace, traitress; before day dawns thou shalt see his head cut off." "The headsman who slays him may prepare for me too; there where you dig his grave dig mine also." For whom are the bells tolling? Count Nello is dead; the Infanta is like to die. The two graves are open; behold! they lay the Count near the porch of the church and the Infanta at the foot of the altar. On one grave grows a cypress, on the other an orange tree; one grows, the other grows; their branches join and kiss. The king, when he hears of it, orders them both to be cut down. From the cypress flows noble blood, from the orange tree blood royal; from one flies forth a dove, from the other a wood-pigeon. When the king sits at table the birds perch before him. "Ill luck upon their fondness," he cries, "ill luck upon their love! Neither in life nor in death have I been able to divide them." The musk and the camomile of Switzerland, the cypress and the orange tree of Portugal, are the cypress and the reed of the Greek folk-song, the thorn and olive of the Norman _chanson_, the rose and the briar of the English ballad, the vine and the rose of the Tristram and Iseult story. Through the world they tell their tale--

Amor condusse noi ad una morte.

The death of heroes has provided an inexhaustible theme for folk-poets. The chief or partisan leader had his complement in the skald or bard or roving ballad-singer; if the one acted, turned tribes into nations, cut out history, the other sang, published his fame, gave his exploits to the future, preserved to his people the remembrance of his dying words. The poetry of hero-worship, beginning on Homeric heights, descends to the "lytell gestes" of all sorts and conditions of more or less respectable and patriotic outlaws and _condottieri_, whose "passing" is often the most honourable point in their career. On the principle which has been followed--that of letting the folk-poet speak for himself, and show what are his ideas and his impressions after his own manner and in his own language--I will take three death scenes from amongst the less known of those recorded in popular verse. The first is Scandinavian. What ails Hjalmar the Icelander? Why is his face so pale? The Norse Warrior answers: "Sixteen wounds have I, and my armour is shattered. All things grow black in my sight; I reel in walking; the bloody sword of Agantyr has pierced my heart. Had I five houses in the fields I could not dwell in one of them; I must abide at Samsa, hopeless and mortally wounded. At Upsal, in the halls of Josur, many Jarls quaff joyously the foaming ale, many Jarls exchange hot words; but as for me, I am here in this island, struck down by the point of the sword. The white daughter of Hilmer accompanied my steps to Aganfik beyond the reefs; her words are come true, for she said I should return no more. Draw off my finger the ring of ruddy gold, bear it to my youthful Ingebrog, it will remind her that she will see me never more. In the east upsoars the raven; after him the mightier eagle wings his way. I will be meat for the eagle and my heart's blood his drink." One backward look to all that was the joy of his life--the feast, the fight, the woman he loved--and then a calm facing of the end. This is how the Norseman died. The Greek hero, who dies peaceably in the ripeness of old age, meets his doom with even less trouble of spirit--

The sun sank down behind the hill, And Dimos faintly said, 'Go, children, fetch your evening meal-- The water and the bread. Thou, Lamprakis, my brother's son, Come hither, by me stand, And arm me with my weapons, And be captain of the band. And, children, take my dear old sword That I no more shall sway, And cut the green boughs from the trees And there my body lay; And hither bring a priestly man To whom I may confess, That I may tell him all my sins, And he forgive and bless. For thirty years a soldier, Twenty years a kleft was I; Now death o'ertakes and seizes me, 'Tis finished, I must die. And be ye sure ye make my grave Of ample height and large, That in it I may stand upright, Or lie my gun to charge. And to the right a lattice make, A passage for the day, Where the swallow, bringing springtide, May dart about and play, And the nightingale, sweet singer, Tell the happy month of May.

The slight natural touches--the eagle soaring against the sunrise, the nightingale singing through the May nights--suggest an intuition of the will-of-the-wisp affinity between nature and human chances which seems for ever on the point of being seized, but which for ever eludes the mental grasp. We think of the "brown bird" in the noble "Funeral Song" of one who would have been a magnificent folk-poet, had he not learnt to write and read--Walt Whitman.

My third specimen is a Piedmontese ballad composed probably about a hundred and fifty years ago, and still very popular. Count Nigra ascertained the existence of eight or more variants. A German soldier, known in Italy as the Baron Lodrone, took arms under the house of Savoy, in whose service he presently died. "In Turin," begins the ballad, "counts and barons and noble dames mourn for the death of the Baron Lodrone." The king went to Cuneo to visit his dying soldier; drums and cannons greeted his approach. He spoke kind words to the sick man: "Courage, thou wilt not die, and I will give thee the supreme command." "There is no commander who can stand against death," answered the baron. Now Lodrone was a Protestant, and when the king was convinced that he must die, he exhorted him to conversion, saying that he himself would stand his sponsor. Lodrone replied that that could not be. The king did not insist; he only asked him where he would be buried, and promised him a sepulchre of gold. He answered--

Mi lasserue per testament Ch 'a mi sotero an val d' Lueserna, An val d' Lueserna a m sotraran Dova l me coer s'arposa tan!

He does not care for a golden sepulchre, but he "leaves for testament" that his body may lie in Val Luserna, "where my heart rests so well!" The valley of Luserna was the seat of the Vaudois faith in the "alpine mountains cold," watered with martyr blood only a little while before Lodrone lived. To read these four simple lines after the fantasia of wild or whimsical guesses, passionate longing, unresisted despair, insatiable curiosity, that death has been seen to create or inspire, is like going out of a public place with its multiform and voluble presentment of men and things into the aisles of a small church which would lie silent but that unseen hands pass over the organ keys.

NATURE IN FOLK-SONGS.

Nature, like music, does not initially make us think, it makes us feel. A midnight scene in the Alps, a sunrise on the Mediterranean, suspends at the moment of contemplating it all thought in pure emotion. Afterwards, however, thought comes back and asks for a reason for the emotion that has been felt. Man at an early age began to try and explain, or give a tangible shape, to the feelings wrought in him by Nature. In the first place he called the things that he saw gods, "because the things are beautiful that are seen." Later on, seers and myth-makers resigned their birthright into the hands of poets, who became henceforth the interpreters between nature and man. A small piece of this succession fell away from the great masters of the world's song, and was picked up almost unconsciously by the obscure and nameless folk-singer. Comparative folk-lore has shown that men have everywhere the same customs, the same superstitions, the same games. The study of folk-songs will go far to show that if they have not likewise a complete community of taste and sentiment, yet even in these, the finer fibres of their being, there is less of difference and more of analogy than has been hitherto supposed. Folk-songs prove, for instance, that the modern unschooled man is not so utterly ignorant of natural beauty as many of us have imagined him to be. Only we must not go from the extreme of expecting nothing to the extreme of expecting too much; it has to be borne in mind that at best folk-poesy is rather the stammering speech of children than a mature eloquence.