Part 2

Gracious Love, to me incline, Make for me a garland fine,-- Garland for the man to wear Who can please a maiden fair. I say to thee, I say to thee, Playmate mine, O come with me![7]

[7] Ibid., page 213: 'Ich wil Truren Varen lan.'

The greeting from youth to maiden, from maiden to youth, was doubtless a favorite bit of folk-song, whether at the dance or as independent lyric. Readers of the 'Library' will find such a greeting incorporated in 'Child Maurice'[8]; only there it is from the son to his mother, and with a somewhat eccentric list of comparisons by way of detail, instead of the terse form known to German tradition:--

Soar, Lady Nightingale, soar above! A hundred thousand times greet my love!

[8] Article in 'Ballads,' Vol. iii., page 1340.

The variations are endless; one of the earliest is found in a charming Latin tale of the eleventh century, 'Rudlieb,' "the oldest known romance in European literature." A few German words are mixed with the Latin; while after the good old ballad way the greeting is first given to the messenger, and repeated when the messenger performs his task:--"I wish thee as much joy as there are leaves on the trees,--and as much delight as birds have, so much love (_minna_),--and as much honor I wish thee as there are flowers and grass!" Competent critics regard this as a current folk-song of greeting inserted in the romance, and therefore as the oldest example of _minnesang_ in German literature. Of the less known variations of this theme, one may be given from the German of an old song where male singers are supposed to compete for a garland presented by the maidens; the rivals not only sing for the prize but even answer riddles. It is a combination of game and dance, and is evidently of communal origin. The honorable authorities of Freiburg, about 1556, put this practice of "dancing of evenings in the streets, and singing for a garland, and dancing in a throng" under strictest ban. The following is a stanza of greeting in such a song:--

Maiden, thee I fain would greet, From thy head unto thy feet. As many times I greet thee even As there are stars in yonder heaven, As there shall blossom flowers gay, From Easter to St. Michael's day![9]

[9] Uhland, 'Volkslieder,' i. 12.

These competitive verses for the dance and the garland were, as we shall presently see, spontaneous: composed in the throng by lad or lassie, they are certainly entitled to the name of communal lyric. Naturally, the greeting could ban as well as bless; and little Kirstin (Christina) in the Danish ballad sends a greeting of double charge:--

To Denmark's King wish as oft good-night As stars are shining in heaven bright; To Denmark's Queen as oft bad year As the linden hath leaves or the hind hath hair![10]

[10] Grundtvig, 'Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,' iii. 161.

Folk-song in the primitive stage always had a refrain or chorus. The invocation of spring, met in so many songs of later time, is doubtless a survival of an older communal chorus sung to deities of summer and flooding sunshine and fertility. The well-known Latin 'Pervigilium Veneris,' artistic and elaborate as it is in eulogy of spring and love, owes its refrain and the cadence of its trochaic rhythm to some song of the Roman folk in festival; so that Walter Pater is not far from the truth when he gracefully assumes that the whole poem was suggested by this refrain "caught from the lips of the young men, singing because they could not help it, in the streets of Pisa," during that Indian summer of paganism under the Antonines. This haunting refrain, with its throb of the spring and the festal throng, is ruthlessly tortured into a heroic couplet in Parnell's translation:--

Let those love now who never loved before; Let those who always loved now love the more!

Contrast the original!--

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit cras amet!_

This is the trochaic rhythm dear to the common people of Rome and the near provinces, who as every one knows spoke a very different speech from the speech of the patrician, and sang their own songs withal; a few specimens of the latter, notably the soldiers' song about Caesar, have come down to us.[11]

[11] We cannot widen our borders so as to include that solitary folk-song rescued from ancient Greek literature, the 'Song of the Swallow,' sung by children of the Island of Rhodes as they went about asking gifts from house to house at the coming of the earliest swallow. The metre is interesting in comparison with the rhythm of later European folk-songs, and there is evident dramatic action. Nor can we include the fragments of communal drama found in the favorite Debates Between Summer and Winter,--from the actual contest, to such lyrical forms as the song at the end of Shakespeare's 'Love's Labor's Lost.' The reader may be reminded of a good specimen of this class in 'Ivy and Holly,' printed by Ritson, 'Ancient Songs and Ballads,' Hazlitt's edition, page 114 ff., with the refrain:--

Nay, Ivy, nay, Hyt shal not be, I wys; Let Holy hafe the maystry, As the maner ys.

The refrain itself, of whatever metre, was imitated by classical poets like Catullus; and the earliest traditions of Greece tell of these refrains, with gathering verses of lyric or narrative character, sung in the harvest-field and at the dance. In early Assyrian poetry, even, the refrain plays an important part; while an Egyptian folk-song, sung by the reapers, seems to have been little else than a refrain. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, courtly poets took up the refrain, experimented with it, refined it, and so developed those highly artificial forms of verse known as roundel, triolet, and ballade. The refrain, in short, is corner-stone for all poetry of the people, if not of poetry itself; beginning with inarticulate cries of joy or sorrow, like the _eya_ noted above, mere emotional utterances or imitations of various sounds, then growing in distinctness and compass, until the separation of choral from artistic poetry, and the increasing importance of the latter, reduced the refrain to a merely ancillary function, and finally did away with it altogether. Many refrains are still used for the dance which are mere exclamations, with just enough coherence of words added to make them pass as poetry. Frequently, as in the French, these have a peculiar beauty. Victor Hugo has imitated them with success; but to render them into English is impossible.

The refrain, moreover, is closely allied to those couplets or quatrains composed spontaneously at the dance or other merry-making of the people. In many parts of Germany, the dances of harvest were until recent days enlivened by the so-called _schnaderhuepfl_, a quatrain sung to a simple air, composed on the spot, and often inclining to the personal and the satiric. In earlier days this power to make a quatrain off-hand seems to have been universal among the peasants of Europe. In Scandinavia such quatrains are known as _stev_. They are related, so far as their spontaneity, their universal character, and their origin are concerned, to the _coplas_ of Spain, the _stornelli_ of Italy, and the distichs of modern Greece. Of course, the specimens of this poetry which can be found now are rude enough; for the life has gone out of it, and to find it at its best one must go back to conditions which brought the undivided genius of the community into play. What one finds nowadays is such motley as this,--a so-called _runda_ from Vogtland, answering to the Bavarian _schnaderhuepfl_:--

I and my Hans, We go to the dance; And if no one will dance, Dance I and my Hans!

A _schnaderhuepfl_ taken down at Appenzell in 1754, and one of the oldest known, was sung by some lively girl as she danced at the reapers' festival:--

Mine, mine, mine,--O my love is fine, And my favor shall he plainly see; Till the clock strike eight, till the clock strike nine, My door, my door shall open be.

It is evident that the great mass of this poetry died with the occasion that brought it forth, or lingered in oral tradition, exposed to a thousand chances of oblivion. The Church made war upon these songs, partly because of their erotic character, but mainly, one may assume, because of the chain of tradition from heathen times which linked them with feasts in honor of abhorred gods, and with rustic dances at the old pagan harvest-home. A study of all this, however, with material at a minimum, and conjecture or philological combination as the only possible method of investigation, must be relegated to the treatise and the monograph;[12] for present purposes we must confine our exposition and search to songs that shall attract readers as well as students. Yet this can be done only by the admission into our pages of folk-song which already bears witness, more or less, to the touch of an artist working upon material once exclusively communal and popular.

[12] Folk-lore, mythology, sociology even, must share in this work. The reader may consult for indirect but valuable material such books as Frazer's 'Golden Bough,' or that admirable treatise, Tylor's 'Primitive Culture.'

Returning to our English type, the 'Cuckoo Song,' we are now to ask what other communal lyrics with this mark upon them, denoting at once rescue and contamination at the hands of minstrel or wandering clerk, have come down to us from the later Middle Ages. Having answered this question, it will remain to deal with the difficult material accumulated in comparatively recent times. Ballads are far easier to preserve than songs. Ballads have a narrative; and this story in them has proved antiseptic, defying the chances of oral transmission. A good story travels far, and the path which it wanders from people to people is often easy to follow; but the more volatile contents of the popular lyric--we are not speaking of its tune, which is carried in every direction--are easily lost.[13] Such a lyric lives chiefly by its sentiment, and sentiment is a fragile burden. We can however get some notion of this communal song by process of inference, for the earliest lays of the Provencal troubadour, and probably of the German minnesinger, were based upon the older song of the country-side. Again, in England there was little distinction made between the singer who entertained court and castle and the gleeman who sang in the villages and at rural festivals; the latter doubtless taking from the common stock more than he contributed from his own. A certain proof of more aristocratic and distinctly artistic, that is to say, individual origin, and a conclusive reason for refusing the name of folk-song to any one of these lyrics of love, is the fact that it happens to address a married woman. Every one knows that the troubadour and the minnesinger thus addressed their lays; and only the style and general character of their earliest poetry can be considered as borrowed from the popular muse. In other words, however vivacious, objective, vigorous, may be the early lays of the troubadour, however one is tempted to call them mere modifications of an older folk-song, they are excluded by this characteristic from the popular lyric and belong to poetry of the schools. Marriage, says Jeanroy, is always respected in the true folk-song. Moreover, this is only a negative test. In Portugal, many songs which must be referred to the individual and courtly poet are written in praise of the unmarried girl; while in England, whether it be set down to austere morals or to the practical turn of the native mind, one finds little or nothing to match this troubadour and minnesinger poetry in honor of the stately but capricious dame.[14] The folk-song that we seek found few to record it; it sounded at the dance, it was heard in the harvest-field; what seemed to be everywhere, growing spontaneously like violets in spring, called upon no one to preserve it and to give it that protection demanded by exotic poetry of the schools. What is preserved is due mainly to the clerks and gleemen of older times, or else to the curiosity of modern antiquarians, rescuing here and there a belated survival of the species. Where the clerk or the gleeman is in question, he is sure to add a personal element, and thus to remove the song from its true communal setting. Contrast the wonderful little song, admired by Alceste in Moliere's 'Misanthrope,' and as impersonal, even in its first-personal guise as any communal lyric ever made,--with a reckless bit of verse sung by some minstrel about the famous Eleanor of Poitou, wife of Henry II. of England. The song so highly commended by Alceste[15] runs, in desperately inadequate translation:--

If the King had made it mine, Paris, his city gay, And I must the love resign Of my bonnie may,[16]--

To King Henry I would say: Take your Paris back, I pray; Better far I love my may,-- O joy!-- Love my bonnie may!

Let us hear the reckless "clerk":--

If the whole wide world were mine, From the ocean to the Rhine, All I'd be denying If the Queen of England once In my arms were lying![17]

[13] For early times translation from language to language is out of the question, certainly in the case of lyrics. It is very important to remember that primitive man regarded song as a momentary and spontaneous thing.

[14] Yet even rough Scandinavia took up this brilliant but doubtful love poetry. To one of the Norse kings is attributed a song in which the royal singer informs his "lady" by way of credentials for his wooing,--"I have struck a blow in the Saracen's land; _let thy husband do the same!_"

[15] 'Le Misanthrope,' i. 2; he calls it a _vielle chanson_. M. Tiersot concedes it to the popular muse, but thinks it is of the city, not of the country.

[16] _May_, a favorite ballad word for "maid," "sweetheart."

[17] 'Carm. Bur.,' page 185: "Waer diu werlt alliu min."

The tone is not directly communal, but it smacks more of the village dance than of the troubadour's harp; for even Bernart of Ventadour did not dare to address Eleanor save in the conventional tone of despair. The clerks and gleemen, however, and even English peasants of modern times,[18] took another view of the matter. The "clerk," that delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between church and tavern, between breviary and love songs, has probably done more for the preservation of folk-song than all other agents known to us. In the above verses he protests a trifle or so too much about himself; let us hear him again as mere reporter for the communal lyric, in verses that he may have brought from the dance to turn into his inevitable Latin:--

Come, my darling, come to me, I am waiting long for thee,-- I am waiting long for thee, Come, my darling, come to me!

Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain, Come and make me well again;-- Come and make me well again, Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain.[19]

[18] See Child's Ballads, vi. 257, and Grandfer Cantle's ballad in Mr. Hardy's 'Return of the Native.' See next page.

[19] 'Carm. Bur.,' page 208: "Kume, Kume, geselle min."

More graceful yet are the anonymous verses quoted in certain Latin love-letters of a manuscript at Munich; and while a few critics rebel at the notion of a folk-song, the pretty lines surely hint more of field and dance than of the study.

Thou art mine, I am thine, Of that may'st certain be; Locked thou art Within my heart, And I have lost the key: There must thou ever be!

Now it happens that this notion of heart and key recurs in later German folk-song. A highly popular song of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has these stanzas:[20]

For thy dear sake I'm hither come, Sweetheart, O hear me woo! My hope rests evermore on thee, I love thee well and true. Let me but be thy servant, Thy dear love let me win; Come, ope thy heart, my darling, And lock me fast within!

* * * * *

Where my love's head is lying, There rests a golden shrine; And in it lies, locked hard and fast, This fresh young heart of mine: Oh would to God I had the key,-- I'd throw it in the Rhine; What place on earth were more to me, Than with my sweeting fine?

Where my love's feet are lying, A fountain gushes cold, And whoso tastes the fountain Grows young and never old: Full often at the fountain I knelt and quenched my drouth,-- Yet tenfold rather would I kiss My darling's rosy mouth!

And in my darling's garden[21] Is many a precious flower; Oh, in this budding season, Would God 'twere now the hour To go and pluck the roses And nevermore to part: I think full sure to win her Who lies within my heart!

* * * * *

Now who this merry roundel Hath sung with such renown? That have two lusty woodsmen At Freiberg in the town,-- Have sung it fresh and fairly, And drunk the cool red wine: And who hath sat and listened?-- Landlady's daughter fine!

[20] Translated from Boehme 'Altdeutsches Liederbuch,' Leipzig, 1877, page 233. Lovers of folk-song will find this book invaluable on account of the carefully edited musical accompaniments. With it and Chappell, the musician has ample material for English and German songs; for French, see Tiersot, 'La Chanson Populaire en France.'

[21] The garden in these later songs is constantly a symbol of love. To pluck the roses, etc., is conventional for making love.

What with the more modern tone, and the lusty woodsmen, one has deserted the actual dance, the actual communal origin of song; but one is still amid communal influences. Another little song about the heart and the key, this time from France, recalls one to the dance itself, and to the simpler tone:--

Shut fast within a rose I ween my heart must be; No locksmith lives in France Who can set it free,-- Only my lover Pierre, Who took away the key![22]

[22] Quoted by Tiersot, page 88, from 'Chansons a Danser en Rond,' gathered before 1704.

Coming back to England, and the search for her folk-song, it is in order to begin with the refrain. A "clerk," in a somewhat artificial lay to his sweetheart, has preserved as refrain what seems to be a bit of communal verse:--

Ever and aye for my love I am in sorrow sore; I think of her I see so seldom any more,[23]--

rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed.

[23] Boeddeker's 'Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with notes, etc., in German; Berlin, 1878, page 179.

Better by far is the song of another _clericus_, with a lusty little refrain as fresh as the wind it invokes, as certainly folk-song as anything left to us:--

Blow, northern wind, Send thou me my sweeting! Blow, northern wind, Blow, blow, blow!

The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good movement. A stanza may be quoted:--

I know a maid in bower so bright That handsome is for any sight, Noble, gracious maid of might, Precious to discover.

In all this wealth of women fair, Maid of beauty to compare With my sweeting found I ne'er All the country over!

Old too is the lullaby used as a burden or refrain for a religious poem printed by Thomas Wright in his 'Songs and Carols':--

Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng, Lullay, my dere herte, myn owyn dere derlyng.[24]

[24] See also Ritson, 'Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3rd Ed., pages xlviii., 202 ff. The Percy folio MS. preserved a cradle song, 'Balow, my Babe, ly Still and Sleepe,' which was published as a broadside, and finally came to be known as 'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' These "balow" lullabies are said by Mr. Ebbsworth to be imitations of a pretty poem first published in 1593, and now printed by Mr. Bullen in his 'Songs from Elizabethan Romances,' page 92.

The same English manuscript which has kept the refrain 'Blow, Northern Wind,' offers another song which may be given in modern translation and entire. All these songs were written down about the year 1310, and probably in Herefordshire. As with the _carmina burana_, the lays of German "clerks," so these English lays represent something between actual communal verse and the poetry of the individual artist; they owe more to folk-song than to the traditions of literature and art. Some of the expressions in this song are taken, if we may trust the critical insight of Ten Brink, directly from the poetry of the people.

A maid as white as ivory bone, A pearl in gold that golden shone, A turtle-dove, a love whereon My heart must cling: Her blitheness nevermore be gone While I can sing!

When she is gay, In all the world no more I pray Than this: alone with her to stay Withouten strife. Could she but know the ills that slay Her lover's life!

Was never woman nobler wrought; And when she blithe to sleep is brought, Well for him who guessed her thought, Proud maid! Yet O, Full well I know she will me nought. My heart is woe.

And how shall I then sweetly sing That thus am marred with mourning? To death, alas, she will me bring Long ere my day. _Greet her well, the sweete thing, With eyen gray!_

Her eyes have wounded me, i-wis. Her arching brows that bring the bliss; Her comely mouth whoso might kiss, In mirth he were; And I would change all mine for his That is her fere.[25]

Her fere, so worthy might I be, Her fere, so noble, stout and free, For this one thing I would give three, Nor haggle aught. From hell to heaven, if one could see, So fine is naught, [Nor half so free;[26] All lovers true, now listen unto me.]

Now hearken to me while I tell, In such a fume I boil and well; There is no fire so hot in hell As his, I trow, Who loves unknown and dares not tell His hidden woe.

_I will her well, she wills me woe; I am her friend, and she my foe;_ Methinks my heart will break in two For sorrow's might; _In God's own greeting may she go, That maiden white!_

_I would I were a throstlecock, A bunting, or a laverock,[27] Sweet maid! Between her kirtle and her smock I'd then be hid!_

[25] _Fere_, companion, lover. "I would give all I have to be her lover."

[26] Superfluous verses; but the MS. makes no distinction. _Free_ means noble, gracious. "If one could see everything between hell and heaven, one would find nothing so fair and noble."

[27] Lark. The poem is translated from Boeddeker, page 161 ff.