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 Molière'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 Alceste1 runs, in desperately inadequate translation: If the King had made it mine, Paris, his city gay, And I must the love resign To King Henry I would say: Love my bonnie may! Let us hear the reckless "clerk":· If the whole wide world were mine, All I'd be denying If the Queen of England once In my arms were lying!3 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, took another view of the matter. The "clerk," that delightful vagabond who made so nice a balance between 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. 2 May, a favorite ballad word for "maid," "sweetheart." (Carm. Bur.,' page 185: «Wær diu werlt alliu mîn.» 'See Child's Ballads, vi. 257, and Grandfer Cantle's ballad in Mr. Hardy's 'Return of the Native.' See next page. 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,— Come, my darling, come to me! Rose-red mouth, so sweet and fain, Come and make me well again, 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: 2 FOR thy dear sake I'm hither come, My hope rests evermore on thee, Thy dear love let me win; (Carm. Bur.,' page 208: "Kume, Kume, geselle min." 2 Translated from Böhme (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.' Come, ope thy heart, my darling, Where my love's head is lying, What place on earth were more to me, Where my love's feet are lying, Grows young and never old: I knelt and quenched my drouth,— And in my darling's garden1 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 Now who this merry roundel That have two lusty woodsmen And drunk the cool red wine: And who hath sat and listened?— Landlady's daughter fine! What with the more modern tone, and the lusty woodsmen, one has deserted the actual dance, the actual communal origin of song; 'The garden in these later songs is constantly a symbol of love. To pluck the roses, etc., is conventional for making love. 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!1 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,2 rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed. 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, The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good movement. A stanza may be quoted: I know a maid in bower so bright In all this wealth of women fair, 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': 1Quoted by Tiersot, page 88, from Chansons à Danser en Rond,' gathered before 1704. 2 Böddeker's Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with notes, etc., in German; Berlin, 1878, page 179. Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng, 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 Her blitheness nevermore be gone When she is gay, In all the world no more I pray Than this: alone with her to stay Could she but know the ills that slay Was never woman nobler wrought; Full well I know she will me nought. And how shall I then sweetly sing That thus am marréd with mourning? To death, alas, she will me bring Long ere my day. Greet her well, the sweete thing, 1 See also Ritson, With eyen gray! Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3d 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. |