Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) Part 1

Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886).

by Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco.

INTRODUCTION.

Wo man singt da la.s.s dich ruhig nieder, Bose Menschen haben keine Lieder.

INTRODUCTION.

It is on record that Wilhelm Mannhardt, the eminent writer on mythology and folk-lore, was once taken for a gnome by a peasant he had been questioning. His personal appearance may have helped the illusion; he was small and irregularly made, and was then only just emerging from a sickly childhood spent beside the Baltic in dreaming over the creations of popular fancy. Then, too, he wore a little red cap, which was doubtless fraught with supernatural suggestions. But above all, the story proves that Mannhardt had solved the difficulty of dealing with primitive folk; that instead of being looked upon as a profane and prying layman, he was regarded as one who was more than initiated into the mysteries--as one who was a mystery himself. And for this reason I recall it here. It exactly indicates the way to set about seeking after old lore. We ought to shake off as much as possible of our conventional civilization which frightens uneducated peasants, and makes them think, at best, that we wish to turn them into ridicule. If we must not hope to pa.s.s for spirits of earth or air, we can aim at inspiring such a measure of confidence as will persuade the natural man to tell us what he still knows of those vanishing beings, and to lend us the key to his general treasure-box before all that is inside be reduced to dust.

This, which applies directly to the collector at first hand, has also its application for the student who would profit by the materials when collected. He should approach popular songs and traditions from some other stand-point than that of mere criticism; and divesting himself of preconcerted ideas, he should try to live the life and think the thoughts of people whose only literature is that which they carry in their heads, and in whom Imagination takes the place of acquired knowledge.

I.

Research into popular traditions has now reached a stage at which the English Folk-Lore Society have found it desirable to attempt a cla.s.sification of its different branches, and in future, students will perhaps devote their labours to one or another of these branches rather than to the subject as a whole. Certain of the sections thus mapped out have plainly more special attractions for a particular cla.s.s of workers: beliefs and superst.i.tions chiefly concern those who study comparative mythology; customs are of peculiar importance to the sociologist, and so on. But tales and songs, while offering points of interest to scientific specialists, appeal also to a much wider cla.s.s, namely, to all who care at all for literature. For the Folk-tale is the father of all fiction, and the Folk-song is the mother of all poetry.

Mankind may be divided into the half which listens and the half which reads. For the first category in its former completeness, we must go now to the East; in Europe only the poor, and of them a rapidly decreasing proportion, have the memory to recite, the patience to hear, the faith to receive. It was not always or primarily an affair of cla.s.ses: down even to a comparatively late day, the pure story-teller was a popular member of society in provincial France and Italy, and perhaps society was as well employed in listening to wonder-tales as it is at present. But there is no going back.

The epitaph for the old order of things was written by the great philosopher who threw the last shovel of earth on its grave:

O l'heureux temps que celui de ces fables Des bons demons, des esprits familiers, Des farfadets, aux mortels secourables!

On ecoutait tous ces faits admirables Dans son chateau, pres d'un large foyer: Le pere et l'oncle, et la mere et la fille, Et les voisins, et toute la famille, Ouvraient l'oreille a Monsieur l'aumonier, Qui leur fesait des contes de sorcier.

On a banni les demons et les fees; Sous la raison les graces etouffees, Livrent nous c[oe]urs a l'insipidite; Le raisonner tristement s'accredite; On court, helas! apres la verite, Ah! croyez-moi, l'erreur a son merite.[1]

Folk-songs differ from folk-tales by the fact of their making a more emphatic claim to credibility. Prose is allowed to be more fanciful, more frivolous than poetry. It deals with the brighter side; the hero and heroine in the folk-tale marry and live happily ever after; in the popular ballad they are but rarely united save in death. To the blithe supernaturalism of elves and fairies, the folk-poet prefers the solemn supernaturalism of ghost-lore.

The folk-song probably preceded the folk-tale. If we are to judge either by early record or by the a.n.a.logy of backward peoples, it seems proved that in infant communities anything that was thought worth remembering was sung. It must have been soon ascertained that words rhythmically arranged take, as a rule, firmer root than prose. "As I do not know how to read," says a modern Greek folk-singer, "I have made this story into a song so as not to forget it."

Popular poetry is the reflection of moments of strong collective or individual emotion. The springs of legend and poetry issue from the deepest wells of national life; the very heart of a people is laid bare in its sagas and songs. There have been times when a profound feeling of race or patriotism has sufficed to turn a whole nation into poets: this happened at the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the struggle for the Stuarts in Scotland, for independence in Greece. It seems likely that all popular epics were born of some such concordant thrill of emotion. The saying of "a very wise man" reported by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, to the effect that if one were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who made the laws, must be taken with this reservation: the ballad-maker only wields his power for as long as he is the true interpreter of the popular will. Laws may be imposed on the unwilling, but not songs.

The Brothers Grimm said that they had not found a single lie in folk-poetry. "The special value," wrote Goethe, "of what we call national songs and ballads, is that their inspiration comes fresh from nature: they are never got up, they flow from a sure spring." He added, what must continually strike anyone who is brought in contact with a primitive peasantry, "The unsophisticated man is more the master of direct, effective expression in few words than he who has received a regular literary education."

Bards chaunted the praises of head-men and heroes, and it may be guessed that almost as soon and as universally as tribes and races fell out, it grew to be the custom for each fighting chief to have one or more bards in his personal service. Robert Wace describes how William the Conqueror was followed by Taillefer, who

Mounted on steed that was swift of foot, Went forth before the armed train Singing of Roland and Charlemain, Of Olivere, and the brave va.s.sals Who died at the Pa.s.s of Roncesvals.

The northern skalds accompanied the armies to the wars and were present at all the battles. "Ye shall be here that ye may see with your own eyes what is achieved this day," said King Olaf to his skalds on the eve of the Battle of Stiklastad (1030), "and have no occasion, when ye shall afterwards celebrate these actions in song, to depend on the reports of others." In the same fight, a skald named Jhormod died an honourable death, shot with an arrow while in the act of singing.

The early Keltic poets were forbidden to bear arms: a reminiscence of their sacerdotal status, but they, too, looked on while others fought, and encouraged the combatants with their songs. All these bards served a higher purpose than the commemoration of individual leaders: they became the historians of their epoch. The profession was one of recognised eminence, and numbered kings among its adepts. Then it declined with the rise of written chronicles, till the last bard disappeared and only the ballad-singer remained.

II.

This personage, though shorn of bardic dignity, yet contrived to hold his own with considerable success. In Provence and Germany, itinerant minstrels who sang for pay brought up the rank and file of the troubadours and minnesingers; in England and Italy and Northern France they formed a cla.s.s apart, which, as times went, was neither ill-esteemed nor ill-paid. When the minstrel found no better audience he mounted a barrel in the nearest tavern, or

At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.

But his favourite sphere was the baronial hall; and to understand how welcome he was there made, it is only needful to picture country life in days when books were few and newspapers did not exist. He sang before n.o.ble knights and gracious dames, who, to us--could we be suddenly brought into their presence--would seem rough in their manner, their speech, their modes of life; but who were far from being dead or insensible to intellectual pleasure when they could get it. He sang the choicest songs that had come down to him from an earlier age; songs of the Round Table and of the great Charles; and then, as he sat at meat, perhaps below the salt, but with his plate well heaped up with the best that there was, he heard strange Eastern tales from the newly-arrived pilgrim at his right hand, and many a wild story of n.o.ble love or hate from the white-haired retainer at his left.

I have always thought that the old ballad-singer's world--the world in which he moved, and again the ideal world of his songs--is nowhere to be so vividly realised as in the Hofkirche at Innsbruck, among that colossal company who watch the tomb of Kaiser Max; huge men and women in richly wrought bronze array, ugly indeed, most of them, but with two of their number seeming to embody every beautiful quality that was possessed or dreamt of through well nigh a millennium: the pensive, graceful form of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and the erect figure whose very att.i.tude suggests all manly worth, all gentle valour, under which is read the quaint device, "Arthur _von England_."

If not rewarded with sufficient prompt.i.tude and liberality, the ballad-singer was not slow to call attention to the fact. Colin Muset, a jongleur who practised his trade in Lorraine and Champagne in the thirteenth century, has left a charming photograph of contemporary manners in a song which sets forth his wants and deserts.

Lord Count, I have the viol played[2]

Before yourself, within your hall, And you my service never paid Nor gave me any wage at all; 'T was villany:

By faith I to Saint Mary owe, Upon such terms I serve you not, My alms-bag sinks exceeding low, My trunk ill-furnished is, I wot.

Lord Count, now let me understand, What 'tis you mean to do for me, If with free heart and open hand Some ample guerdon you decree Through courtesy; For much I wish, you need not doubt, In my own household to return, And if full purse I am without, Small greeting from my wife I earn.

"Sir Engele," I hear her say, "In what poor country have you been, That through the city all the day You nothing have contrived to glean!

See how your wallet folds and bends, Well stuffed with wind and nought beside; Accursed is he who e'er intends As your companion to abide."

When reached the house wherein I dwell, And that my wife can clearly spy My bag behind me bulge and swell, And I myself clad handsomely In a grey gown, Know that she quickly throws away Her distaff, nor of work doth reck, She greets me laughing, kind and gay, And twines both arms around my neck.

My wife soon seizes on my bag, And empties it without delay; My boy begins to groom my nag, And hastes to give him drink and hay; My maid meanwhile runs off to kill Two capons, dressing them with skill In garlic sauce;

My daughter in her hand doth bear, Kind girl, a comb to smooth my hair.

Then in my house I am a king, Great joyance and no sorrowing, Happier than you can say or sing.

Ballad-singing suffered by the invention of printing, but it was in England that the professional minstrel met with the cruellest blow of all--the statute pa.s.sed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth which forbade his recitations, and cla.s.sed him with "rogues, vagabonds, and st.u.r.dy beggars."

"Beggars they are with one consent, And rogues by Act of Parliament."

On the other hand, it was also in England that the romantic ballad had its revival, and was introduced to an entirely new phase of existence.

The publication of the _Percy Reliques_ (1765) started the modern period in which popular ballads were not only to be accepted as literature, but were to exercise the strongest influence on lettered poets from Goethe and Scott, down to Dante Rossetti.

Not that popular poetry had ever been without its intelligent admirers, here and there, among men of culture: Montaigne had said of it, "La poesie populere et purement naturelle a des nafvetez et graces par ou elle se compare a la princ.i.p.ale beaute de la poesie parfaicte selon l'art: comme il se voit es villanelles de Gascouigne et aus chancons qu'on nous raporte des nations qui n'ont conoissance d'acune science, ny mesme d'escripture." There were even ardent collectors, like Samuel Pepys, who is said to have acquired copies of two thousand ballads.[3] Still, till after the appearance of Bishop Percy's book (as his own many faults of omission and commission attest), the literary cla.s.s at large did not take folk-songs quite seriously. The _Percy Reliques_ was followed by Herder's _Volkslieder_ (1782), Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_ (1802), Fauriel's _Chansons Populaires de la Grece_ (1824), to mention only three of its more immediate successors. The "return to Nature" in poetry became an irresistible movement; the world, tired of the cla.s.sical forms of the eighteenth century, listened as gladly to the fresh voice of the popular muse, as in his father's dreary palace Giacomo Leopardi listened to the voice of the peasant girl over the way, who sang as she plied the shuttle:

Sonavan le quiete Stanze, e le vie dintorno.

Al tuo perpetuo canto, Allor che all opre femminili intenta Sedevi, a.s.sai contenta Di quel vago avvenir che in mente avevi.

Era il Maggio odoroso: e tu solevi Cos menare il giorno.

Lingua mortal non dice Quel ch' io sentiva in seno.

The hunt for ballads led the way to the search for every sort of popular song, and with what zeal that search has since been prosecuted, the splendid results in the hands of the public now testify.

III.