Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886) Part 30

Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour, Grow thou as the gilliflower.

As a tear-drop be thou white, As a willow, tall and slight; Gentle as the ring-doves are, And be lovely as a star!

This _nani-nani_ calls to mind some words in a letter of Sydney Dobell's: "A little girl-child! The very idea is the most exquisite of poems! a child-daughter--wherein it seems to me that the spirit of all dews and flowers and springs and tender, sweet wonders 'strikes its being into bounds.'" "Tear drop" (_lacrimira_) is the poetic Roumanian name for the lily of the valley. It may be needful to add that gilliflower is the English name for the clove-pink; at least an explanatory foot-note is now attached to the word in new editions of the old poets. Exiled from the polite society of "bedding plants"--all heads and no bodies--the "matted and clove gilliflowers" which Bacon wished to have in his garden, must be sought for by the door of the cottager who speaks of them fondly yet apologetically, as "old-fashioned things." To the folk-singers of the small Italy on the Danube and the great Italy on the Arno they are still the type of the choicest excellence, of the most healthful grace. Even the long stalk, which has been the flower's undoing, from a worldly point of view, gets praised by the unsophisticated Tuscan. "See," he says, "with how lordly an air it holds itself in the hand!" ("Guarda con quanta signoria si tiene in mano!")

The anguish of the Hindu dying childless has its root deeper down in the human heart than the reason he gives for it, the foolish fear lest his funeral rites be not properly performed. No man quite knows what it is to die who leaves a child in the world; children are more than a link with the future--they _are_ the future: the portion of ourselves that belongs not to this day but to to-morrow. To them may be transferred all the hopes sadly laid by, in our own case, as illusions; the "to be" of their young lives can be turned into a beautiful "arrangement in pink," even though experience has taught us that the common lot of humanity is "an Imbroglio in Whity-brown." Most parents do all this and much more; as lullabies would show were there any need for the showing of it. One cradle-song, however, faces the truth that of all sure things the surest is that sorrow and disappointment will fall upon the children as it has fallen upon the fathers. The song comes from Germany; the English version is by Mr C.

G. Leland:

Sleep, little darling, an angel art thou!

Sleep, while I'm brushing the flies from your brow.

All is as silent as silent can be; Close your blue eyes from the daylight and me.

This is the time, love, to sleep and to play; Later, oh later, is not like to-day, When care and trouble and sorrow come sore You never will sleep, love, as sound as before.

Angels from heaven as lovely as thou Sweep round thy bed, love, and smile on thee now; Later, oh later, they'll come as to-day, But only to wipe all the tear-drops away.

Sleep, little darling, while night's coming round, Mother will still by her baby be found; If it be early, or if it be late, Still by her baby she'll watch and she'll wait.

The sad truth is there, but with what tenderness is it not hedged about! These Teutonic angels are worth more than the too sensitive little angels of Spain who fly away at the sight of tears. And the last verse conveys a second truth, as consoling as the first is sad; pa.s.s what must, change what may, the mother's love will not change or pa.s.s; its healing presence will remain till death; who knows? perhaps after. Signor Salomone-Marino records the cry of one, who out of the depths blesses the haven of maternal love:

Mamma, Mammuzza mia, vu' siti l'arma, Lu me rifugiu nni la sorti orrenna, Vui siti la culonna e la giurlanna, Lu celu chi vi guardi e vi mantegna!

The soul that directs and inspires, the refuge that shelters, the column that supports, the garland that crowns--such language would not be natural in the mouth of an English labourer. An Englishman who feels deeply is almost bound to hold his tongue; but the poor Sicilian can so express himself in perfect naturalness and simplicity.

There is a kind of sleep-song that has only the form in common with the rose-coloured fiction that makes the bulk of cradle literature. It is the song of the mother who lulls her child with the overflow of her own troubled heart. The child may be the very cause of her sorest perplexity: yet from it alone she gains the courage to live, from it alone she learns a lesson of duty:

"The babe I carry on my arm, He saves for me my precious soul."

A Corsican mother says to the infant at her breast, "Thou art my guardian angel!"--which is the same thought spoken in another way.

The most lovely of all sad lullabies is that written much more than two thousand years ago by Simonides of Ceos. Acrisius, king of Argos, was informed by an oracle that he would be killed by the son of his daughter Danae, who was therefore shut up in a tower, where Zeus visited her in the form of a shower of gold. Afterwards, when she gave birth to Perseus, Acrisius ordered mother and child to be exposed in a wicker chest or coffin on the open sea. This is the story which Simonides took as the subject of his poem:

Whilst the wind blew and rattled on the decorated ark, and the troubled deep tossed as though in terror--her own fair cheek also not unwet--around Perseus Danae threw her arms, and cried: "O how grievous, my child, is my trouble; yet thou sleepest, and with tranquil heart slumberest within this joyless house, beneath the brazen-barred, black-gleaming, musky heavens. Ah! little reckest thou, beloved object, of the howling of the tempest, nor of the brine wetting thy delicate hair, as there thou liest, clad in thy little crimson mantle!

But even were this dire pa.s.s dreadful also to thee, yet lend thy soft ear to my words: Sleep on, my babe, I say; sleep on, I charge thee; nay, let the wild waters sleep, and sleep the immeasurable woe. Let me, too, see some change of will on thy part, Zeus, father! or if the speech be deemed too venturous, then, for thy child's sake, I pray thee pardon."

This is not a folk-song, but it has a prescriptive right to a place among lullabies.

Pa.s.sing over the beautiful Widow's Song, quoted in a former essay, we come to some Basque lines, which bring before us the blank and vulgar ugliness of modern misery with a realism that would please M. Zola:

Hush, poor child, hush thee to sleep; (See him lying in slumber deep!) Thou first, then following I, We will hush and hushaby.

Thy bad father is at the inn; Oh! the shame of it, and the sin!

Home at midnight he will fare, Drunk with strong wine of Navarre.

After each verse the singer repeats again and again: _Lo lo, lo lo_, on three lingering notes that have the plaintive monotony of the chiming of bells where there are but three in the belfry.

Almost as dismal as the Basque ditty is the English nursery rhyme:

Bye, O my baby!

When I was a lady O then my poor baby didn't cry; But my baby is weeping For want of good keeping; Oh! I fear my poor baby will die!

--which may have been composed to fit in with some particular story, as was the tearful little song occurring in the ballad of Childe Waters:

She said: Lullabye, mine own dear child, Lullabye, my child so dear; I would thy father were a king, Thy mother laid on a bier.

One feels glad that that story ends happily in a "churching and bridal" that take place upon the same day.

I have the copy of a lullaby for a sick child, written down from memory by Signor Lerda, of Turin, who reports it to be popular in Tuscany:

Sleep, dear child, as mother bids: If thou sleep thou shalt not die!

Sleep, and death shall pa.s.s thee by.

Close worn eyes and aching lids, Yield to soft forgetfulness; Let sweet sleep thy senses press: Child, on whom my love doth dwell, Sleep, sleep, and thou shalt be well.

See, I strew thee, soft and light, Bed of down that cannot pain; Linen sheets have o'er it lain More than snow new-fallen white.

Perfume sweet, health-giving scent, The meadows' pride, is o'er it sprent: Sleep, dear son, a little spell, Sleep, sleep, and thou shalt be well.

Change thy side and rest thee there, Beauty! love! turn on thy side, O my son, thou dost not bide As of yore, so fresh and fair.

Sickness mars thee with its spite, Cruel sickness changes quite; How, alas! its traces tell!

Yet sleep, and thou shalt be well.

Sleep, thy mother's kisses poured On her darling son. Repose; G.o.d give end to all our woes.

Sleep, and wake by sleep restored, Pangs that make thee faint shall fly!

Sleep, my child, and lullaby!

Sleep, and fears of death dispel; Sleep, sleep, and thou shalt be well.

"Se tu dormi, non morrai!" In how many tongues are not these words spoken every day by trembling lips, whilst the heart seems to stand still, whilst the eyes dare not weep, for tears would mean the victory of hope or fear; whilst the watcher leans expectant over the beloved little wasted form, conscious that all that can be done has been done, that all that care or skill can try has been tried, that there are no other remedies to fall back upon, that there is no more strength left for battle, and that now, even in this very hour, sleep or his brother death will decide the issue.

When a Sicilian hears that a child is dead, he exclaims, "Glory and Paradise!" The phrase is jubilant almost to harshness; yet the underlying sentiment is not harsh. The thought of a dead child makes natural harmonies with thoughts of bright and shining things. A mother likes to dream of her lost babe as fair and spotless and little. If she is sad, with him it is surely well. He is gone to play with the Holy Boys. He has won the crown of innocence. There are folk-songs that reflect this radiancy with which love clothes dead children; songs for the last sleep full of all the confusion of fond epithets commonly addressed to living babies.

Only in one direction did my efforts to obtain lullabies prove fruitless. America has, it seems, no nursery rhymes but those which are still current in the Old World.[2] Mr Bret Harte told me: "Our lullabies are the same as in England, but there are also a few Dutch ones," and he went on to relate how, when he was at a small frontier town on the Rhine, he heard a woman singing a song to her child: it was the old story,--if the child would not sleep it would be punished, its shoes would be taken away; if it would go to sleep at once, Santa Claus would bring it a beautiful gift. Words and air, said Mr Bret Harte, were strangely familiar to him; then, after a moment's reflection, he remembered hearing this identical lullaby sung amongst his own kindred in the Far West of America.

[Footnote 1: The "Preaching of the children" took place as usual in the Christmas week of 1885, but as the convent in connection with the church of Santa Maria is about to be pulled down, I cannot tell whether the pretty custom will be adhered to in future. The church, however, which was also threatened with demolition, is now safe.]

[Footnote 2: This is confirmed by Mr W. Newell in his admirable book, "Games and Songs of American Children" (1885), which might be called with equal propriety, "Games and Songs of British Children." It is indeed the best collection of English nursery rhymes that exists. Thus America will have given the mother country the most satisfactory editions, both of her ballads (Prof. F. T. Child's splendid work, now in course of publication) and of her children's songs.]

FOLK-DIRGES.

There are probably many persons who could repeat by heart the greater portion of the last scene in the last book of the _Iliad_, and who yet have never been struck by the fact, that not its least excellence consists in its setting before us a carefully accurate picture of a group of usages which for the antiquity of their origin, the wide area of their observance, and the tenacity with which they have been preserved, may be fairly said to occupy an unique position amongst popular customs and ceremonials. First, we are shown the citizens of Troy bearing their vanquished hero within the walls amidst vehement demonstrations of grief: the people cling to the chariot wheels, or prostrate themselves on the earth; the wife and the mother of the dead tear their hair and cast it to the winds. Then the body is laid on a bed of state, and the leaders of a choir of professional minstrels sing a dirge, which is at times interrupted by the wailing of the women. When this is done, Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen in turn give voice each one to the feelings awakened in her by their common loss; and afterwards--so soon as the proper interval has elapsed--the body is burnt, wine being poured over the embers of the pyre. Lastly, the ashes are consigned to the tomb, and the mourners sit down to a banquet. "Such honours paid they to the good knight Hector;" and such, in their main features, are the funeral rites which may be presumed to date back to a period not only anterior to the siege of Troy, granting for the moment that event to have veritably taken place, but also previous to the crystallisation of the Greek or any other of the Indo-European nationalities which flowed westward from the uplands of the Hindu Kush. The custom of hymning the dead, which is just now what more particularly concerns us, once prevailed over most if not all parts of Europe; and the firmness of its hold upon the affections of the people may be inferred from the persistency with which they adhered to it, even when it was opposed not only by the working of the gradual, though fatal, law of decay to which all old usages must in the end submit, but also by the active interposition of persons in authority. Charlemagne, for instance, tried to put it down in Provence--desiring that all those attending funerals, who did not know by rote any of the appropriate psalms, should recite aloud the _Kyrie eleison_ instead of singing "profane songs" made to suit the occasion.

But the edict seems to have met with a signal want of success; for some five hundred years after it was issued, the Provencals still hired Praeficae, and still introduced within the very precincts of their churches, whole choirs of lay dirge-singers, frequently composed of young girls who were stationed in two companies, that chanted songs alternately to the accompaniment of instrumental music; and this notwithstanding that the clergy of Provence showed the strongest objection to the performance of observances at funerals, other than such as were approved by ecclesiastical sanction. The custom in question bears an obvious affinity to Highland coronachs and Irish keens, and here in England there is reason to believe it to have survived as late as the seventeenth century. That Shakespeare was well acquainted with it is amply testified by the fourth act of _Cymbeline_; for it is plain that the song p.r.o.nounced by Guiderius and Arviragus over the supposed corpse of Imogene was no mere poetic outburst of regret, but a real and legitimate dirge, the singing or saying of which was held to const.i.tute Fidele's obsequies. In the Cotton Library there is a MS., having reference to a Yorkshire village in the reign of Elizabeth, which relates: "When any dieth, certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie recyting the jorney that the partye deceased must goe." Unhappily the English Neniae are nearly all lost and forgotten; I know of no genuine specimen extant, except the famous Lyke Wake (_i.e._, Death Watch) dirge beginning:

This ae nighte, this ae nighte, _Everie nighte and alle_, Fire and sleete and candle lighte, _And Christe receive thy saule_, &c.

To the present day we find practices closely a.n.a.logous with those recounted in the _Iliad_ scattered here and there from the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean to the banks of Lake Onega; and the Trojan threnody is even now reproduced in Ireland, in Corsica, Sardinia, and Roumania, in Russia, in Greece, and South Italy. Students who may be tempted to make observations on this strange survival of the old world, will do well, however, to set about it at once, in parts which are either already invaded or else threatened with an imminent invasion of railways, for the screech of the engine sounds the very death-knell of ancient customs. Thus the Irish practice of keening is becoming less and less general. On recently making inquiries of a gentleman residing in Leinster, I learnt that it had gone quite out in that province; he added that he had once seen keeners at a funeral at Clonmacnoise (King's County), but was told they came from the Connaught side of the Shannon. The keens must not be confused with the peculiar wail or death-cry known as the Ullagone; they are articulate utterances, in a strongly marked rhythm, extolling the merits of the dead, and reproaching him for leaving his family, with much more in the same strain. The keeners may or may not be professional, and the keens are more often of a traditional than of an improvised description. One or two specimens in Gaelic have appeared in the _Journal of the Irish Archaeological a.s.sociation_, but on the whole the subject is far from having received the attention it deserves. The Irish keeners are invariably women, as also are all the continental dirge-singers of modern times. Whether by reason of the somewhat new-fashioned sentiment which forbids a man to exhibit his feelings in public, or from other motives not unconnected with selfishness, the onus of discharging the more active and laborious obligations prescribed in popular funeral rites has bit by bit been altogether shifted upon the shoulders of the weaker s.e.x; _e.g._, in places where scratching and tearing of the face forms part of the traditional ritual, the women are expected to continue the performance of this unpleasant ceremony which the men have long since abandoned. Together with the dirge, a more or less serious measure of self-disfigurement has come down from an early date. An Etruscan funeral urn, discovered at Clusi, shows an exact picture of the hired mourners who tear their hair and rend their garments, whilst one stands apart, in a prophetic att.i.tude, and declaims to the accompaniment of a flute. Of the precise origin of the employment of Public Wailers, or Praeficae, not much has been ascertained. One distinguished writer on folk-lore suggests that it had its rise not in any lack of consideration for the dead, but in the apprehension lest the repose of their ghosts should be disturbed by a display of grief on the part of those who had been nearest and dearest to them in life; and his theory gains support in the abundant evidence forthcoming to attest the existence of a widely-spread notion that the dead are pained, and even annoyed and exasperated, by the tears of their kindred. Traces of this belief are discoverable in Zend and Hindu writings; also amongst the Sclavs, Germans, and Scandinavians--and, to look nearer home, in Ireland and Scotland. On the other hand, it is possible that the business of singing before the dead sprang from the root of well-nigh every trade--that its duties were at first exclusively performed by private persons, and their pa.s.sing into public hands resulted simply from people finding out that they were executed with less trouble and more efficiency by a professional functionary; a common-place view of the matter which is somewhat borne out by the circ.u.mstance, that whenever a member of the family is qualified and disposed to undertake the dirge-singing, there seems to be no prejudice against her doing so. It is often far from easy to determine whether such or such a death-song was composed by a hired praefica who for the time being a.s.sumed the character of one of the dead man's relatives, or by the latter speaking in her own person.

In Corsica, the wailing and chanting are kept up, off and on, from the hour of death to the hour of burial. The news that the head of a family has expired is quickly communicated to his relations and friends in the surrounding hamlets, who hasten to form themselves into a troop or band locally called the Scirrata, and thus advance in procession towards the house of mourning. If the death was caused by violence, the scirrata makes a halt when it arrives in sight of the village; and then it is that the Corsican women tear their hair and scratch their faces till the blood flows--just as do their sisters in Dalmatia and Montenegro. Shortly after this, the scirrata is met by the deceased's fellow-villagers, accompanied by all his near relatives with the exception of the widow, to whose abode the whole party now proceeds with loud cries and lamentations. The widow awaits the scirrata by the door of her house, and, as it draws near, the leader steps forward and throws a black veil over her head to symbolise her widowhood; the term of which must offer a dreary prospect to a woman who has the misfortune to lose her husband while she is still in the prime of life, for public opinion insists that she remain for years in almost total seclusion. The mourners and as many as can enter the room a.s.semble round the body, which lies stretched on a table or plank supported by benches; it is draped in a long mantle, or it is clothed in the dead man's best suit. Now begins the dirge, or Vocero. Two persons will perhaps start off singing together, and in that case the words cannot be distinguished; but more often only one gets up at a time. She will open her song with a quietly-delivered eulogy of the virtues of the dead, and a few pointed allusions to the most important events of his life; but before long she warms to her work, and pours forth volleys of rhythmic lamentation with a fire and animation that stir up the women present into a frenzied delirium of grief, in which, as the praefica pauses to take breath, they howl, dig their nails into their flesh, throw themselves on the ground, and sometimes cover their heads with ashes. When the dirge is ended they join hands and dance frantically round the plank on which the body lies. More singing takes place on the way to the church, and thence to the graveyard. After the funeral the men do not shave for weeks, and the women let their hair go loose and occasionally cut it off at the grave--cutting off the hair being, by the way, a universal sign of female mourning; it was done by the women of ancient Greece, and it is done by the women of India. A good deal of eating and drinking brings the ceremonials to a close. If the bill of fare comes short of that recorded of the funeral feast of Sir John Paston, of Barton, when 1300 eggs, 41 pigs, 40 calves, and 10 nete were but a few of the items--nevertheless the Corsican baked meats fall very heavily upon the pockets of such families as deem themselves compelled to "keep up a position." Sixty persons is not an extraordinary number to be entertained at the banquet, and there is, over and above, a general distribution of bread and meat to poorer neighbours. Mutton in summer, and pork in winter, are esteemed the viands proper to the occasion. In happy contrast to all this lugubrious feasting is the simple cup of milk drunk by each kinsman of the shepherd who dies in the mountains; in which case his body is laid out, like Robin Hood's, in the open air, a green sod under his head, his loins begirt with the pistol belt, his gun at his side, his dog at his feet. Curious are the superst.i.tions of the Corsican shepherds touching death. The dead, they say, call the living in the night time, and he who answers will soon follow them; they believe, too, that, if you listen attentively after dark, you may hear at times the low beating of a drum, which announces that a soul has pa.s.sed.