Frank Sidgwick

“ Palamon said it were small honour for Arcite to be false to his cousin and sworn brother, since each had taken an oath not to hinder the other in love; nay, as a knight Arcite was bound to help him in his amour. But Arcite replied that love knows no law; decrees of man are every day broken for love; moreover Palamon and he were prisoners, and were like two dogs fighting for a bone which meantime a kite bears away. Let each continue in his love, for in prison each must endure. ”

“ Lick is cook and dresseth meat, And fetcheth all things that we eat: Lull is nurse and tends the cradle, And the babes doth dress and swaddle. This little fellow, called Tom Thumb, That is no bigger than a plum, He is the porter to our gate, For he doth let all in thereat, And makes us merry with his play, And merrily we spend the day. ”

“ But where foul sluts did dwell, Who used to sit up late, And would not scour the pewter well, There came a merry mate To kitchen or to hall, Or place where sprites resort; Then down went dish and platters all To make the greater sport. A further sport fell out When they to spoil did fall; Rude Robin Goodfellow, the lout, Would skim the milk-bowls all, And search the cream-pots too, For which poor milk-maid weeps. God wot what such mad guests will do When people soundly sleeps! ”

“ Hence Oberon him sport to make, Their rest when weary mortals take, And none but only fairies wake, Descendeth for his pleasure; And Mab, his merry Queen, by night Bestrides young folks that lie upright [1] (In elder times, the mare that hight) , Which plagues them out of measure. Hence shadows, seeming idle shapes, Of little frisking elves and apes To earth do make their wanton scapes, As hope of pastime hastes them: Which maids think on the hearth they see When fires well-near consumed be, There dancing hays [2] by two and three, Just as their fancy casts them. ”

“ By wells and rills, in meadows green, We nightly dance our heydeguys; And to our fairy king and queen We chant our moon-light minstrelsies. When larks 'gin sing, Away we fling; And babes new-born steal as we go, And elf in bed We leave instead, And wend us laughing, ho, ho, ho! From hag-bred Merlin's time have I Thus nightly revell'd to and fro: And for my pranks men call me by The name of Robin Good-fellow. ”

“ The blood did spin on high As when a conduit pipe is cracked, the water bursting out Doth shoot itself a great way off, and pierce the air about. The leaves that were upon the tree besprinkled with his blood Were dyéd black. The root also, bestained as it stood A deep dark purple colour, straight upon the berries cast, Anon scarce ridded of her fear with which she was aghast, For doubt of disappointing him comes Thisbe forth in haste, And for her lover looks about, rejoicing for to tell How hardly she had 'scaped that night the danger that befell. ”

“ In the still popular Dutch ballad Halewijn, Heer Halewijn sings so sweetly that the king’s daughter asks leave to go to him. Her father, mother, and sister remind her that those who have gone to him have never returned; her brother says he does not care where she goes, if she retains her honour. She makes an elaborate toilet, takes the best horse in the king’s stables, and joins Halewijn in the wood. They ride till they come to a gallows with many women hanged upon it. Halewijn offers her the choice of the means of her death, because she is fairest of all. ”

“ Now worse than e'er he was before, Poor Puck doth yell, poor Puck doth roar, That waked Queen Mab, who doubted sore Some treason had been wrought her: Until Nymphidia told the Queen, What she had done, what she had seen, Who then had well-near cracked her spleen With very extreme laughter. But leave we Hob to clamber out, Queen Mab and all her Fairy rout, And come again to have a bout With Oberon yet madding: And with Pigwiggen now distraught, Who much was troubled in his thought, That he so long the Queen had sought, And through the fields was gadding. ”

“ But love thou those that honest be, And help them in necessity. Do thus, and all the world shall know The pranks of Robin Good-fellow; For by that name thou called shalt be To age's last posterity. If thou observe my just command, One day thou shalt see Fairy Land. This more I give: who tells thy pranks From those that hear them shall have thanks. ”

“ Civilisation, advancing more swiftly in some countries than in others, has left rich stores here, and little there. Our close kinsmen of Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, possess a ballad-literature of which they do well to be proud; and Spain is said to have inherited even better legacies. A study of our native ballads yields much interest, much delight, and much regret that the gleaning is comparatively so small. But what we still have is of immense value. The ballads may not be required again to revoke English literature from flights into artificiality and subjectivity ”

“ Tout n'est plus que réalité; Rien n'est si jolie que la fable, Si triste que la verité! In The Midsummer-Night's Dream, Shakespeare presents a conception of fairy-land as original as that which owes its propagation to Perrault and the other French collectors of fairy-tales; its merits as a popular delineation of the fairy-world are proved by the fact that it has obtained the sanction and approval of tradition, passing almost at once into an accepted literary convention ”

“ Going forth ‘upon a mery day,’ Little John shoots with such skill that he attracts the attention of the Sheriff of Nottingham (who is here and elsewhere the type of Robin Hood’s enemies) , and enters his service for a year under the name of Reynold Greenleaf. While the sheriff is hunting, Little John fights his servants, robs his treasure-house, and escapes back to Robin Hood with ‘three hundred pound and more.’ He then bethinks him of a shrewd wile, and inveigles the sheriff to leave his hunting in order to see a right fair hart and seven score of deer, which turn out to be Robin and his men. ”

“ Of town and tower it bears the bell, In earth is none like it untill. For sooth, Thomas, yon is mine own, And the king's of this country; But me were lever [42] be hanged and drawn Or that [43] he wist thou lay me by. When thou com'st to yon castle gay, I pray thee courteous man to be, And whatso any man to thee say, Look thou answer none but me. My lord is servèd at each mess With thirty knightès fair and free; I shall say, sitting at the dess [44] , I took thy speech beyond the sea." Thomas still as stone he stood, And he beheld that lady gay ”

“ The weaver standing by the river side said:—Now will I cool your hot blood, Master Robert, and if you cannot swim the better you shall sink and drown, With that he hurled the sack in, thinking that it had been Robin Good-fellow. Robin, standing behind him, said—
For this your kindness, master, I you thank: Go swim yourself; I'll stay upon the bank. With that Robin pushed him in, and went laughing away, ho, ho, hoh! ”

“ My love no less than thine Shall give me force to work my wound. I will pursue thee dead, And, wretched woman as I am, it shall of me be said, That like as of thy death I was the only cause and blame, So am I thy companion eke and partner in the same. ”

“ In Elizabeth’s reign we first meet with the ballad-mongers and professional authors of ballads. Simultaneously, or nearly so, comes the degradation of the word ‘ballad,’ until it signifies either the genuine popular ballad, or a satirical song, or a broadside, or almost any ditty of the day. Of the ballad-mongers, we have mentioned Elderton, Deloney, and Johnson. We might add a hundred others, from Anthony Munday to Martin Parker, and even Tom Durfey, each of whom contributed largely to the vast mushroom-literature that sprang up and flourished vigorously for the next century. ”

“ A while there let we Mab alone, And come we to King Oberon, Who, armed to meet his foe, is gone, For proud Pigwiggen crying: Who sought the Fairy King as fast And had so well his journeys cast, That he arrived at the last, His puissant foe espying. Stout Tomalin came with the King, Tom Thumb doth on Pigwiggen bring, That perfect were in everything To single fights belonging: And therefore they themselves engage To see them exercise their rage With fair and comely equipage, Not one the other wronging. ”

“ The Ballads of Riddle and Repartee do not amount to very many in our tongue. But they contain riddles which may be found in one form or another in nearly every folklore on the earth. Even Samson had a riddle. Always popular, they seem to have been especial favourites in early Oriental literature, in the mediæval Latin races, and, in slightly more modern times, amongst the Teutonic and Scandinavian peoples. Perhaps King John and the Abbot is the best English specimen, for it is to-day as pleasing to an audience as it can ever have been. ”

“ Now the day of the tourney approached, and Palamon and Arcite returned each with a hundred knights.
"To fighte for a lady, ben'cite! It were a lusty sighte for to see." Palamon brought with him Ligurge king of Thrace, and with Arcite was Emetreas, the king of India, each a giant in might. So on a Sunday they all came to the city.
And in the night, ere dawn, Palamon arose and went to the temple of Venus to pray that he might win Emilia for his wife; and, as it seemed, in answer to his prayer, the statue of Venus shook, and Palamon held it for a sign that the boon he asked was granted. ”

“ To look back for a moment, we must note that so far we have touched no belief later than the fifteenth century, and already we have seen enough blending of various superstitions and legends to give our fairies a very mixed ancestry. Classical mythology, Celtic heroic sagas and northern Eddas in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, Saxo the Danish historian in the twelfth, and a series of romances, running through Celtic-Breton-French-English languages from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries—all combine to alter or add to the popular conception of fairies. ”

“ At the sight of this the old usurer would have risen out of his bed, and have leaped out of the window, but he was stayed by Robin Good-fellow, who spake to him thus—
If thou dost stir out of thy bed, I do vow to strike thee dead. I do come to do thee good; Recall thy wits and starkled [8] blood. The money which thou up dost store In soul and body makes thee poor. Do good with money while you may; Thou hast not long on earth to stay. ”

“ The Story might be called a counterpart to Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, inasmuch as it has Little John for its hero, and relates how he set his master free, although Robin had lost his temper with him in the morning. A most unfortunate hiatus after 30.2 prevents us from learning how Robin’s fate was reported to his men; but as it stands it is a perfect ballad, straightforward, lively, and picturesque. The first five stanzas, which make a delightful little lyric in themselves, breathe the whole spirit of the greenwood. ”

“ The lore is now traditional, whether it be in prose, as Märchen, or in verse, as ballad. And so it remains in oral circulation—and therefore still liable to variation—until it is written down or printed. It is left ‘masterless,’ unsigned; for of the original author’s composition, may be, only a word or two remains. It has passed through many mouths, and has been made over countless times. But once written down it ceases virûm volitare per ora; the invention of printing has spoiled the powers of man’s memory.
We can now take up the tale at the fifteenth century ”

“ The bat's abroad likewise, And the night-raven, Which doth use for to call Men to Death's haven. Now the mice peep abroad, And the cats take them, Now do young wenches sleep, Till their dreams wake them. Make a ring on the grass With your quick measures: Tom shall play, I will sing For all your pleasures. Thus danced they a good space: at last they left and sat down upon the grass; and to requite Robin Good-fellow's kindness, they promised to tell to him all the exploits that they were accustomed to do: Robin thanked them and listened to them, and one began to tell his tricks in this manner. ”