“ They were lovely patterns of words, woven like some
exquisite, foaming lace, but they were Swinburne, Swinburne all the
time. They had nothing to do with the common people. The common people
would not have understood a word of them.
Ballads must be popular. And that is why it will always remain
one of the weirdest paradoxes of literature that the only man, except
Kipling, who has written a true ballad in the last fifty years is the
man who despised the people, who shrank from them, and jeered at them,
from his little gilded niche in Piccadilly. ”

“ To me, "Tipperary" is still the most moving
tune in the world. It happens to be a very good tune, from the
musician's point of view, a tune that Handel would not have been ashamed
to write, but that is not the point. Its emotional qualities are due to
its associations. Perhaps that is how it has always been, with ballads.
From the standard of pure aesthetics, one ought not to consider
"associations" in judging a poem or a tune, but with a song like
"Tipperary" you would be an inhuman prig if you didn't. We all have our
"associations" with this particular tune. ”

“ Sa fast as he might drie.
And soon i' the Gordon's foul hartis bluid
He's wroken his dear ladie.
THE BALLAD OF CHEVY CHACE
God prosper long our noble king,
Our lives and safetyes all;
A woefull hunting once there did
In Chevy-Chace befall;
To drive the deere with hound and horne,
Erle Percy took his way,
The child may rue that is unborne,
The hunting of that day.
The stout Erle of Northumberland
A vow to God did make,
His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summers days to take;
The cheefest harts in Chevy-chace
To kill and beare away. ”

“ And then the local wit caps it with another phrase and a rhyme is born.
For there is always a local wit in every community, however primitive.
There is even a local wit in the monkey house at the zoo.
And once you have that single rhyme and that little piece of rhythm, you
have the genesis of the whole thing. It may not be worked out that
night, nor even by the men who first made it. The fire may long have
died before the ballad is completed, and tall trees may stand over the
men and women who were the first to tell the tale. ”

“ Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol." It was a true ballad, and it was the
best thing he ever wrote. For it was written de profundis, when
his hands were bloody with labour and his tortured spirit had been down
to the level of the lowest, to the level of the pavement ... nay, lower
... to the gutter itself. And in the gutter, with agony, he learned the
meaning of song.
Ballads begin and end with the people. You cannot escape that fact. ”

“ Hast thou not heard, nowe, Henrye Hunt,
As thou hast sayled by daye and by night,
Of a Scottish rover on the seas;
Men call him Sir Andrew Barton, knight!
Then ever he sighed, and said alas!
With a grieved mind, and well away!
But over-well I knowe that wight,
I was his prisoner yesterday.
As I was sayling uppon the sea,
A Burdeaux voyage for to fare;
To his hach-borde he clasped me,
And robd me of all my merchant ware:
And mickle debts, God wot, I owe,
And every man will have his owne ”

“ The ballads, even the lightest and most
blossoming of them, were deep-rooted in the soil of English history. How
different from anything that we possess to-day! Great causes do not lead
men to song, nowadays they lead them to write letters to the newspapers.
A national thanksgiving cannot call forth a single rhyme or a single bar
of music. ”

“ And it is a happy thought that those minstrels were such
considerable persons, so honourably treated, so generously esteemed.
The modern mind, accustomed to think of the singer of popular songs
either as a highly paid music-hall artist, at the top of the ladder, or
a shivering street-singer, at the bottom of it, may find it difficult to
conceive of a minstrel as a sort of ambassador of song, moving from
court to court with dignity and ceremony. ”

“ We are supposed to have progressed
towards internationalism, nowadays. Whereas, in reality, we have grown
more and more frenziedly national. We are very far behind the age of
Froissart, when there was a true internationalism--the internationalism
of art.
To some of us that is still a very real internationalism. When we hear a
Beethoven sonata we do not think of it as issuing from the brain of a
"Teuton" but as blowing from the eternal heights of music whose winds
list nothing of frontiers.
Man needs song, for he is a singing animal. ”

“ And though all generalizations are dangerous I believe
there is one which explains our problem, a very simple one.... namely,
that the eyes of the old ballad-singers were turned outwards, while the
eyes of the modern lyric-writer are turned inwards.
The authors of the old ballads wrote when the world was young, and
infinitely exciting, when nobody knew what mystery might not lie on the
other side of the hill, when the moon was a golden lamp, lit by a
personal God, when giants and monsters stalked, without the slightest
doubt, in the valleys over the river. ”

“ Had heard the strange tale in the song he had showne,
They all were amazed, as well they might bee,
Both at the blinde beggar, and pretty Bessee.
With that the faire bride they all did embrace,
Saying, Sure thou art come of an honourable race,
Thy father likewise is of noble degree,
And thou art well worthy a lady to bee.
Thus was the feast ended with joye and delighte,
A bridegroome most happy then was the younge knighte,
In joy and felicitie long lived hee,
All with his faire ladye, the pretty Bessee. ”

“ Looke thou goe not hence away;
He make thee a whole man and a sound
In two howers of the day."
Then went him forth Sir Aldingar,
And hyed him to our king:
"If I might have grace, as I have space,
Sad tydings I could bring."
Say on, say on, Sir Aldingar,
Saye on the soothe to mee.
"Our queene hath chosen a new new love,
And shee will have none of thee.
"If shee had chosen a right good knight,
The lesse had beene her shame;
But she hath chose her a lazar man,
A lazar both blinde and lame." ”

“ I durst encounter man for man,
With him to break a spere.
Erle Douglas on his milke-white steede,
Most like a baron bolde,
Rode foremost of his company,
Whose armour shone like gold.
Show me, sayd hee, whose men you bee,
That hunt soe boldly heere,
That, without my consent, doe chase
And kill my fallow-deere.
The first man that did answer make
Was noble Percy hee;
Who sayd, Wee list not to declare,
Nor shew whose men wee bee:
Yet wee will spend our deerest blood,
Thy cheefest harts to slay. ”

“ Obviously a
multitude of people could not, deliberately, make a single poem any more
than a multitude of people could, deliberately, make a single picture,
one man doing the nose, one man an eye and so on. Such a suggestion is
grotesque, and Grimm never meant it. If I might guess at what he meant,
I would suggest that he was thinking that the origin of ballads must
have been similar to the origin of the dance, (which was probably the
earliest form of aesthetic expression known to man) . ”

“ Even when, as they
occasionally do, the modern lyric-writers discover, to their
astonishment, that they are feeling happy, they make the happiness such
a personal issue that half its tonic value is destroyed. It is not, like
the old ballads, just an outburst of delight, a sudden rapture at the
warmth of the sun, or the song of the birds, or the glint of moonlight
on a sword, or the dew in a woman's eyes. It is not an emotion so sweet
and soaring that self is left behind, like a dull chrysalis, while the
butterfly of the spirit flutters free. No ... ”

“ And the bride frae the bridegroom was stown awa.
JOHN BROWN'S BODY
Old John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave,
Because he fought for Freedom and the stricken Negro slave;
Old John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave,
But his soul is marching on.
Chorus
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
His soul is marching on.
He was a noble martyr, was Old John Brown the true;
His little patriot band into a noble army grew;
He was a noble martyr, was Old John Brown the true,
And his soul is marching on. ”

“ That was a song which made us all smile and set all our feet
dancing!
Even when their tale was woven out of the stuff of tragedy, the old
ballads were not tarnished with such morbid speculations. Read the tale
of the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green. One shudders to think what a
modern lyric-writer would make of it. We should all be in tears before
the end of the first chorus.
But here, a lovely girl leaves her blind father to search for fortune.
She has many adventures, and in the end, she marries a knight. ”

“ He was a Scot. But he loved Marlborough with the sort of love which the
old ballad-mongers must have had-the sort of love which takes a man on
wings, far from his foolish little body.
He wrote a song called "The Scotch Marlburian". ”

“ And first, quo' the king, when I'm in this stead,
With my crowne of golde so faire on my head,
Among all my liege-men so noble of birthe,
Thou must tell me to one penny what I am worthe.
Secondlye, tell me, without any doubt,
How soone I may ride the whole world about.
And at the third question thou must not shrink,
But tell me here truly what I do think.
O, these are hard questions for my shallow witt,
Nor I cannot answer your grace as yet:
But if you will give me but three weekes space,
Ile do my endeavour to answer your grace. ”

“ Who sent Erle Percy present word,
He wold prevent his sport.
The English erle, not fearing that,
Did to the woods resort
With fifteen hundred bow-men bold;
All chosen men of might,
Who knew full well in time of neede
To ayme their shafts arright.
The galland greyhounds swiftly ran,
To chase the fallow deere:
On munday they began to hunt,
Ere day-light did appeare;
And long before high noone they had
An hundred fat buckes slaine;
Then having dined, the drovyers went
To rouze the deare againe.
The bow-men mustered on the hills,
Well able to endure ”

“ And so, in a world where everything is known (and nothing
understood) , the modern lyric-writer wearily averts his eyes, and stares
into his own heart.
That way madness lies. All madmen are ferocious egotists, and so are all
modern lyric-writers. That is the first and most vital difference
between these ballads and their modern counterparts. The old
ballad-singers hardly ever used the first person singular. The modern
lyric-writer hardly ever uses anything else. ”

“ In other words, how many history masters ever take the trouble to sketch
in the great background, the life of the common people? How many even
realize their existence, except on occasions of national
disaster, such as the Black Plague?
A proper study of the ballads would go a long way towards remedying this
defect. Thomas Percy, whose Reliques must ever be the main source
of our information on all questions connected with ballads, has pointed
out that all the great events of the country have, sooner or later,
found their way into the country's song-book. ”

“ On the road to Mandalay ...
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', an' it's there that I would be--
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
O the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin'-fishes play,
An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!
THE FROLICKSOME DUKE
or
THE TINKER'S GOOD FORTUNE ”

“ At last these two stout erles did meet,
Like captaines of great might:
Like lyons wood, they layd on lode,
And made a cruell fight:
They fought untill they both did sweat,
With swords of tempered steele;
Untill the blood, like drops of rain,
They tricklin downe did feele.
Yeeld thee, Lord Percy, Douglas sayd
In faith I will thee bringe,
Where thou shalt high advanced bee
By James our Scottish king:
Thy ransome I will freely give,
And this report of thee,
Thou art the most couragious knight,
That ever I did see.
Noe, Douglas, quoth Erle Percy then,
Thy proffer I doe scorne ”