“ Nobody who is painfully acquainted with the rambling,
egotistical pieces of dreary versification, passing for modern
"ballads", will deny it.
Ballad-making is a lost art for a very simple reason. Which is, that we
are all, nowadays, too sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought to
receive emotions directly, without self-consciousness. If we are
wounded, we are no longer able to sing a song about a clean sword, and a
great cause, and a black enemy, and a waving flag. ”

“ It will now be clear, from the foregoing remarks, that there are
thousands of poems, labelled "ballads" from the eighteenth century,
through the romantic movement, and onwards, which are not ballads at
all. Swinburne's ballads, which so shocked our grandparents, bore about
as much relation to the true ballads as a vase of wax fruit to a
hawker's barrow. 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. ”

“ Grimm, listening
in his fairyland, heard some of the earliest ballads, loved them,
pondered on them, and suddenly startled the world by announcing that
most ballads were not the work of a single author, but of the people at
large. Das Volk dichtet, he said. And that phrase got him into a
lot of trouble. People told him to get back to his fairyland and not
make such ridiculous suggestions. For how, they asked, could a whole
people make a poem? You might as well tell a thousand men to make a
tune, limiting each of them to one note! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One that pleases his fancy with frolicksome sport:
But amongst all the rest, here is one I protest,
Which will make you to smile when you hear the true jest:
A poor tinker he found, lying drunk on the ground,
As secure in a sleep as if laid in a swound.
The Duke said to his men, William, Richard, and Ben,
Take him home to my palace, we'll sport with him then. ”

“ Be a lady in chariots of pleasure to ride?
Must we have gold and land ev'ry day at command?
Then I shall be a squire I well understand:
Well I thank your good grace, and your love I embrace,
I was never before in so happy a case. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is not only the
resounding names that are celebrated. In the ballads we hear the echoes
of the street, the rude laughter and the pointed jests. Sometimes these
ring so plainly that they need no explanation. At other times, we have
to go to Percy or to some of his successors to realize the true
significance of the song.
For example, the famous ballad "John Anderson my Jo" seems, at first
sight, to be innocent of any polemical intention. But it was written
during the Reformation when, as Percy dryly observes, "the Muses were
deeply engaged in religious controversy." ”

“ 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 ... ”

“ If countless young men, every
night, are to clasp countless young women to their bosoms, and rotate
over countless dancing-floors, muttering "I'm feeling blue ... I
don't know what to do", it is not unreasonable to suppose that they will
subconsciously apply some of the lyric's mournful egotism to themselves.
Anybody who has even a nodding acquaintance with modern psychological
science will be aware of the significance of "conditioning", as applied
to the human temperament. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The late M. Coué "conditioned" people into
happiness by making them repeat, over and over again, the phrase "Every
day in every way I grow better and better and better."
The modern lyric-monger exactly reverses M. Coué's doctrine. He makes
the patient repeat "Every night, with all my might, I grow worse and
worse and worse." Of course the "I" of the lyric-writer is an imaginary
"I", but if any man sings "I'm feeling blue", often enough, to a
catchy tune, he will be a superman if he does not eventually apply that
"I" to himself.
But the "blueness" is really beside the point. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is rather for their tonic qualities that they should
be prescribed in 1934. The post-war vintage of poetry is the thinnest
and the most watery that England has ever produced. But here, in these
ballads, are great draughts of poetry which have lost none of their
sparkle and none of their bouquet.
It is worth while asking ourselves why this should be--why these poems
should "keep", apparently for ever, when the average modern poem turns
sour overnight. And though all generalizations are dangerous I believe
there is one which explains our problem, a very simple one.... ”

“ And crazy pacifists might draw a very sharp line indeed between the
songs which celebrated real personal struggles in the tiny wars of the
past, and the songs which were merely the prelude to thousands of
puzzled young men suddenly finding themselves choking in chlorine gas,
in the wars of the present.
But even the craziest pacifist could not fail to be moved by some of the
ballads of the last war. ”

“ To invest Grimm's words with such an intention is quite unfair.
[Footnote: For a discussion of Grimm's theories, together with much
interesting speculation on the origin of the ballads, the reader should
study the admirable introduction to English and Scottish Popular
Ballads, published by George Harrap & Co., Ltd.] 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. ”

“ Why should I go into raptures about such a song, which
seems only to express a highly debatable approval of a certain method of
education?"
If you are asking yourself that sort of question, you are obviously in
very grave need of the tonic properties of this book. For after you have
read it, you will wonder why you ever asked it.
IV
I go back and back to the same point, at the risk of boring you to
distraction. For it is a point which has much more "to" it than the
average modern will care to admit, unless he is forced to do so.
You remember the generalization about the eyes ... ”

“ This minstrel, too, moves among
kings without any ceremony. As Percy has pointed out, "The further we
carry our enquiries back, the greater respect we find paid to the
professors of poetry and music among all the Celtic and Gothic nations.
Their character was deemed so sacred that under its sanction our famous
King Alfred made no scruple to enter the Danish camp, and was at once
admitted to the king's headquarters."
And even so late as the time of Froissart, we have minstrels and
heralds mentioned together, as those who might securely go into an
enemy's country. ”

“ Needless to say, all the poems are not
anonymous. As society became more civilized it was inevitable that the
peculiar circumstances from which the earlier ballads sprang should
become less frequent. Nevertheless, about nearly all of the ballads
there is "a common touch", as though even the most self-conscious author
had drunk deep of the well of tradition, that sparkling well in which so
much beauty is distilled.
VI
But though the author or authors of most of the ballads may be lost in
the lists of time, we know a good deal about the minstrels who sang
them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the road to Mandalay...
But that's all shove be'ind me--long ago an' fur away,
An' there ain't no 'busses runnin' from the Bank to Mandalay;
An' I'm learnin' 'ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
'If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught
else.'
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An' the sunshine an' the palm-trees an' the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay...
I am sick o' wastin' leather on these gritty pavin'-stones,
An' the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones ”

“ The point is that it gave to a group of people an
ordered means of expressing their delight instead of just leaping about
and making loud cries, like the animals. And you may be sure that as the
primitive dance began, there was always some member of the tribe a
little more agile than the rest--some man who kicked a little higher or
wriggled his body in an amusing way. And the rest of them copied him,
and incorporated his step into their own.
Apply this analogy to the origin of ballads. It fits perfectly. ”

“ Moreover, he needs
communal song, for he is a social animal. The military authorities
realized this very cleverly, and they encouraged the troops, during the
war, to sing on every possible occasion. Crazy pacifists, like myself,
may find it almost unbearably bitter to think that on each side of
various frontiers young men were being trained to sing themselves to
death, in a struggle which was hideously impersonal, a struggle of
machinery, in which the only winners were the armament manufacturers. ”

“ And to my song give ear.
That may sound more dignified, but it amounts to the same thing!
VIII
But if the generation to come will learn a great deal from the few
popular ballads which we are still creating in our music-halls, how much
more shall we learn of history from these ballads, which rang through
the whole country, and were impregnated with the spirit of a whole
people! These ballads are history, and as such they should be
recognised.
It has always seemed to me that we teach history in the wrong way. ”

“ But thou mayst fayle of thy purpose, quoth John,
If itt be Christ his will.
Let us leave talking of Little John,
And thinke of Robin Hood,
How he is gone to the wight yeoman,
Where under the leaves he stood.
Good morrowe, good fellowe, sayd Robin so fayre,
Good morrowe, good fellow, quoth he:
Methinkes by this bowe thou beares in thy hande
A good archere thou sholdst bee.
I am wilfull of my waye, quo' the yeman,
And of my morning tyde.
He lead thee through the wood, sayd Robin;
Good fellow, He be thy guide.
I seeke an outlàwe, the straunger sayd,
Men call him Robin Hood ”