S. Baring-Gould

“ When seven o'clock soundeth to work we do go,
We hitch up our horses and halloo Wee Woo!
At eight o' clock, lads, we are merry and bold,
To see of us which the best furrow can hold.
With rubbing and scrubbing, I swear and I vow,
That we're all jolly fellows that follow the plough.
4
The farmer came to us, and thus did he say,
"What have you been doing lads, all the long day?
You've not ploughed your acre, I swear and I vow,
You are all lazy fellows that follow the plough."
With rubbing and scrubbing, I swear and I vow,
That we're all jolly fellows that follow the plough. ”

“ Singing, whack, fal-de-dee, whack, fal-de-dee!
And I in my pocket had ONE PENNY.
4
I took up the dice, and I threw them the main,
It was my good fortune, that evening, to gain;
If they had a won, sirs, there'd been a loud curse,
When I threw in naught save a moneyless purse.
Singing, whack, fal-de-dee, whack, fal-de-dee!
And I in my pocket had ONE PENNY.
5
Was ever a mortal a quarter as glad,
With the little of money at first that I had!
A hearty good fellow, as most men opine
I am; so my neighbours pray pour out the wine,
Singing, whack, fal-de-dee, whack, fal-de-dee! ”

“ It must be borne well in mind that to the rustic singer, melody is everything. It was so in the days before Elizabeth. The people then did not want harmony; to them harmony is quite a modern invention and need.
At the present day, we are so accustomed to choral and concerted music that we have come to care little for formal melody, and Wagner has taught us to be content with musical phrases alone. Melody is a musical idea worked out in successive notes of our scale. Modern music is constructed in but two of the seven diatonic modes, in which melodies may be cast, the major and the minor ”

“ The singers are almost invariably illiterate and aged, and when they die the tradition will be lost, for the present generation will have nothing to do with these songs, especially such as are modal, and supplant them with the vulgarest music hall compositions. The melodies are far more precious than the words, and we have been more concerned to rescue these than the words, which are often common-place, and may frequently be found on broadside ballad sheets. ”

“ On another occasion, we took down four or five airs all beginning alike, because one singer had impressed this beginning on the minds of the others. At another time, when this impression was worn off, they would sing correctly, and then the beginnings would be different. Experience taught us never to take down too much at one sitting.
In a very few years all this heritage of traditional folk music will be gone; and this is the supreme moment at which such a collection can be made. ”

“ It seemed a pity to consign the lovely old melodies to the antiquary's library, by publishing them with words which were fatal to the success of the songs in the drawing room or the concert hall. We resolved where the old words were good, or tolerable, to retain them. Where bad, to re-write, adhering as closely as possible to the original. Where the songs were mere broadside ballads, we have had no scruple in doing this, for we give reference to the press-mark in the British Museum, where the original text may be found. But the broadside itself is often a debased form of a fine early ballad. ”

“ But the separation began, in music, in the Elizabethan days; in ballads, in those of James I., when nearly every old ballad was re-written to fresh metres, unsingable to the traditional airs. The skilled musician scorned folk melodies, and revelled in counter-point.
It is a mistake to suppose that all mediæval music was in the Gregorian modes other than our major and minor. Even in the 13th century, the modern major mode was used, so that some of our traditional airs, which seem to be modern may really be old. ”

“ One day I found an old white-headed and white-bearded man cutting ferns in the hedges at Trebartha in Cornwall. His name was Adam Landry. We got into conversation. I had heard he was a singer, and I asked after this especial song. He knew it. I sat down among the cut fern and learned it from him, singing it over and over till I had it by heart, and then drove home eighteen miles, warbling it the whole way, and went to my piano and fixed it. Later we found a labouring man, Joseph Dyer, at Mawgan-in-Pyder, who could sing the song through. ”

“ As they were about to be married, he was pressed and carried off to sea. Three years later, news arrived that he was dead, and then she married a carpenter, and lived with him for five years, and bore him three children. At the end of seven years an evil spirit assumed the likeness of her dead lover, and appeared to her, and induced her to leave with him. He carried her off, and she was never seen again. The husband, in despair, hung himself. Such is the theme of a lengthy ballad in the Roxburgh Collection, ed. Chappell, iii. ”

“ Blame assuredly attaches to the farmer for this condition of affairs, in that he has done away with the farmhouse festivities in which workmen and employer took part.
One evening in 1888, I was dining with the late Mr. Daniel Radford, of Mount Tavy, when the conversation turned to old Devonshire songs. Some of those present knew "Widdecombe Fair," others remembered "Arscott of Tetcott"; and all had heard many and various songs sung at Hunt-suppers, at harvest and sheep-shearing feasts. My host turned to me and said: "It is a sad thing that our folk-music should perish. ”

“ The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep or cows, and sit in the shade singing ballads. ”

“ Paris, 1885, says: "When a song has been transmitted from mouth to mouth, without having been fixed by notation, it is exposed to alterations. One is sometimes obliged to collect as many as twenty variants of the same air, before finding one that is good. This is the greatest difficulty to the seeker; it is as hard to lay the hand on the veritable typal form of a melody as it is to meet with an intact specimen among the shells that have been rolled on the sea shore." When a party of singers is assembled, or when one man sings a succession of ballads, the memory becomes troubled ”

“ In fact, the profession of song-man was hereditary in the family. At every country entertainment, in olden times, at the public-house almost nightly, for more than a century, one of these men of the Parsons' family had not failed to attend, to sing as required for the entertainment of the company. The repertoire of the grandfather had descended to old James. For how many generations before him the profession had been followed I could not learn. James Parsons' ballad tunes were of an early and archaic character. ”

“ A good many of the ditties in favour with our rural song-men, are, it must be admitted, of the D'Urfey type; and what is more some of the very worst are sung to the daintiest early melodies. Two courses lay open to us. One that adopted Dr. Barrett and Mr. Kidson to print the words exactly as given on the broadsides, with asterisks for the undesirable stanzas. But this would simply have killed the songs. No one would care to warble what was fragmentary. ”

“ To the same category belongs the song, "Go no more a-rushing, Maids, in May," that we have taken down from several singers, and which is given as well by Miss Mason, and by Chappell, i. p. 158, where the task is to solve riddles—
"I'll give you a chicken that has no bone,
I'll give you a cherry without a stone,
I'll give you a ring that has no rim,
I'll give you an oak that has no limb."
The solution is—
"When the chicken is in the egg it has no bone,
When the cherry is in bloom it has no stone,
When the ring is a-melting it has no rim,
When the oak is in the acorn it has no limb." ”

“ The milkmaid, and the girls guarding sheep and cows are things of the past, and with them have largely departed their old ballads and songs. Tusser, in his "Points on Huswifry," in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select her maids from those who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best.
"Such servants are oftenest painsfull and good,
That sing at their labours, like birds in a wood." ”

“ Then came S. Lover, and he took this air from Bunting, and wrote to it "The Lowbacked Car." But the original melody is found, not only in Devon and Cornwall, but also in the North, and Mr. Kidson gives it in his "Traditional Tunes," as "With Henry Hunt we'll go," a song sung in Manchester in connection with the arrest of Hunt in 1819. To the same air was set "The Plains of Waterloo." "The Lowbacked Car" has become popular through its words, and the inartistic quality of a patchwork tune has been forgiven for their sake. ”

“ We do not think that the pieces we have removed are not good, but that we are able to supply their places with others that are better. Mr. Sheppard entertained a very strong objection to arranging any song he had not himself "pricked down" from the lips of the singers, and as Mr. Bussell had noted down hundreds as well, these, for the most part, had to be laid on one side. Mr. Sheppard was, doubtless, right in his assertion, that unless he had himself heard the song sung, he could not catch its special character, and so render it justly. ”

“ Of nine melodies by the King of Navarre, four are in the major, a fifth in the 7th tone, is of the same nature as those of De Coucy. Of thirty-four chansons by Adam de la Hall, twenty-one are in the major.
The folk airs that we give in our collection may not please at first, certainly will not please all; but when once a relish for them has been acquired, then hearers will turn with weariness from the ordinary concert hall feebleness, as we turn from the twaddle of a vacuous female. We have found it necessary to take down all the variants of the same air that we have come across. ”

“ I have written fresh words to the tune.
This tune is in the Dorian mode. As sung by J. Masters, the E was sharpened in the 3rd bar but flattened on the repetition of the same phase in the penultimate bar. Mr. Sheppard, when arranging the song, flattened the E throughout. It must be one thing or the other. Flattened throughout, it makes a charming melody, but the last flattened E was probably due to the singer's memory failing him in the latter part of the air, but serving him at the beginning of the tune. Mr. Sharp has accordingly retained the E natural throughout. ”

“ No 54 PLYMOUTH SOUND H.F.S.
[Listen] [XML] [Note]
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1
O the fair town of Plymouth is by the sea-side,
The Sound is so blue, and so still and so wide,
Encircled with hills and with forests all green,
As a crown of fresh leaves on the head of a queen,
O dear Plymouth town, and O blue Plymouth Sound!
O where is your equal on Earth to be found.
2
O the maidens of Plymouth are comely and sweet,
So mirthful of eye and so nimble of feet,
I love all the lasses of Plymouth so well,
That the which I love best not a prophet can tell.
O dear Plymouth town, &c. ”

“ I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings to their heels. ”

“ They are passing away everywhere. Few counties of England have been worked. Sussex has been well explored by the late Rev. John Broadwood, and then by Miss Lucy Broadwood [3] ; Yorkshire, by Mr. Frank Kidson; Northumberland, by Dr. Collingwood Bruce and Mr. John Stokoe. Mr. Cecil Sharp is now engaged on Somersetshire, and Dr. Vaughan Williams on Essex. Who will undertake Lincolnshire, Dorset, Hampshire, and other counties? The purely agricultural districts are most auriferous. In manufacturing counties modern music has driven out the traditional folk melodies. ”

“ As Dogget's doggerel has been printed, and as I have taken down a dozen variants, I have retained only what I deemed worthy of retention, and have entirely recast the conclusion of the song.
John Arscott is still believed to hunt the country, and there are men alive who declare positively that they have seen him and his hounds go by, and have heard the winding of his horn, at night, in the park at Tetcott.
Mr. Frank Abbott, gamekeeper at Pencarrow, but born at Tetcott, informed me, concerning Dogget: "Once they unkennelled in the immediate neighbourhood of Tetcott, and killed at Hatherleigh. ”

“ At eight o'clock the "Hal-an-tow" is sung by a party of from twenty to thirty men and boys who come into the town bearing green branches, with flowers in their hats, preceded by a single drum, on which a boy beats the Furry Dance. They perambulate the town for many hours, stopping at intervals at some of the principal houses.
At one o'clock a large party of ladies and gentlemen, in summer attire—the ladies decorated with garlands of flowers, the gentlemen with nosegays and flowers in their hats, assemble at the Town Hall, and proceed to dance after the band, playing the traditional air. ”

“ I would I were fast in my lover's arms clasp't,
For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme.
"O it's very good drinking of ale,
But it's better far drinking of wine,
I would I were clasp't in my lover's arms fast,
For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme."
-N4-
The song, running as it does on the same theme and in the same metre as "The Seeds of Love," is very generally mixed up with it, and Miss Broadwood calls her version of it, in "English County Songs," p. 58, "The Seeds of Love, or The Sprig of Thyme." The "Seeds of Love" is attributed by Dr. Whittaker, in his "History of Whalley," to Mrs. ”