This may well be rime doggerel, quoth he.
This may well be rime doggerel, quoth he.
But Chaucer has made a good thing out of the rhyme doggerel, and expresses the pleasant old-fashioned quality of the minstrels’ romances, as well as their absurdities.
His parody touches on the want of plan and method and meaning in the popular rhymes of chivalry; it is also intended as criticism of their verse. That verse, of which there are several varieties—there is more than one type of stanza inSir Thopas—is technically calledrime couéeor ‘tail-rhyme’, and like all patterns of verse it imposes a certain condition of mind, for the time, on the poets who use it. It is not absolutelysimple, and so it is apt to make the writer well pleased with himself when he finds it going well; it very readily becomes monotonous and flat—
Now cometh the emperour of price,Again him rode the king of GaliceWith full mickle pride;The child was worthy under weedAnd sat upon a noble steedBy his father side;And when he met the emperourHe valed his hood with great honourAnd kissed him in that tide;And other lords of great valourThey also kissèd SegramourIn heart is not to hide.(Emaré.)
Now cometh the emperour of price,
Again him rode the king of Galice
With full mickle pride;
The child was worthy under weed
And sat upon a noble steed
By his father side;
And when he met the emperour
He valed his hood with great honour
And kissed him in that tide;
And other lords of great valour
They also kissèd Segramour
In heart is not to hide.(Emaré.)
For that reason, because of the monotonous beat of the tail-rhymes in the middle and at the end of the stanza, it is chosen by the parodists of Wordsworth in theRejected Addresseswhen they are aiming at what they think is flat and insipid in his poetry. But it is a form of stanza which may be so used as to escape the besetting faults; the fact that it has survived through all the changes of literary fashion, and has been used by poets in all the different centuries, is something to the credit of the minstrels, as against the rude common-sense criticism of the Host of the Tabard when he stopped the Rime ofSir Thopas.
Chaucer’s catalogue of romances is well known—
Men speken of romances of prysOf Horn Child and of YpotysOf Bevis and Sir Gy,Of Sir Libeux and Pleyndamour,But Sir Thopas he bereth the flourOf royal chivalry.
Men speken of romances of prys
Of Horn Child and of Ypotys
Of Bevis and Sir Gy,
Of Sir Libeux and Pleyndamour,
But Sir Thopas he bereth the flour
Of royal chivalry.
In this summary, the name ofPleyndamouris still a difficulty for historians; it is not known to what book Chaucer was referring.Ypotisis curiously placed, for the poem ofYpotisis not what is usually reckoned a romance. ‘Ypotis’ is Epictetus the Stoic philosopher, and the poem is derived from the old moralizing dialogue literature; it is related to the Anglo-Saxon dialogue of Solomon and Saturn. The other four are well known.Horn Childeis a later version, in stanzas, of the story ofKing Horn. Bevis of Southampton and Guy of Warwick are among the most renowned, and most popular, of all the chivalrous heroes. In later prose adaptations they were current down to modern times; they were part of the favourite reading of Bunyan, and gave him ideas for thePilgrim’s Progress.Guy of Warwickwas rewritten many times—Chaucer’s pupil, Lydgate, took it up and made a new version of it. There was a moral and religious strain in it, which appealed to the tastes of many; the remarkable didactic prose romance ofTirant the White, written in Spain in the fifteenth century, is connected withGuy of Warwick. Sir Bevis is more ordinary and has no particular moral; it is worth reading, if any one wishes to know what was regularly expected in romances by the people who read, or rather who listened to them. The disinherited hero, the beautiful Paynim princess, the good horse Arundel, the giant Ascapart—these and many other incidents may be paralleled in other stories; the history of Sir Bevis has brought them all together, and all the popular novelist’s machinery might be fairly catalogued out of this work alone.
Sir Libeaus—Le Beau Desconnu, the Fair Knightunknown—is a different thing. This also belongs to the School of Sir Thopas—it is minstrels’ work, and does not pretend to be anything else. But it is well done. The verse, which is in short measure like that ofSir Tristrem, but not in so ambitious a stanza, is well managed—
That maide knelde in halleBefore the knightes alleAnd seide: My lord Arthour!A cas ther is befalleWorse withinne walleWas never non of dolour.My lady of SinadouneIs brought in strong prisounThat was of great valour;Sche praith the sende her a knightWith herte good and lightTo winne her with honour.
That maide knelde in halle
Before the knightes alle
And seide: My lord Arthour!
A cas ther is befalle
Worse withinne walle
Was never non of dolour.
My lady of Sinadoune
Is brought in strong prisoun
That was of great valour;
Sche praith the sende her a knight
With herte good and light
To winne her with honour.
This quotation came from the beginning of the story, and it gives the one problem which has to be solved by the hero. Instead of the mixed adventures of Sir Bevis, there is only one principal one, which gives occasion to all the adventures by the way. The lady of Sinodoun has fallen into the power of two enchanters, and her damsel (with her dwarf attendant) comes to the court of King Arthur to ask for a champion to rescue her. It is a story like that of the Red Cross Knight and Una. If Sir Bevis corresponds to what one may call the ordinary matter of Spenser’sFaerie Queen, the wanderings, the separations, the dangerous encounters,Sir Libeausresembles those parts of Spenser’s story where the plot is most coherent. One of the most beautiful passages in all his work, Britomart in thehouse of the enchanter Busirane, may have been suggested bySir Libeaus. Sir Libeausis one example of a kind of medieval story, not the greatest, but still good and sound; the Arthurian romance in which Arthur has nothing to do except to preside at the beginning, and afterwards to receive the conquered opponents whom the hero sends home from successive stages in his progress, to make submission to the king. Sir Libeaus (his real name is Guinglain, the son of Gawain) sets out on his journey with the damsel and the dwarf; at first he is scorned by her, like Sir Gareth of Orkney in another story of the same sort, but very soon he shows what he can do at the passage of the Pont Perilous, and in the challenging of the gerfalcon, and many other trials. Like other heroes of romance, he falls under the spell of a sorceress who dazzles him with ‘fantasm and faerie’, but he escapes after a long delay, and defeats the magicians of Sinodoun and rescues the lady with a kiss from her serpent shape which the enchanters have put upon her. Compared with Spenser’s house of Busirane, the scene of Sir Libeaus at Sinodoun is a small thing. But one does not feel as inSir Tristremthe discrepancy between the miniature stage, the small bright figures, and the tragic meaning of their story. Here the story is not tragic; it is a story that the actors understand and can play rightly. There are no characters and no motives beyond the scope of a fairy tale—
Sir Libeaus, knight corteisRode into the paleisAnd at the halle alighte;Trompes, homes, schalmeis,Before the highe dais,He herd and saw with sight;Amid the halle floorA fire stark and storeWas light and brende bright;Then farther in he yedeAnd took with him his steedThat halp him in the fight.
Sir Libeaus, knight corteis
Rode into the paleis
And at the halle alighte;
Trompes, homes, schalmeis,
Before the highe dais,
He herd and saw with sight;
Amid the halle floor
A fire stark and store
Was light and brende bright;
Then farther in he yede
And took with him his steed
That halp him in the fight.
Libeaus inner gan paceTo behold each place,The hales in the halle;nichesOf main more ne lasseNe saw he body ne faceBut menstrales clothed in palle;With harpe, fithele and rote,And with organes note,Great glee they maden alle,With citole and sautrie,So moche menstralsieWas never withinne walle.
Libeaus inner gan pace
To behold each place,
The hales in the halle;niches
Of main more ne lasse
Ne saw he body ne face
But menstrales clothed in palle;
With harpe, fithele and rote,
And with organes note,
Great glee they maden alle,
With citole and sautrie,
So moche menstralsie
Was never withinne walle.
As if to show the range and the difference of style in English romance, there is another story written likeSir Libeausin the reign of Edward III, taken from the same Arthurian legend and beginning in the same way, which has scarcely anything in common with it except the general resemblance in the plot. This isSir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most original works in medieval romance. It is written in alliterative blank verse, divided into irregular periods which have rhyming tailpieces at the end of them—
As hit is stad and stokenIn story stif and strongeWith leal letters lokenIn land so has been longe.
As hit is stad and stoken
In story stif and stronge
With leal letters loken
In land so has been longe.
While the story ofSir Libeausis found in different languages—French, Italian, German—there is no other extant older version ofGawain and the Green Knight. But the separate incidents are found elsewhere, and the scene to begin with is the usual one: Arthur at his court, Arthur keeping high festival and waiting for ‘some main marvel’. The adventure comes when it is wanted; the Green Knight on his green horse rides into the king’s hall—half-ogre, by the look of him, to challenge the Round Table. What he offers is a ‘jeopardy’, a hazard, a wager. ‘Will any gentleman cut off my head’, says he, ‘on condition that I may have a fair blow at him, and no favour, in a twelvemonth’s time? Or if you would rather have it so, let me have the first stroke, and I promise to offer my neck in turn, when a year has gone’. This is the beheading game which is spoken of in other stories (one of them an old Irish comic romance) but which seems to have been new at that time to the knights of King Arthur. It is rightly considered dangerous; and so it proved when Sir Gawain had accepted the jeopardy. For after Gawain had cut off the stranger’s head, the Green Knight picked it up by the hair, and held it up, and it spoke and summoned Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a year’s space, and bide the return blow.
This is more surprising than anything inSir BevisorSir Guy. Not much is done by the writer to explain it; at the same time nothing is left vague. The author might almost have been a modern novelist with a contempt for romance, trying, by way of experiment, to work out a ‘supernatural’ plot with the full strengthof his reason; merely accepting the fabulous story, and trying how it will go with accessories from real life, and with modern manners and conversation. There is none of the minstrel’s cant in this work, none of the cheap sensations, the hackneyed wonders such as are ridiculed inSir Thopas. Only, the incident on which the whole story turns, the device of the beheading game, is a piece of traditional romance. It is not found in every language, but it is fairly well known. It is not as common as the lady turned into a serpent, or the man into a werewolf, but still it is not invented, it is borrowed by the English poet, and borrowed for a work which always, even in the beheading scenes, is founded on reality.
It is probable that the author ofSir Gawainis also the author of three other poems (not romances) which are found along with it in the same manuscript—thePearl,Cleanness, andPatience. He is a writer with a gift for teaching, of a peculiar sort. He is not an original philosopher, and his reading appears to have been the usual sort of thing among fairly educated men. He does not try to get away from the regular authorities, and he is not afraid of commonplaces. But he has great force of will, and a strong sense of the difficulties of life; also high spirits and great keenness. His memory is well supplied from all that he has gone through. The three sporting episodes inSir Gawain, the deer-hunt (in Christmas week, killing the hinds), the boar-hunt and the fox-hunt, are not only beyond question as to their scientific truth; the details are remembered without study because the author has lived in them, and thus, minute as they are, they arenot wearisome. They do not come from a careful notebook; they are not like the descriptions of rooms and furniture in painstaking novels. The landscapes and the weather ofSir Gawainare put in with the same freedom. The author has a talent especially for winter scenes. ‘Grim Nature’s visage hoar’ had plainly impressed his mind, and not in a repulsive way. The winter ‘mist hackles’ (copes of mist) on the hills, the icicles on the stones, the swollen streams, all come into his work—a relief from the too ready illustrations of spring and summer which are scattered about in medieval stories.
The meaning of the story is in the character of Gawain. Like some other romances, this is a chivalrousPilgrim’s Progress. Gawain, so much vilified by authors who should have known better, is for this poet, as he is for Chaucer, the perfection of courtesy. He is also the servant of Our Lady, and bears her picture on his shield, along with the pentangle which is the emblem of her Five Joys, as well as the Five Wounds of Christ. The poem is the ordeal of Gawain; Gawain is tried in courage and loyalty by his compact with the Green Knight; he is tried in loyalty and temperance when he is wooed by the wanton conversation of the lady in the castle. The author’s choice of a plot is justified, because what he wants is an ordeal of courage, and that is afforded by the Green Knight’s ‘jeopardy’.
The alliterative poetry is almost always stronger than the tales in rhyme, written with more zest, not so much in danger of droning and sleepiness as the school of Sir Thopas undoubtedly is. But there isa great difference among the alliterative romances.William of Palerne, for example, is vigorous, but to little purpose, because the author has not understood the character of the French poem which he has translated, and has misapplied his vigorous style to the handling of a rather sophisticated story which wanted the smooth, even, unemphatic, French style to express it properly.The Wars of Alexanderis the least distinguished of the group; there was another alliterative story of Alexander, of which only fragments remain. TheChevelere Assigne, the ‘Knight of the Swan,’ is historically interesting, as giving the romantic origin of Godfrey the Crusader, who is the last of the Nine Worthies. Though purely romantic in its contents, theChevalier au Cygnebelongs to one of the French narrative groups usually called epic—the epic ofAntioch, which is concerned with the first Crusade. TheGest historial of the Destruction of Troyis of great interest; it is the liveliest of all the extant ‘Troy Books’, and it has all the good qualities of the fourteenth-century alliterative school, without the exaggeration and violence which was the common fault of this style, as the contrary fault of tameness was the danger of the rhyming romances. But the alliterative poem which ranks along withSir Gawayneas an original work with a distinct and fresh comprehension of its subject is theMorte Arthure. This has some claim to be called an epic poem, an epic of the modern kind, composed with a definite theory. The author takes the heroic view of Arthur given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and turns his warfare into a reflection of the glory of King Edward III; not casually, butfollowing definite lines, with almost as much tenacity as the author ofSir Gawayne, and, of course, with a greater theme. The tragedy of Arthur in Malory to some extent repeats the work of this poet—whose name was Huchoun of the Awle Ryale; it may have been Sir Hugh of Eglinton.
King Canute’s boat-song has some claim to be the earliest English song in rhyme—
Merie sungen the muneches binnen ElyTha Knut king rew therby:Roweth, knihtes, ner the landAnd here we thes muneches sang.
Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely
Tha Knut king rew therby:
Roweth, knihtes, ner the land
And here we thes muneches sang.
If this claim be disallowed, then the first is St. Godric, the hermit of Finchale in the reign of Henry II—his hymn to Our Lady and the hymn to St. Nicholas. These are preserved along with the music (like the Cuckoo song which comes later); the manuscript of the poems of Godric is copied in the frontispiece to Saintsbury’sHistory of English Prosody; it proves many interesting things. It is obvious that musical notation is well established; and it seems to follow that with a good musical tradition there may be encouragement for lyric poetry apart from any such ‘courtly’ circumstances as have been described in another chapter. There is no doubt about this. While it is certain on the one hand that the lyrical art of the Middle Ages was carried furthest in courtly society by the French, Provençal, German and Italian poets, it is equally certain that the art of music flourished also in out-of-the-way places. And as in those days musical and poetical measures, tunes and words, generally went together, the development ofmusic would mean the development of poetical forms, of lyric stanzas. Music flourished in England most of all in Godric’s country, the old Northumbria. Giraldus Cambrensis, who has been quoted already for his story of the wake and the English love-song, gives in another place a remarkable description of the part-singing which in his time was cultivated where it is most in favour at the present day—in Wales, and in England north of the Humber. Where people met to sing in parts, where music, therefore, was accurate and well studied, there must have been careful patterns of stanza. Not much remains from a date so early as this, nor even for a century after the time of Godric and Giraldus. But towards the end of the reign of Edward I lyric poems are found more frequently, often careful in form. And in judging of their art it is well to remember that it is not necessary to refer them to the courtly schools for their origin. Country people might be good judges of lyric; they might be as exacting in their musical and poetical criticisms as any persons of quality could be. Hence while it is certain that England before the time of Chaucer was generally rustic and provincial in its literary taste, it does not follow that the rustic taste was uninstructed or that the art was poor. The beauty of the English songs between 1300 and 1500 is not that of the nobler lyric as it was (for example) practised and described by Dante. But the beauty is undeniable, and it is the beauty of an art which has laws of its own; it is poetry, not the primitive elements of poetry. In art, it is not very far from that of the earlier Provençal poets. For everywhere, it should be remembered, the noble lyricpoetry was ready to draw from the popular sources, to adapt and imitate the rustic themes; as on the other hand the common people were often willing to take up the courtly forms.
The earliest rhyming songs are more interesting from their associations than their own merits; though Canute and St. Godric are certainly able to put a good deal of meaning into few words. Godric’s address to St. Nicholas is particularly memorable for its bearing on his own history. Godric had been a sea captain in his youth (like another famous author of hymns, the Rev. John Newton) and St. Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors. Godric, whose operations were in the Levant, had often prayed to St. Nicholas of Bari, and he brings the name of the saint’s own city into his hymn, by means of a sacred pun. ‘Saint Nicholas’, he says, ‘build us a far sheen house—
At thi burch at thi bareSainte Nicholaes bring us wel thare.
At thi burch at thi bare
Sainte Nicholaes bring us wel thare.
‘Bare’ here means shrine, literally, but Godric is thinking also of the name of the ‘burgh’, the city of Bari to which the relics of the saint had been lately brought.
Religious lyric poetry is not separate from other kinds, and it frequently imitates the forms and language of worldly songs. TheLuve Ronof the Friar Minor Thomas de Hales is one of the earliest poems of a type something between the song and the moral poem—a lyric rather far away from the music of a song, more like the lyrics of modern poets, meant to be read rather than sung, yet keeping the lyrical stave. One passagein it is on the favourite theme of the ‘snows of yester year’—
Where is Paris and HeleyneThat were so bright and fair of blee!
Where is Paris and Heleyne
That were so bright and fair of blee!
This is earlier in date than the famous collection in the Harleian MS., which is everything best worth remembering in the old lyrical poetry—
Betwene Mersche and AverilWhen spray beginneth to springe.
Betwene Mersche and Averil
When spray beginneth to springe.
The lyrical contents of this book (there are other things besides the songs—a copy ofKing Horn, e.g.)—the songs of this Harleian MS.—are classified as religious, amatory and satirical; but a better division is simply into songs of love and songs of scorn. The division is as old and as constant as anything in the world, and the distinction between ‘courtly’ and ‘popular’ does not affect it. In the older court poetry of Iceland, as in the later of Provence and Germany, the lyric of scorn and the lyric of praise were equally recognized. The name ‘Wormtongue’ given to an Icelandic poet for his attacking poems would do very well for many of the Provençals—for Sordello, particularly, whose best-known poem is his lyrical satire on the Kings of Christendom. It depends, of course, on fashion how the lyrical attack shall be developed. In England it could not be as subtle as in the countries of Bertran de Born or Walter von der Vogelweide, where the poet was a friend and enemy of some among the greatest of the earth. The political songs in the Harleian manuscript are anonymous, and express the heart of the people. The earliest in date and the best knownis the song of Lewes—a blast of laughter from the partisans of Simon de Montfort following up the pursuit of their defeated adversaries—thoroughly happy and contemptuous, and not cruel. It is addressed to ‘Richard of Almain’, Richard the king’s brother, who was looked on as the bad counsellor of his nephew Edward—
Sir Simon de Montfort hath swore by his chin,Hadde he now here the Erl of WarinSholde he never more come to his innWith shelde, ne with spere, ne with other ginTo helpe of Windesore!Richard! thah thou be ever trichard,Trichen shalt thou never more!
Sir Simon de Montfort hath swore by his chin,
Hadde he now here the Erl of Warin
Sholde he never more come to his inn
With shelde, ne with spere, ne with other gin
To helpe of Windesore!
Richard! thah thou be ever trichard,
Trichen shalt thou never more!
This very spirited song is preserved together with some others dealing with later events in the life of Edward. One of them is a long poem of exultation over the death of the King’s Scottish rebels, Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser; the author takes great pleasure in the treatment of Wallace by the King and the hangman—
Sir Edward oure King, that full is of pitéThe Waleis’ quarters sende to his owne countréOn four half to honge, here mirour to beTher upon to thenche, that monie mihten seeAnd drede:Why nolden hie be war,Of the bataile of DonbarHow evele hem con spede?
Sir Edward oure King, that full is of pité
The Waleis’ quarters sende to his owne countré
On four half to honge, here mirour to be
Ther upon to thenche, that monie mihten see
And drede:
Why nolden hie be war,
Of the bataile of Donbar
How evele hem con spede?
The same poet gibes at a Scottish rebel who was then still living and calls him a ‘king of summer’ and ‘King Hob’—
Nou kyng Hobbe in the mures gongeth.
Nou kyng Hobbe in the mures gongeth.
This King Hob of the moors was Robert the Bruce, wandering, as Barbour describes him, over the land. There is another very vigorous and rather long piece on a recent defeat of the French by the Flemings at Courtrai—
The Frenshe came to Flaundres so light so the hareEr hit were midnight, hit fell hem to careHie were caught by the net, so bird is in snareWith rouncin and with stede:The Flemishe hem dabbeth on the hed bare,Hie nolden take for hem raunsoun ne wareHie doddeth off here hevedes, fare so hit fare,And thare to haveth hie nede.
The Frenshe came to Flaundres so light so the hare
Er hit were midnight, hit fell hem to care
Hie were caught by the net, so bird is in snare
With rouncin and with stede:
The Flemishe hem dabbeth on the hed bare,
Hie nolden take for hem raunsoun ne ware
Hie doddeth off here hevedes, fare so hit fare,
And thare to haveth hie nede.
This style of political journalism in rhyme was carried on later with much spirit, and one author is well known by name and has had his poems often edited—Lawrence Minot, a good workman who is sometimes undervalued. Lawrence Minot has command of various lyrical measures; he has the clear sharp phrasing which belongs generally to his northern dialect, and he can put contempt into his voice with no recourse to bad language. After describing the threats and boasting of the French, when Minot remarks
And yet is England as it was,
And yet is England as it was,
the effect is just where it ought to be, between wind and water; the enemy is done for. It is like Prior’s observation to Boileau, in theOdeon the taking of Namur, and the surrender of the French garrison—
Each was a Hercules, you tell us,Yet out they marched like common men.
Each was a Hercules, you tell us,
Yet out they marched like common men.
Besides the songs of attack, there are also comic poems, simply amusing without malice—such is the excellent Harleian piece on theMan in the Moon, which is the meditation of a solitary reveller, apparently thinking out the problem of the Man and his thorn-bush and offering sympathy: ‘Did you cut a bundle of thorns, and did the heyward come and make you pay? Ask him to drink, and we will get your pledge redeemed’.
If thy wed is y-take, bring home the truss;Set forth thine other foot, stride over sty!We shall pray the heyward home to our house,And maken him at ease, for the maistry!Drink to him dearly of full good bouse,And our dame Douce shall sitten him by;When that he is drunk as a dreynt mouseThen we shall borrow the wed at the bailie!
If thy wed is y-take, bring home the truss;
Set forth thine other foot, stride over sty!
We shall pray the heyward home to our house,
And maken him at ease, for the maistry!
Drink to him dearly of full good bouse,
And our dame Douce shall sitten him by;
When that he is drunk as a dreynt mouse
Then we shall borrow the wed at the bailie!
A Franciscan brother in Ireland, Friar Michael of Kildare, composed some good nonsensical poems—one of them a rigmarole in which part of the joke is the way he pretends to rhyme and then sticks in a word that does not rhyme, asking all through for admiration of his skill in verse. As a poetical joke it is curious, and shows that Brother Michael was a critic and knew the terms of his art. There are many literary games in the Middle Ages, nonsense rhymes of different sorts; they are connected with the serious art of poetry which had its own ‘toys and trifles’—such feats of skill in verse and rhyming as Chaucer shows in hisComplaint of Anelida. Tricks of verse were apt to multiply as the poetic imagination failed—a substitute for poetry; but many of the strongest poets have usedthem occasionally. Among all the artistic games one of the most curious is where a Welsh poet (in Oxford in the fifteenth century) gives a display of Welsh poetical form with English words—to confute the ignorant Saxon who had said there was no art of poetry in Wales.
The stanza forms in the Harleian book are various, and interesting to compare with modern stanzas. There is an example of the verse which has travelled from William of Poitiers, about the year 1100, to Burns and his imitators. Modern poetry begins with William of Poitiers using the verse of Burns in a poem onNothing—
The song I make is of no thing,Of no one, nor myself, I sing,Of joyous youth, nor love-longing,Nor place, nor time;I rode on horseback, slumbering:There sprang this rhyme!
The song I make is of no thing,
Of no one, nor myself, I sing,
Of joyous youth, nor love-longing,
Nor place, nor time;
I rode on horseback, slumbering:
There sprang this rhyme!
Two hundred years after, it is found in England—
Her eye hath wounded me, y-wisse,Her bende browen that bringeth blisse;Her comely mouth that mightè kisseIn mirth he were;I woldè chaungè mine for hisThat is her fere!
Her eye hath wounded me, y-wisse,
Her bende browen that bringeth blisse;
Her comely mouth that mightè kisse
In mirth he were;
I woldè chaungè mine for his
That is her fere!
The romance stanza is used also in its original lyrical way, with a refrain added—
For her love I cark and careFor her love I droop and dareFor her love my bliss is bareAnd all I waxè wan;For her love in sleep I slake,For her love all night I wakeFor her love mourning I makeMore than any man.Blow, northern wind!Send thou me my sweeting!Blow, northern wind!Blow! blow! blow!
For her love I cark and care
For her love I droop and dare
For her love my bliss is bare
And all I waxè wan;
For her love in sleep I slake,
For her love all night I wake
For her love mourning I make
More than any man.
Blow, northern wind!
Send thou me my sweeting!
Blow, northern wind!
Blow! blow! blow!
Technically, it is to be noted that some of those poems have the combination of a six-line with a four-line passage which is frequent in French lyrics of all ages, which is also found in the verse ofThe Cherrie and the Slae(another of Burns’s favourite measures), and also in some of Gray’s simpler odes. It is found in one of the religious poems, with the six lines first, and the four lines after, as in Burns. The common French pattern arranges them the other way round, and so does Gray, but the constituent parts are the same.
Now shrinketh rose and lily flowerThat whilom bare that sweete savour,In summer, that sweete tide;Ne is no queene so stark ne stour,Ne no lady so bright in bowerThat death ne shall by glide;Whoso will flesh-lust forgon,And heaven bliss abide,On Jesu be his thought anon,That thirled was his side.
Now shrinketh rose and lily flower
That whilom bare that sweete savour,
In summer, that sweete tide;
Ne is no queene so stark ne stour,
Ne no lady so bright in bower
That death ne shall by glide;
Whoso will flesh-lust forgon,
And heaven bliss abide,
On Jesu be his thought anon,
That thirled was his side.
This poem is a good text to prove the long ancestry of modern verse, and the community of the nations, often very remote from definite intercourse between them. And there is one phrase in this stanza which goes back to the older world: ‘bright in bower’ is fromthe ancient heroic verse; it may be found in Icelandic, in the Elder Edda.
The fifteenth century, which is so dismal in the works of the more ambitious poets (Lydgate, and Occleve, e.g.), is rich in popular carols which by this time have drawn close to the modern meaning of the name. They are Christmas carols, and the name loses its old general application to any song that went with dancing in a round. In the carols, the art is generally much more simple than in the lyrics which have just been quoted; they belong more truly to the common people, and their authors are less careful. Yet the difference is one of degree. The only difference which is really certain is between one poem and another.
Speaking generally about the carols one may say truly they are unlike the work of the Chaucerian school; the lyrics of the Harleian book in the reign of Edward I are nearer the Chaucerian manner. It is hardly worth while to say more, for the present.
And it is not easy to choose among the carols. Some of them are well known to-day—
When Christ was born of Mary freeIn Bethlehem that fair cityAngels sang loud with mirth and gleeIn excelsis gloria.
When Christ was born of Mary free
In Bethlehem that fair city
Angels sang loud with mirth and glee
In excelsis gloria.
Ballads in the ordinary sense of the term—ballads with a story in them, likeSir Patrick SpensorThe Milldams of Binnorie—are not found in any quantity till late in the Middle Ages, and hardly at all before the fifteenth century. But there are some early things of the kind. A rhyme ofJudas(thirteenth century) isreckoned among the ballads by the scholar (the late Professor Child) who gave most time to the subject, and whose great collection of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads has brought together everything ascertainable about them.
By some the ballads are held to be degenerate romances; and they appear at a time when the best of romance was over, and when even the worst was dying out. Also, it is quite certain that some ballads are derived from romances. There is a ballad of the youngHynd Hornwhich comes from the old narrative poem ofKing Hornor ofHorn Childe. There is a ballad version ofSir Orfeo, the ‘Breton lay’ which has been described in another chapter. But there are great difficulties in the way of this theory. In the first place, there are many ballads which have no romance extant to correspond to them. That may not prove much, for many old romances have been lost. But if one is to make allowance for chances of this sort, then many old ballads may have been lost also, and many extant ballads may go back to the thirteenth century or even earlier for their original forms. Again, there are ballads which it is scarcely possible to think of as existing in the shape of a narrative romance. The form of the ballad is lyrical; all ballads are lyrical ballads, and some of them at any rate would lose their meaning utterly if they were paraphrased into a story. What would the story ofSir Patrick Spensbe worth if it were told in any other way—with a description of the scenery about Dunfermline, the domestic establishment of the King of Norway, and the manners at his Court? Further, the theory that the ballads aredegenerate romances is unfair to those ballads which are known to be descended from romances. The ballad ofHynd Hornmay be derived from an older narrative poem, but it is not acorruptionof any old narrative; it is a different thing, in a lyrical form which has a value of its own. ‘Corruption’, ‘degeneracy’, does not explain the form of the ballads, any more than the Miracle Plays are explained by calling them corruptions of the Gospel.
The proper form of the ballads is the same as thecarole, with narrative substance added. Anything will do for a ring dance, either at a wake in a churchyard, or in a garden like that of theRoman de la Rose, or at Christmas games like those described inSir Gawayne and the Green Knight. At first, a love-song was the favourite sort, with a refrain ofdouce amie, and so on. But the method was always the same; there was a leader who sang the successive verses, the fresh lines of the song, while the other dancers came in with the refrain, most often in two parts, one after the first verse, the second after the second—
When that I was and a little tiny boyWith a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,A foolish thing was but a toyAnd the rain it raineth every day.
When that I was and a little tiny boy
With a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy
And the rain it raineth every day.
The narrative ballad was most in favour where people were fondest of dancing. The love-song or the nonsense verses could not be kept up so long; something more was wanted, and this was given by the story; also as the story was always dramatic, more or less, with different people speaking, the entertainmentwas all the better. If this is not the whole explanation, it still accounts for something in the history, and it is certainly true of some places where the ballad has flourished longest. Thecarolehas lasted to the present day in the Faroe Islands, together with some very ancient types of tune; and there the ballads are much longer than in other countries, because the dancers are unwearied and wish to keep it up as long as may be. So the ballads are spun out, enormously.
The history of ballad poetry in Western Europe, if one dates it from the beginning of the Frenchcarolefashion—about 1100—is parallel to the history of pure lyric, and to the history of romance. It is distinct from both, and related to both. There are many mysterious things in it. The strangest thing of all is that it often seems to repeat in comparatively modern times—in the second half of the Middle Ages—what has been generally held to be the process by which epic poetry begins. There is reason for thinking that epic poetry began in concerted lyric, something like the ballad chorus. The oldest Anglo-Saxon heroic poem,Widsith, is near to lyric;Deor’s Lamentis lyric, with a refrain. The old Teutonic narrative poetry (as inBeowulf) may have grown out of a very old sort of ballad custom, where the narrative elements increased and gradually killed the lyric, so that recitation of a story by the minstrel took the place of the dancing chorus. However that may be, it is certain that the ballads of Christendom in the Middle Ages are related in a strange way to the older epic poetry, not by derivation, but by sympathy. The balladpoets think in the same manner as the epic poets and choose by preference the same kind of plot. The plots of epics are generally the plots of tragedies. This is one of the great differences between the Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry and the later romances. It is a difference also between the romances and the ballads. Few of the romances are tragical. The story of Tristram and the story of King Arthur are tragical; but the romantic poets are beaten by the story of Tristram, and they generally keep away from the tragedy of Arthur. The ballads often have happy endings, but not nearly so often as the romances; in the best of the ballads there is a sorrowful ending; in many there is a tragical mistake; in many (and in how few of the romances!) there is a repetition of the old heroic scene, the last resistance against the enemy as in Roncevaux or in theNibelunge Nôt.Chevy Chaseis the ballad counterpart ofMaldon;Parcy ReedorJohnny of Braidisleeanswers in the ballad form to the fight atFinnesburgh, a story of a treacherous onset and a good defence. Parcy Reed, beset and betrayed, is more like a northern hero than a knight of romance.
The mystery is that the same kind of choice should be found in all the countries where ballads were sung. The English and Scottish ballads, like the English romances, are related to similar things in other lands. To understand the history of the ballads it is necessary, as with the romances, to compare different versions of the same matter—French or German, Italian, Danish.
Many curious things have been brought out by study of this sort—resemblances of ballad plots all over Christendom. But there is a sort of resemblancewhich no amount of ‘analogues’ in different languages can explain, and that is the likeness in temper among the ballad poets of different languages, which not only makes them take up the same stories, but makes them deal with fresh realities in the same way. How is it that an English ballad poet sees the death of Parcy Reed in a certain manner, while a Danish poet far off will see the same poetical meaning in a Danish adventure, and will turn it into the common ballad form? In both cases it is the death of a hero that the poet renders in verse; deaths of heroes are a subject for poetry, it may be said, all over the world. But how is it that this particular form should be used in different countries for the same kind of subject, not conventionally, but with imaginative life, each poet independently seizing this as the proper subject and treating it with all the force of his mind?
The medieval ballad is a form used by poets with their eyes open upon life, and with a form of thought in their minds by which they comprehend a tragic situation. The medieval romance is a form used originally by poets with a certain vein of sentiment who found that narrative plots helped them to develop their emotional rhetoric; then it passed through various stages in different countries, sinking into chapbooks or rising to theOrlandoor theFaerie Queene—but never coming back to the old tragic form of imagination, out of which the older epics had been derived, and which is constantly found in the ballads.
Probably the old ballad chorus in its proper dancing form was going out of use in England about 1400. Barbour, a contemporary of Chaucer, speaks of girlssinging ballads ‘at their play’; Thomas Deloney in the time of Elizabeth describes the singing of a ballad refrain; and the game lives happily still, in songs ofLondon Bridgeand others. But it became more and more common for ballads to be sung or recited to an audience sitting still; ballads were given out by minstrels, like the minstrel ofChevy Chase. Sometimes ballads are found swelling into something like a narrative poem; such is the famous ballad ofAdam Bell, Clim o’ the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee, which has a plot of the right sort, the defence of a house against enemies.The Little Geste of Robin Hoodseems to be an attempt to make an epic poem by joining together a number of ballads. The ballad ofRobin Hood’s Deathis worth reading as a contrast to this rather mechanical work.Robin Hood’s Deathis a ballad tragedy; again, the death of a hero beset by traitors. Red Roger stabbed Robin with a grounden glave (‘grounden’ comes from the oldest poetic vocabulary). Robin made ‘a wound full wide’ between Roger’s head and his shoulders. Then he asks Little John for the sacrament, the housel of earth (he calls it ‘moud’, i.e. ‘mould’) which could be given and taken by any Christian man, in extremity, without a priest—
‘Now give me moud,’ Robin said to Little John,‘Now give me moud with thy hand;I trust to God in heaven so highMy housel will me bestand.’
‘Now give me moud,’ Robin said to Little John,
‘Now give me moud with thy hand;
I trust to God in heaven so high
My housel will me bestand.’
And he refuses to let Little John burn the house of the treacherous Prioress where he had come by his death. This is heroic poetry in its simplest form, and quite true to its proper nature.
The beauty of the ballads is uncertain and often corrupted by forgetfulness and the ordinary accidents of popular tradition. It is not always true that the right subject has the best form. But the grace of the ballads is unmistakable; it is unlike anything in the contemporary romances, because it is lyrical poetry. It is often vague and intangible. It is never the same as narrative romance.
He’s tane three locks o’ her yellow hair,Binnorie, O Binnorie!And wi’ them strung his harp so fairBy the bonny mill-dams o’ Binnorie.
He’s tane three locks o’ her yellow hair,
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
And wi’ them strung his harp so fair
By the bonny mill-dams o’ Binnorie.
It is the singing voice that makes the difference; and it is a difference of thought as well as of style.
France sets the model for comic as well as romantic poetry, in the Middle Ages. In romance the English were not able for a long time—hardly before Chaucer and Gower—to imitate the French style properly; the French sentiment was beyond them, not appreciated; they took the stories, the action and adventures, and let the sentiment alone, or abridged it. The reasons for this are obvious. But there seems to be no reason, except accident, for the way in which the English writers in those times neglected the French comic literature of the twelfth century. Very little of it is represented in the English of the following centuries; yet what there is in English corresponding to the Frenchfabliauxand to Reynard the Fox is thoroughly well done. The English wit was quite equal to the French in matters such as these; there were no difficulties of style or caste in the way, such as prevented the English minstrels from using much of the French romantic, sentimental rhetoric. There might have been a thirteenth-century EnglishReynard, as good as the High or Low GermanReynards; that is proved by the one short example (295 lines) in which an episode of the great medieval comic epic is told by an English versifier—the story ofThe Vox and the Wolf. This is one of the best of all the practical jokes of Reynard—the well-known story of the Fox and the Wolf in the well. It is told again, in a differentway, among the Fables of the Scottish poet Robert Henryson; it is also one of the stories of Uncle Remus.
A vox gan out of the wodè go,
A vox gan out of the wodè go,
and made his way to a hen-roost, where he got three hens out of five, and argued with Chauntecler the cock, explaining, though unsuccessfully, that a little blood-letting might be good for him; thence, being troubled with thirst, he went to the well. The well had two buckets on a rope over a pulley; the Fox ‘ne understood nought of the gin’ and got into one of the buckets and went down to the bottom of the well; where he repented of his gluttony. The comic epic is as moral as Piers Plowman; that is part of the game.
Then (‘out of the depe wode’) appeared the Wolf, Sigrim (Isengrim), also thirsty, and looking for a drink; he heard the lamentations of his gossip Reneuard, and sat down by the well and called to him. Then at last the Fox’s wit returned and he saw how he might escape. There was nothing (he said) he would have prayed for more than that his friend should join him in the happy place: ‘here is the bliss of Paradise’. ‘What! art thou dead?’ says the Wolf: ‘this is news; it was only three days ago that thou and thy wife and children all came to dine with me.’ ‘Yes! I am dead’, says the Fox. ‘I would not return to the world again, for all the world’s wealth. Why should I walk in the world, in care and woe, in filth and sin? But this place is full of all happiness; here is mutton, both sheep and goat.’ When the Wolf heard of this good meat his hunger overcame him and he asked to be let in. ‘Not till thou art shriven’, says the Fox;and the Wolf bends his head, sighing hard and strong, and makes his confession, and gets forgiveness, and is happy.