XXIX

There was an old prophecy found in a bog:Ireland shall be ruled by an ass and a dog;And now this prophecy is come to pass,For Talbot's the dog, and James is the ass.Lillibullero, Bullen-a-la.

Doggerel as this was, it survived the special occasion for which it was written. When Queen Anne's reign was well advanced balladmongers were singing:

So God bless the Queen and the House of Hanover,And never may Pope or Pretender come over.Lillibullero, Bullen-a-la.

If the song is still remembered by other than historical students, it is probably more because Uncle Toby, when he was hard pressed in argument, "had accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle Lillibullero," than for any other reason.

But whether it be doggerel or dignified verse, popular poetry almost invariably possesses one great merit. When we read the outpourings of the seventeenth and eighteenth century poets to the innumerable Julias, Sacharissas, and Celias whom they celebrated in verse, we cannot but feel that we are often in contact with a display of spurious passion which is the outcome of the head rather than of the heart. Thus Johnson tells us that Prior's Chloe "was probably sometimes ideal, but the woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species." The case of popular and patriotic poetry is very different. It is wholly devoid of affectation. Whatever be its literary merits or demerits, it always represents some genuine and usually deep-rooted conviction. It enables usto gauge the national aspirations of the day, and to estimate the character of the nation whose yearnings found expression in song. The following linesâ€”written by Bishop Still, the reputed author of "Gammer Gurton's Needle"â€”very faithfully represent the feelings excited in England at the time of the Spanish Armada:

We will not change our CredoFor Pope, nor boke, nor bell;And yf the Devil come himselfWe'll hounde him back to hell.

The fiery Protestant spirit which is breathed forth in these lines found its counterpart in Germany. Luther, at a somewhat earlier period, wrote:

Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort,Und steur des Papsts und TÃ¼rken Mord.

Take again the case of French Revolutionary poetry. The noble, as also the ignoble, sides of that vast upheaval were alike represented in the current popular poetry of the day. Posterity has no difficulty in understanding why the whole French nation was thrilled by Rouget de Lisle's famous song, to whose lofty strains the young conscripts rushed to the frontier in order to hurl back the invaders of their country. On the other hand, the ferocity of the period found expression in such lines as:

Ah! Ã§a ira, Ã§a ira, Ã§a ira!Les aristocrates Ã la lanterne,

which was composed by one LadrÃ©, a street singer, or in the savage "Carmagnole," a name originally applied to a peasant costume worn in the Piedmontese town of Carmagnola, and afterwards adopted by the Maenads and Bacchanals, who sang and danced in frenzied joy over the judicial murder of poor "Monsieur et Madame VÃ©to."

The light-hearted and characteristically Latin buoyancy of the French nation, which they have inherited from the days of that fifth-century Gaulish bishop (Salvianus) who said that the Roman world was laughing when it died ("moritur et ridet"), and which has stood them in good stead in many an arduous trial, is also fully represented in their national poetry. No other people, after such a crushing defeat as that incurred at Pavia, would have been convulsed with laughter over the innumerable stanzas which have immortalised their slain commander, M. de la Palisse:

Il mourut le vendredi,Le dernier jour de son Ã¢ge;S'il fut mort le samedi,Il eÃ»t vÃ©cu davantage.

The inchoate national aspirations, as also the grave and resolute patriotism of the Germans, found interpreters of genius in the persons of Arndt and KÃ¶rner, the latter of whom laid downhis life for the people whom he loved so well. During the Napoleonic period all their compositions, many of which will live so long as the German language lasts, strike the same noteâ€”the determination of Germans to be free:

Lasst klingen, was nur klingen kann,Die Trommeln und die FlÃ¶ten!Wir wollen heute Mann fÃ¼r MannMit Blut das Eisen rÃ¶ten.Mit Henkerblut, FranzÃ¶senblutâ€”O sÃ¼sser Tag der Rache!Das klinget allen Deutschen gut,Das ist die grosse Sache.

Some six decades later, when Arndt's famous question "Was ist das deutsche Vaterland?" was about to receive a practical answer, the German soldier marched to the frontier to the inspiriting strains of "Die Wacht am Rhein."

No more characteristic national poetry was ever written than that evoked by the civil war which raged in America some fifty years ago. Those who, like the present writer, were witnesses on the spot of some portion of that great struggle, are never likely to forget the different impressions left on their minds by the poetry respectively of the North and of the South. The pathetic song of the Southerners, "Maryland, my Maryland," which was composed by Mr. T.R. Randall,appeared, even whilst the contest was still undecided, to embody the plaintive wail of a doomed cause, and stood in strong contrast to the aggressive and almost rollicking vigour of "John Brown's Body" and "The Union for ever, Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!"

Even a nation so little distinguished in literature as the Ottoman Turks is able, under the stress of genuine patriotism, to embody its hopes and aspirations in stirring verse. The following, which was written during the last Russo-Turkish war, suffers in translation. Its rhythm and heroic, albeit savage, vigour may perhaps even be appreciated by those who are not familiar with the language in which it is written:

Achalum sanjaklari!Ghechelim Balkanlari!Allah! Allah! deyerek,Dushman kanin' ichelim!Padishahmiz chok yasha!Ghazi Osman chok yasha![109]

Let us now turn to Italy and Greece, the nations from which modern Europe inherits most of its ideas, and which have furnished the greater part of the models in which thoseideas are expressed, whether in prose or in verse.

Although lines from Virgil, who may almost be said to have created Roman Imperialism, have been found scribbled on the walls of Pompeii, it is probable that in his day no popular poetry, in the sense in which we should understand the word, existed. But there is something extremely patheticâ€”more especially in the days when the Empire was hastening to its ruinâ€”in the feeling, little short of adoration, which the Latin poets showed to the city of Rome, and in the overweening confidence which they evinced in the stability of Roman rule. This feeling runs through the whole of Latin literature from the days of Ovid and Virgil to the fifth-century Rutilius, who was the last of the classic poets. Virgil speaks of Rome as "the mistress of the world" (maxima rerum Roma). Claudian deified Rome, "O numen amicum et legum genetrix," and Rutilius wrote:

Exaudi, regina tui pulcherrima mundi,Inter sidereos Roma recepta polos,Exaudi, genetrix hominum, genetrixque deorum,Non procul a caelo per tua templa sumus.

Modern Italians have made ample amends for any lack of purely popular poetry which may have prevailed in the days of their ancestors. It would, indeed, have been strange if the enthusiasmfor liberty which arose in the ranks of a highly gifted and emotional nation such as the Italians had not found expression in song. When the proper time came, Giusti, Carducci, Mameli, Gordigiani, and scores of others voiced the patriotic sentiments of their countrymen. They all dwelt on the theme embodied in the stirring Garibaldian hymn:

Va fuori d'Italia!Va fuori, o stranier!

It will suffice to quote, as an example of the rest, one stanza from an "Inno di Guerra" chosen at random from a collection of popular poetry published at Turin in 1863:

Coraggio ... All' armi, all' armi,O fanti e cavalieri,Snudiamo ardenti e fieri,Snudiam l'invitto acciar!Dall' Umbria mesto e oppressoCi chiama il pio fratello,Rispondasi all' appello,Corriamo a guerreggiar!

The cramping isolation of the city-states of ancient Greece arrested the growth of Hellenic nationalism, and therefore precluded the birth of any genuinely nationalist poetry. But it only required the occasion to arise in order to give birth to patriotic song. Such an occasion was furnished when, under the pressing danger of Asiatic invasion, some degree of Hellenic unityand cohesion was temporarily achieved. Then the tuneful Simonides recorded the raising of an altar to "Zeus, the free man's god, a fair token of freedom for Hellas."

In more modern times the long struggle for Greek independence produced a crop of poets who, if they could not emulate the dignity and linguistic elegance of their predecessors, were none the less able to express their national aspirations in rugged but withal very tuneful verse which went straight to the hearts of their countrymen. The Klephtic ballads played a very important part in rousing the Greek spirit during the Graeco-Turkish war at the beginning of the last century. The fine ode of the Zantiote Solomos has been adopted as the national anthem, whilst the poetry of another Ionian, Aristotle Valaorites, and of numerous others glows with genuine and perfervid patriotism. But perhaps the greatest nationalist poet that modern Greece has produced was Rhigas Pheraios, who, as proto-martyr in the Greek cause, was executed by the Turks in 1798, with the prophecy on his dying lips that he had "sown a rich seed, and that the hour was coming when his country would reap its glorious fruits." His Greek Marseillaise (Î”ÎµÏÏ„Îµ Ï€Î±á¿–Î´ÎµÏ‚ Ï„á¿¶Î½ á¼™Î»Î»Î®Î½Ï‰Î½) is known to Englishmen through Byron's translation, "Sons of the Greeks, arise, etc." But the glorious liltand swing of hisPolemisterion, though probably familiar to every child in Greece, is less known in this country. The lines,

recall to the mind Tennyson's

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

A British Aeschylus, were such a person conceivable, might very fitly tell his countrymen, in the words addressed to Prometheus some twenty-three centuries ago, that they would find no friend more staunch than Oceanus:

In truth, the whole national life of England is summed up in the fine lines of Swinburne:

All our past comes wailing in the wind,And all our future thunders in the sea.

The natural instincts of a maritime nation are brought out in strong relief throughout the whole of English literature, from its very birth down to the present day. The author of "The Lay ofBeowulf," whoever he may have been, rivalled Homer in the awe-stricken epithets he applied to the "immense stream of ocean murmuring with foam" (Il.xviii. 402). "Then," he wrote, "most like a bird, the foamy-necked floater went wind-driven over the sea-wave; ... the sea-timber thundered; the wind over the billows did not hinder the wave-floater in her course; the sea-goer put forth; forth over the flood floated she, foamy-necked, over the sea-streams, with wreathed prow until they could make out the cliffs of the Goths."

Although the claim of Alfred the Great to be the founder of the British navy is now generally rejected by historians, it is certain that from the very earliest times the need of dominating the sea was present in the minds of Englishmen, and that this feeling gained in strength as the centuries rolled on and the value of sea-power became more and more apparent. In a poem entitled "The Libel of English Policy," which is believed to have been written about the year 1436, the following lines occur:

Kepe then the see abought in specialle,Whiche of England is the rounde walle;As thoughe England were lykened to a citÃ©.And the walle enviroun were the see.Kepe then the see, that is the walle of England,And then is England kepte by Goddes sonde.

A long succession of poets dwelt on the sametheme. Wallerâ€”presumably during a Royalist phase of his chequered careerâ€”addressed the King in lines which forestalled the very modern political idea that a powerful British navy is not only necessary for the security of England, but also affords a guarantee for the peace of all the world:

Where'er thy navy spreads her canvas wingsHomage to thee, and peace to all, she brings.

Thomson's "Rule, Britannia," was not composed till 1740, but before that time the heroism displayed both by the navy collectively and by individual sailors was frequently celebrated in popular verse. The death of Admiral Benbow, who continued to give orders after his leg had been carried off by a chain-shot at the battle of Carthagena in 1702, is recorded in the lines:

While the surgeon dressed his woundsThus he said, thus he said,While the surgeon dressed his wounds thus he said:"Let my cradle now in hasteOn the quarter-deck be placed,That my enemies I may faceTill I'm dead, till I'm dead."

But it was more especially the long struggle with Napoleon that led to an outburst of naval poetry. It is to the national feelings current during this period that we owe such songs as "The Bay of Biscay, O," by Andrew Cherry; "Hearts ofOak," by David Garrick[110]; "The Saucy Arethusa," by Prince Hoare; "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea," by Allan Cunningham; "Ye Mariners of England," by Thomas Campbell, and a host of others. Amongst this nautical choir, Charles Dibdin, who was born in 1745, stands pre-eminent. Sir Cyprian Bridge, in his introduction to Mr. Stone's collection ofSea Songs, tells us that it is doubtful whether Dibdin's songs "were ever very popular on the forecastle." The really popular songs, he thinks, were of a much more simple type, and were termed "Fore-bitters," from the fact that the man who sang them took his place on the fore-bitts, "a stout construction of timber near the foremast, through which many of the principal ropes were led." However this may be, there cannot be the smallest doubt that Dibdin's songs exercised a very powerful effect on landsmen, and contributed greatly to foster national pride in the navy and popular sympathy with sailors. It was presumably a cordial recognition of this fact that led Pitt to grant him a pension. It would, indeed, be difficult to conceive poetry more calculated to make the chord of national sentiment vibrate responsively than "Tom Bowling" or that well-known song in which Dibdin depicted at once the high sense of duty and the rough, albeit affectionate, love-making of "Poor Jack":

I said to our Poll, for, d'ye see, she would cry,When last we made anchor for sea,What argufies sniv'ling and piping your eye?Why, what a damn'd fool you must be!.Â Â Â Â Â Â .Â Â Â Â Â Â .Â Â Â Â Â Â .Â Â Â Â Â Â .As for me in all weathers, all times, tides and ends,Nought's a trouble from duty that springs,For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino my friend's,And as for my life it's the King's;Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so softAs for grief to be taken aback,For the same little cherub that sits up aloftWill look out a good berth for poor Jack!

Pride in the navy and its commanders is breathed forth in the following eulogy of Admiral Jervis (Lord St. Vincent):

You've heard, I s'pose, the people talkOf Benbow and Boscawen,Of Anson, Pocock, Vernon, Hawke,And many more then going;All pretty lads, and brave, and rum,That seed much noble service;But, Lord, their merit's all a hum,Compared to Admiral Jervis!

"Tom Tough" is an example of the same spirit:

I've sailed with gallant Howe, I've sailed with noble Jervis,And in valiant Duncan's fleet I've sung yo, heave ho!Yet more ye shall be knowing,I was cox'n to Boscawen,And even with brave Hawke have I nobly faced the foe.

Perfervid patriotism and ardent loyalty find expression in the following swinging lines:

Some drank our Queen, and some our land,Our glorious land of freedom;Some that our tars might never standFor heroes brave to lead 'em!That beauty in distress might findSuch friends as ne'er would fail her;But the standing toast that pleased the mostWasâ€”the wind that blows, the ship that goes,And the lass that loves the sailor!

The whole-hearted Gallophobia which prevailed at the period, but which did not preclude generous admiration for a gallant foe, finds, of course, adequate expression in most of the songs of the period. Thus an unknown author, who, it is believed, lived at the commencement rather than at the close of the eighteenth century, wrote:

Stick stout to orders, messmates,We'll plunder, burn, and sink,Then, France, have at your first-rates,For Britons never shrink:We'll rummage all we fancy,We'll bring them in by scores,And Moll and Kate and NancyShall roll in louis-d'ors.

It was long before this spirit died out. Twenty-two years after the battle of Waterloo, when, on the occasion of the coronation of Queen Victoria, Marshal Soult visited England and it was suggested that the Duke of Wellington should propose the health of the French army at a public dinner, he replied: "Dâ€”â€” 'em. I'll have nothing to do with them but beat them."

Inspiriting songs, such as "When Johnny comes marching home" and "The British Grenadiers," which, Mr. Stone informs us, "cannot be older than 1678, when the Grenadier Company was formed, and not later than 1714, when hand-grenades were discontinued," abundantly testify to the fact that the British soldier has also not lacked poets to vaunt his prowess. Many of the military songs have served as a distinct stimulus to recruiting, and possibly some of them were written with that express object in view. Sir Ian Hamilton, in his preface to Mr. Stone's collection ofWar Songs, says, "The Royal Fusiliers are the heroes of a modern but inspiriting song, 'Fighting with the 7th Royal Fusiliers.' It was composed in the early 'nineties, and produced such an overwhelming rush of recruits that the authorities could easily, had they so chosen, have raised several additional battalions." The writer of the present article remembers in his childhood to have learnt the following lines from his old nurse, who was the widow of a corporal in the army employed in the recruiting service:

'Twas in the merry month of May,When bees from flower to flower do hum,And soldiers through the town march gay,And villagers flock to the sound of the drum.Young Roger swore he'd leave his plough,His team and tillage all begun;Of country life he'd had enow,He'd leave it all and follow the drum.

The British military has perhaps been somewhat less happily inspired than the naval muse. Nevertheless the army can boast of some good poetry. "Why, soldiers, why?" the authorship of which is sometimes erroneously attributed to Wolfe, is a fine song, and the following lines written by an unknown author after the crushing blow inflicted on Lord Galway's force at Almanza, in 1707, display that absence of discouragement after defeat which is perhaps one of the most severe tests by which the discipline and spirit of an army can be tried:

Let no brave soldier be dismayedFor losing of a battle;We have more forces coming onWill make Jack Frenchman rattle.

Abundant evidence might be adduced to show that the British soldier is amenable to poetic influences. Sir Adam Fergusson, writing to Sir Walter Scott on August 31, 1811, said that the canto of theLady of the Lakedescribing the stag hunt "was the favourite among the rough sons of the fighting Third Division," and Professor Courthope in hisHistory of English Poetryquotes the following passage from Lockhart'sLife of Scott:

When theLady of the Lakefirst reached Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted with his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery; somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men wereordered to lie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the Captain, kneeling at their head, read aloud the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza whenever the French shot struck the bank close above them.

Finally, before leaving this subject, it may be noted that amidst the verse, sometimes pathetic and sometimes rollicking, which appealed more especially to the naval and military temperament, there occasionally cropped up a political allusion which is very indicative of the state of popular feeling at the time the songs were composed. Thus the following, from a song entitled "A cruising we will go," shows the unpopularity of the war waged against the United States in 1812:

Be Britain to herself but true,To France defiance hurled;Give peace, America, with you,And war with all the world.

The sixteenth-century Spaniards embodied a somewhat similar maxim of State policy as applied to England in the following distich, the principle of which was, however, flagrantly violated by that fervent Catholic, Philip II.:

Con todo el mundo guerraY paz con Inglaterra.

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