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CHAPTER X.

OLD BALLADS AND SONGS.

"Listene these layes, for some there bethe
Of love which stronger is than dethe;
And some of scorne, and some of guile,
And old adventures that fell while."

In the old ballads and songs of England we may read the history of the people; the ballads especially are historical, they were chaunted by the old harper and minstrel in the cottage o the yeoman; and many of them have been well preserved in the ear and the heart of the people; and it is not too much to say, that the ballads of the cottage exhibit far more of true and unaffected Nature, than those sung to the baron in the hall. Allan Cunningham says, "It would not be difficult to prove that almost every romance of the baron was re-echoed in sentiment and narrative in the ballad of the husbandman; and less difficult still to show that much of the superstitious folly and tip-toe sentiment and love of the utterly incredible was abated or removed in the transmutation by the

rustic minstrel. Yet, with all this lowering, or, as a husbandman would say, this thrashing out of the marvellous and the mad, these bal

lads are still-for the children of these our latter days at least-sufficiently romantic: they are often raised above the matters of common life into the regions of imagination; and without dragons which vomit fire, knights who can scatter armies, or enchanters who turn blades of Damascus steel into swords of rushes, cobwebs into cloth of gold, a lady's slipper into a barge, or a cave into a palace with a thousand statues of silver and ten thousand lamps of gold, they exhibit poetry enough to soothe the fancy; deeds of that order which satisfy the chivalrous with pictures of manners peculiar to Old England, and sentiments so natural and just as to find an echo in every heart."

In the days when these ballads were written there were no books for the people, no lectures, no long sermons, the ballads were the only intellectual incentives they possessed; and into these ballads, therefore, there would be infused those elements the people most needed; they were, as far as we learn of them, descriptive of human emotions, of loves, and joys, and sorrows of the disappointed maiden, of the young knight slain in foreign lands, of the consignment to the convent cell or the monastic gloom. Or they described the raid, the siege, the battle scene, the mighty feat of arms rousing the young blood by the courageous deed performed, on savage cruelty; and many of these ballads were smart on churchmen, and on barons. Many

were the local allusions which might glance in satire or in indignation through the verses; the virtues of chastity, patience, fortitude, and forbearance, were exhibited; probably no sermons preached in some localities, for many ages, had half the value of many of these simple songs. They were the great sources of popular life and interest, and the harper was, therefore, a favoured man wherever he went, all received him in gladly; the bower of the lady, the hall of the baron, the hut of the peasant, in all places he found a home, everywhere there was spread for him good cheer; the events of the times as they transpired, were caught up by him and described in verse, and as it not unfrequently happened, that they were chaunted out before those who had themselves been the actors; there was necessarily some degree of truth demanded in the song.

The traditions of the times of old, too, were amongst the subjects of the harpist, the Round Table of Arthur and his valiant knights, and the vices of Queen Gunever, and the virtues of the lady of Cradocke, and the woeful love of Sir Cauline. Then Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of England-the Robin Hood of the invisible world, he was a fruitful theme for the minstrel, for to his love of merriment and mischief all the laughable misadventures of men and women were represented as dating their origin, and to his love of mischief all the evil for which no mortal author could be found was at once set down: the loiterer on an errand of mercy; the slothful in household labours; the

wife who forgot her duty to her husband; the husband who mistook his neighbour's bed for his own; the shepherd negligent of his flock; the ploughman cruel to his horses; or the dairymaid who neglected her cows or her churn, were all alike amenable to the laws of this domestic deity; and their punishment sometimes severe and always ludicrous, took place in the sight of all. Yet, though Robin was here and there, and everywhere, he was always invisible. Milton, it is imagined, had once a glimpse of him, when he

"Stretch'd out all the chimney length,
Bask'd at the fire his hairy strength

and some of our Northern peasants assert that they have seen, when ten men's tasks were invisibly wrought, a hairy hand, an unearthly head, and heard a portentous laugh, which either belonged to the Brownie or to no one else. As he has never sat to any one for his portrait, we must turn to his actions: and of these no one has given so good an account as himself, in the ballad which bears his name.

He is sent, he says, from the Land by King Oberon, to work his will and execute his laws on earth; and, above all, to make sport and merriment. For this he is well fitted: he moves like lightning; nothing escapes the quickness of his sight; and his chief delight lies in misleading those who are returning home from graceless visits :

"Sometimes I meet them like a man,
Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound;
And to a horse I turn me can,

To trip and trot about them round:
But if to ride, my back they stride,
More swift than wind away I go;

O'er hedge and lands, through pools and ponds,
I whirry, laughing, Ho, ho, ho!"

"Besides," continues Robin, "when lads and lasses are merry over their possets and junkets, I slip among them unseen, and eat their cakes and sip their wine; and when they wonder at the quick decrease, I blow out the candles, kiss the maids, and laugh to hear them' cry 'H! what rough lip is this?"

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When house or hearth doth sluttish lie,
I pinch the maidens black or blue;
The bed clothes from the bed pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
'Twixt sleep and wake I do them take,

And on the clay-cold floor them throw:
If out they cry, then forth I fly,

And loudly laugh out, Ho, ho, ho !”

Yet," said he, "when I wish to please the maids, I card their wool while they sleep; I spin their flax; I grind flour in the hand-mill; I dress their hemp, and trim the house; and when one of the rosiest awakens and would catch at me, away I bolt with a laugh, which arouses the whole household. But when I find sluttish and unthrifty queans, who love idleness and gossiping, I set them together by the ears, and leave them scratching and scolding :"