A Book of Old Ballads — Complete. Various
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century, there are times when a man finds himself in a certain place at
a certain hour and something happens to him which takes him out of
himself. And a song is born, simply and sweetly, a song which other
men can sing, for all time, and forget themselves.
Such a song was once written by a master at my old school, Marlborough.
He was a Scot. But he loved Marlborough with the sort of love which the
old ballad-mongers must have had-the sort of love which takes a man on
wings, far from his foolish little body.
He wrote a song called "The Scotch Marlburian".
Here it is:--
Oh Marlborough, she's a toun o' touns
We will say that and mair,
We that ha' walked alang her douns
And snuffed her Wiltshire air.
A weary way ye'll hae to tramp
Afore ye match the green
O' Savernake and Barbery Camp
And a' that lies atween!
The infinite beauty of that phrase … "and a' that lies atween"! The
infinite beauty as it is roared by seven hundred young throats in
unison! For in that phrase there drifts a whole pageant of boyhood--the
sound of cheers as a race is run on a stormy day in March, the tolling
of the Chapel bell, the crack of ball against bat, the sighs of sleep
in a long white dormitory.
But you may say "What is all this to me? I wasn't at Maryborough. I
don't like schoolboys … they strike me as dirty, noisy, and usually
foul-minded. 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 … how they used to look
out, but now look in? Well, listen to this. …
I'm feeling blue, I don't know what to do, 'Cos I love you And you don't love me.
The above masterpiece is, as far as I am aware, imaginary. But it
represents a sort of reductio ad absurdum of thousands of lyrics which have been echoing over the post-war world. Nearly all these lyrics are melancholy, with the profound and primitive melancholy of the negro swamp, and they are all violently egotistical.
Now this, in the long run, is an influence of far greater evil than one
would be inclined at first to admit. 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. 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. It is the egotism of the modern ballad which is the trouble. 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 … the chrysalis is never left behind, the "I", "I", "I", continues, in a maddening monotone. And we get this sort of thing. …
I want to be happy, But I can't be happy Till I've made you happy too.
And that, if you please, is one of the jolliest lyrics of the last
decade! 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. The
ballad ends with words of almost childish simplicity, but they are words
which ring with the true tone of happiness:--
Thus was the feast ended with joye and delighte
A bridegroome most happy then was the young knighte
In joy and felicitie long lived hee
All with his faire ladye, the pretty Bessee.
I said that the words were of almost childish simplicity. But the
student of language, and the would-be writer, might do worse than study
those words, if only to see how the cumulative effect of brightness and
radiance is gained. You may think the words are artless, but just
ponder, for a moment, the number of brilliant verbal symbols which are
collected into that tiny verse. There are only four lines. But those
lines contain these words …
Feast, joy, delight, bridegroom, happy, joy, young, felicity, fair,
pretty.
Is that quite so artless, after all? Is it not rather like an old and
primitive plaque, where colour is piled on colour