CHAPTER II THE MEDIAEVAL BALLAD AND THE DANCE
If the ballad, whether defined as dance song or as narrative lyric, is not the archetypal poetic form, preserving the model of primitive song, if it did not originate, more specifically than other lyric verse, in the festal dance songs of primitive peoples, is it not, at least, to be associated with the dances or the dance songs of the Middle Ages? Such association is customary. The primary definition of the English ballad, in English dictionaries of the nineteenth century, is "dance song." The etymology of the name makes linkage of the ballad with the dances of mediaeval times practically inevitable. A few quotations will make clear the present state of opinion.
The leading American writer on ballads in recent times, Professor F. J. Gummere, affirmed, "But there is neither hurry nor compact narrative in the real ballad, so named not because it was sung at a dance but because it was a dance, a dramatic situation, unchanged in bulk and plan, but shifting its parts in tune with these until a climax is attained." 1 According to Professor G. L. Kittredge, " It appears that there is no lack of characteristic traits . . . which justify the conjecture that the history of balladry, if we could follow it back in a straight line without interruptions would lead us to a very simple condition of
i Democracy and Poetry (1911), p. 191.
36
society, to the singing and dancing throng, to a period of communal composition." 2 Professor Henry Beers wrote, "It should never be forgotten that the ballad . . . was not originally a written poem but a song and dance." 3 More qualification characterizes the words of Professor Charles S. Baldwin, " They [the ballads] may have been originally dance songs with communal refrain." "Bride-stealing, a situation often told in ballads, may in some far off day have been half presented, half represented by a dancing chorus and villagers, singing one detail after another and iterating a common refrain." 4
To pass from American opinion to British, that excellent ballad scholar, Professor W. P. Ker, writes, "The proper form of the ballads is the same as the cardie, with narrative substance added. Anything will do for a ring dance, either at a wake in a churchyard or in a garden. ... At first a love song was the favorite sort, with a refrain of douce amie, and so on. . . . The narrative ballad was most in favor 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 entertainment was all the better." "The old Teutonic narrative poetry may have grown out of a very old ballad custom, where the narrative element increased and grad
2 Kittredge and Sargent, English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1904), Introd. p. xxii.
3 English Romanticism in the XVIII Century (1898), p. 270. Professor Beers's discussion, in this volume, of the English and Scottish ballads, their content and special qualities, is very suggestive and stimulating.
* English Mediceval Literature (1914), pp. 237, 242.
ually killed the lyric, so that recitation of a story by a minstrel took the place of the dancing chorus." In the following passage he suggests a specific development: —
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 girls singing "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 of London Bridge and others. But it becomes 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 of Chevy Chase. Sometimes ballads are found swelling into something like a narrative poem; such is the famous ballad of Adam Bell, Clim o' the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee.5
W. T. Young summarizes as follows: "Scholars are coming to the conclusion that they [the ballads] originated, as their refrains seem to indicate, in a song accompanied by dancing and a chorus, not unlike the French carole." 6 Mr. T. F. Henderson, a keen and sane ballad scholar, like Professor K'er, cannot concede that the ballad had its origin in individual peasant improvisation nor that it was
BEnglish Literature: Mediaeval (1912). Home University Library edition, pp. 159, 161, 164. It is difficult to concede that Barbour's "ballads" (probably ballades or love songs) give evidence bearing on the lyric-epic type now known as the traditional ballad. And if the Deloney "ballad refrain" survives in games and songs, not in ballads, it would seem to reinforce the inference (see pp. 55, 65) that mediaeval dance songs in England and mediaeval lyricepics or ballads proper were not the same species, therefore not of identical origin. Support is lent, not to the theory that the earlier dance songs developed into ballads of the Child type, but to the inference that the two were distinct in origin and destiny.
e Introduction to the Study of English Literature (1914). Based on, and an introduction to The Cambridge History of English Literature.
the creation of rural dancing throngs, but he admits that it might have borne some relation to dancing of more aristocratic type. "This kind of ballad [the serious lyric-epic] for its full effectiveness as a song or recital called in originally the aid of a chorus, and, probably, of the dance," ". . . it often added to the emotional impression by the device of the refrain sung by a chorus, and at one time probably danced as well as sung." Elsewhere he speaks of "The earlier ballads sung probably to the dance, or at least made to be sung with choral effect." 7
In the following pages it is proposed to canvass the evidence for the definition of ballads as dance songs, or rather for the assumption of dance-song origin for ballads, and to make inquiry as to its validity. Particular reference is had to the English and Scottish ballad type.
I 1 THE NAME "BALLAD"
Much of the confusion in scholarly and literary discussion of the English and Scottish ballads and their American descendants or analogues, rests on ambiguous and contradictory usages of the word "ballad." It has been employed for as many lyric types as were " sonnet" and "ode," and it has hardly yet settled down into consistent application. The popular use of the word for a short song, often sentimental in character, or for the music for such a song, is clear enough; but its most recently developed meaning of narrative song, currently employed by literary historians, is only now assuming initial place in the dictionaries.8 It is this newly developed usage which
7 The Ballad in, Literature (1912), pp. 6, 8, 87, 95.
s Although the meaning narrative song gained headway in the has brought confusion. For though the shifts in meaning of the term "ballad" have often been noted and traced, clarity or consistency in its employment have not followed, even among the tracers. They distinguish what they mean by ballad clearly enough; but they lose sight of their own distinctions when they come to theorizing about their material. Within the last one hundred and fifty years the name has been restricted, among specialists, to a type of English song to which it did not belong originally, and a type which is not called by that name in other languages, save when the usage has been carried over from the English.9 The etymology of " ballad " should not be given undue weight, since the attachment of the name to
eighteenth century, it was not very clearly recognized in the New English Dictionary, 1888. The entry given fifth place is "A simple spirited poem in short stanzas, originally a 'ballad' in sense 3 [popular songs — often broadsides] in which some popular story is graphically narrated. (This sense is essentially modern.)" The New Webster International, 1910, also gives this meaning fifth place, but contributes clarity: "A popular kind of short narrative poem adapted for singing; especially a romantic poem of the kind characterized by simplicity of structure and impersonality of authorship." In The Standard Dictionary, 1917, is entered as the first meaning of the word: "A simple lyrical poem telling a story or legend, usually of popular origin; as the ballad of Chevy Chase." Here the older order of definition is reversed, recognizing the change established long before in usage.
9 The Danish name for pieces of the English ballad type is folkeviser. The Spanish name is romances. The German usage of Ballade follows the English; German poets derived much of their balladry from England. The name is applied to short poems in which the narrative element is as important as the lyrical. See E. A. Brockhaus, Konversations-Lexicon, Berlin and Vienna, 1894. Pieces of the English lyric-epic type have no specific name in French. They are grouped under the large class of chansons populaires, a name as inclusive as our " folk-song." But see also note 13.
the material which it describes is recent. Over-emphasis upon its etymology, and the double and triple senses in which contemporary scholars use the term, have puzzled and misled many earnest students. Writers who insist that they have clearly in mind what they mean sometimes apply the name "ballad" to dance songs, sometimes to narrative songs, sometimes to pure lyrics, and sometimes to all three.
Ballad is derived from ballare, to dance, and historically it means dancing song; it is associated etymologically with ballet, a form of dance. In the Romance languages, from which the word issued into general European currency, it came to apply to various types of lyrics. The French and Italian pieces taking the name, or various forms of it, are genuinely lyrical; they are to be associated with dance origins, and they do not narrate happenings or suggest action. Many were used, it is certain, as dance songs.10 To be a folk-ballad, not merely a folk-song, an English piece must tell a story. Poems of the type of Rossetti's Sister Helen or Stratton Water, or Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus, are termed "literary" ballads, as over against anonymous traditional ballads, like Sir Patrick Spens. The name ballad, meaning primarily, as we have seen, a dance-lyric is not entirely satisfactory for these lyric-epics. It gained its distinctive application by chance rather than by historic right, and it gained this application late. Owing partly to the etymology of the name, partly to the hypotheses of certain critics, who associate the origin of the English and Scottish pieces with the choral dances of mediaeval festal communes, ballads
10 Dante, for example, assigns ballata a lower plane than song proper or sonnet on account of its dependence on the aid of dancers. of the type collected by Professor F. J. Child have come to be associated with the dance to a degree which the evidence does not justify. The dance is given place in the foreground, as essential in defining the type and its origin, instead of being made something remote and subsidiary. For the Child pieces, the etymology of the name should be given little or no emphasis; insistence on it is likely to be misleading. In fact, dance-genesis has more immediate connection with English lyrics of many other types, in the consideration of which we are not asked to have it constantly before us, than it has with the English ballads; for instance, with the ballade, or the rondeau.
The name "ballad" was not applied specifically to heroic or romantic narrative songs until the eighteenth century. Thomas Deloney, in the age of Elizabeth, referred to The Fair Flower of Northumberland and to Flodden Field as "songs." Sidney speaks of the "old song" of The Percy and the Douglas. Pepys uses the same term for narrative songs. Philip's New World of English Words 11 defines "ballad" as "a Common Song sung up and down the streets." In Dr. Johnson's Dictionary "ballad" means "song" and nothing more. It was Ritson who first stated the distinction that now obtains. "With us, songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly called songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative pieces, which we now denominate ballads." 12 For several centuries earlier the name had been applied
ii Sixth edition, 1705.
iz Introduction to his Select Collection of English Songs, 3 vols., 2nd edition, 1813. Shenstone and Michael Bruce had expressed the distinction earlier (see S. B. Hustvedt, Ballad Criticism in Scandinavia and Great Britain, 1916, p. 254), but it was first publicly enunciated by Ritson.
with miscellaneous reference. It might be given to a short didactic poem, a love poem (as sometimes now), to poems of satire and vituperation, to political pieces, to hymns and religious pieces, to elegiac pieces, occasionally to narrative pieces; in short, to lyrics of any type. Thus its specific application to verse of the Child type came late and not by inheritance, but arbitrarily. Nor did the etymology of the name play any part in the selection of it for the pieces to which it was applied.
It will be sufficient to sketch in summary here the stages of development for English in the usage of the name ballad.13
When Chaucer uses the term ballad it is for lyrics of the fixed type imported from the French, the Balade de Bon Conseyl, or Lak of Stedfastnesse, or the Compleynt to His Empty Purse, not to lyric-epics.14 Ballad was •long used of dance songs of various types, as a few
13 The entries in The New English Dictionary have been referred to. Fourteen pages of matter illustrative of the history of ballade are given in Larousse's Grand Diotionnaire Vniversel du XIX Si&cle, Paris (1867), ranging from the first entry "chanson a danser" to, "Aujourd'hui, ode d'un genre familier et le plus souvent legendaire et fantastique: les ballades de Schiller, de Goethe, etc." Nothing is said of a narrative element. But see especially Helen Louise Cohen, The Ballade, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, New York, 1915. According to Miss Cohen, the word is used in contemporary French in the way in which it has come to be used in English and in German. "In France, at the present time, the same word, ballade, serves for' the English or Scottish popular ballad and for a certain kind of narrative poem, written in imitation of German authors like Uhland, as well as for the artificially fixed lyric poem." The usages of "ballad" for English have been traced by Professor Gummere, Old English Ballads, pp. xviii ff.
14 An excellent example of his usage is found in the Prologue to citations will show; e. g., these lines from Dunbar's Golden Targe, of about 1500:
And sang ballettes with mighty notes clere, Ladyes to daunce full sobirly assayit. Ascham writes in 1545,15 "these balades and roundes, these galiardes, pauanes and daunces." A passage in George Gascoigne's Certain Notes of Instruction, 1575, is very specific. He thinks of the term mainly in Chaucer's sense:
There is also another kinde, called Ballade, and therof are sundrie sortes: for a man may write ballade in a staffe of sixe lines, every line conteyning eighte or sixe sillables, wherof the firste and third, second and fourth do rime acrosse, and the fifth and sixth do rime togither in conclusion. You may write also your ballad of tenne syllables, rimying as before is declared, but these two were wont to be most comonly used in ballade, whiche propre name was (I thinke) derived of this worde in Italian Ballare, whiche signifieth to daunce, and indeed, those kinds of rimes serve beste for daunces and light matters.
Ben Jonson, in Love Restored, writes "Unless we should come in like Morrice-dancers and whistle our ballet ourselves." All these citations show loose reference to amatory songs, and dance songs, lyrical, not narrative in character. The word is also applied to pieces of the various types enumerated at the end of the preceding paragraph. Cotgrave's Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, 1611, associates the word with dance song. Burton writes,
The Legend of Good Women, where he has his characters dance in a circle "as it were in carole-wise" while they sang the ballade — "Hyd, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere." 15 Toxophilus, Arher ed., p. 39.
Anatomy of Melancholy, in, 1, i, " Castalio would not have young men read the Canticles because to his thinking it was too light and amorous a tract, a ballad of ballads, as our old English translation hath it." Percy, as often pointed out, employs ballad in his Reliques with miscellaneous application. Eitson's contribution toward establishing the word in its latest meaning has been quoted already. Coleridge's use is modern when he writes of "The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens." To summarize the stages for English:
1. Ballad in the fourteenth century meant the French art lyric with fixed form. The name could be given to a dance song, though the latter was more often called a carol. Ballad, in the period when it could mean dance song, did not mean "narrative lyric."
2. In the Elizabethan period, ballads, ballets, ballants, etc., are terms loosely associated with song, or lyric verse of various kinds. The name could be applied to dance songs, among these types and, though infrequently, to narrative lyrics.
3. In the eighteenth century, ballad continues in loose popular usage. With specialists it comes to have particular reference to narrative songs. The narrative songs which the eighteenth century collected were not dance songs, and they are not the pieces called by cognate names in the Romance languages, from which ballad, in lyric nomenclature, is derived.
4. In the nineteenth century, ballad continues in loose popular reference as synonymous with song. In the use of specialists it is increasingly applied to narrative songs; by the twentieth century, this has become the primary meaning. The variant ballade, in the Erench and four
teenth-century English sense, is revived, in the nineteenth century, with the re-introduction of the fixed lyric type.
This sketch should have made clear that a definition of the ballad as "a narrative lyric made and sung at the dance and handed down in popular tradition" is not warranted, for English ballads, by the history of the word. For a valid etymological argument for ballad as a dance song, one would have to derive the lyric-epic species, ballad, from the fixed art species, the ballade. And there is no sufficient proof that narrative lyrics were ever, anywhere, at any time, by any people, made and sung at the dance. The dance songs of primitive peoples are- not narrative, and the earliest English dance songs are not narrative. Nor is this longer definition, also Professor Gummere's,16 better. "The popular ballad, as it is understood for the purpose of these selections, is a narrative, in lyric form, with no traces of individual authorship, and is preserved mainly by oral tradition. In its earliest stages it was meant to be sung by a crowd, and got its name from the dance to which it furnished the sole musical accompaniment." The first sentences are unimpeachable, but the last is not. The lyric type to which reference is made did not get its name until the late eighteenth century, and then took it by borrowing or transference from songs of another character, for which it was more appropriate. It could not have taken its name from its origin, nor is its name evidence as to its origin.
i«In The Popular Ballad (1907), pp. 75, 344, etc., and "Ballads" in Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature. "Their very name," we are reminded, "tells of external origin at the communal dance."
II DANOE SOITOS PROPEB
The name actually given in England to dance songs of the Middle Ages was "carol." We hear of carols before we hear of ballads. There is a familiar picture of a highborn throng singing to the caroling of a lady in the Chaucerian Romance of the Rose:
The folk of which I telle you so, Upon a earole wenten tho. A lady caroled hem that hyghte, Gladness (the) blisful, the lyghte . . . 743-6.
Tho mightest thou caroles seen, And folk (ther) daunce and mery been And make many a fair tourning Upon the grene gras springing . . . 759-62.
The description is continued, 802-15, 850-54, and onwards, and teaches U3 no little concerning mediaeval dance customs. Other passages, illustrating the use of carol for dance song, in the next century, might be multiplied.17 Many are cited in the dictionaries.
Suppose we try to put ourselves back into the old world
17 Compare Gawayn and the Green Knight: "This King Arthur lay royally at Camelot at Christmas tide with many fine lords, the best of men, all the rich brethren of the Round Table, with right rich revel and careless mirth. There full many heroes tourneyed betimes, jousted full gaily; then returned these gentle knights to the court to make carols. For there the feast was held full fifteen days alike with all the meat and the mirth that men could devise. Such a merry tumult, glorious to hear; joyful din by day, dancing at night. All was high joy in hall and chambers with lords and ladies as pleased them best."
of dance songs. What kind of song was it which the lady sang, and to which the others danced? It might have been a ballade, or roundel, or "virelai," or some type of art lyric, with fixed refrain of regular occurrence; for such lyrics were used for dancing.18 Or it might have had greater suggestion of animation and movement, like many examples afforded by Old French verse; 19 or it might have been a gay love lyric. That it was anything like King Estmere, or Thomas Bymer, or Edward, or Lord Randal, is most improbable. And when peasant throngs, as over against aristocrats, danced in feudal times, they did not dance, as I believe, to pieces of the lyric-epic type just mentioned. Nor, as a general thing, the rule rather than the exception, did they dance to their own improvisations. It is more likely that they danced to current inherited songs, appropriate for dance purposes, with, possibly enough, a bygone vogue in higher circles behind them; that is, if we keep the analogies of existent dance songs before us.
The following lines from Gawain Douglas point to the dancing of his characters mostly to lyric and amatory matter: 20
Sum sing sangis, dansis ledys and roundis With voeis schill, quhill all the dail resoundis Quharso thai walk into thar carolyng For amorus lays doith the Eoches ryng: is See the quotation from Chaucer's Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, note 14 preceding.
1° See the iallettes, in Jeanroy's Les Origines de la Poe"sie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age; and his letter, cited in Miss Cohen's The Ballade, p. 15; also Joseph Beadier, Les Plus Anciennes Donees Frangaises, Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 15, 1906, p. 398.
20 Mneid, Prologue of Bk. XII.
And sang, 'the schyp salys our the salt faym Will bryng thir merchandis and my lemman haym'; Sum other syngis, I wil be blyth-and lycht Mine hart is lent upon so gudly wight. But we need not speak speculatively of mediaeval dance songs. Many remain to us; and it is possible to derive from them pretty clear ideas as to what the typical ones were like. A couplet used for dance purposes remains from the twelfth century. Ritson21 cites from Lambarde's Dictionary of England this anecdote: "In tyme of Hen. II. [anno 1173] Robert therl of Leycester . . . purposed to spoile the town and thabbey [of St. Edmundes Burye] . . . Now while his gallauntes paused upon the heathe, they fell to daunce and singe,
"Hoppe Wylikin, hoppe Wyllykin, Ingland is thyne and myne, etc." The well-known Sumer is icumen in of the thirteenth century, might have been a dance song — its animation and movement would make it appropriate; and welcomes to spring, when dancing on the green or in the grove could be resumed, were common for dance-song usage in all parts of Europe. A classic example of a dance song is that preserved by Fabyan (1516), celebrating the victory of the Scots at Bannockburn: 22
21 Dissertation on Ancient Songs and Music (ed. of 1829), p. xl. The fragment of the dance song is to be found in Matthew of Paris's Historia Anglorum sive, ut vulgo dicitur, Historia Minor. Ed. Sir F. Madden, Rolls series (1866), vol. I, p. 381. See also J. F. Royster, English Tags in Matthew of Paris, Modem Language Review, vol. iv, p. 509.
22 Concordance of Histories.
Maydens of Englonde, sore may ye morne,
For your lemmans ye have loste at Bannockisborne!
With a hewe a lowe. What wenyth the Kynge of Englonde So soon to have wonne Scotlonde: With a rumby lowe.
This song, says Eabyan, "was after many days sung in dances, in caroles of the maidens and minstrels of Scotland." High-born maidens they were, too, most likely, not peasants. It is appropriate for a dance song. It is lyrical, not a verse story. The refrain is important, and holds it together; but it is not narrative. It is nothing like a Child piece, and never became like one, so far as there is evidence.23
23 King Cnut's song is often said (Gummere, Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. n, ch. xvii, The Popular Ballad, pp. 58 ff, Old English Ballads, p. 254) to give us our "first example of actual ballad structure and the ballad's metrical form which is to be met in English records." The beginning of the song and an account of its composition, as the king's boat neared Ely, is given in the Historia Eliensis of 1166. But whether the song affords valid illustration of ballad history turns upon whether its missing lines are epic or lyric, i.e., whether it was a ballad or merely a song. There is no proof that it was lyric-epic in character, the presence of rhyme and the strophe structure are both doubtful, and there is no proof that it was a dance song (as Professor Gummere assumed when he persistently translated the chronicler's in choris publice as "sung in their dances "), or that it ever came to be used as such. Judging from the chronicler's account, it was more likely to have started as a rowing song. Danish folk poetry has many of these. (See nos. 124, 140, 460, 244, 399) in Grundtvig's Denmark's Oamle Volkeviser). The king's boat would be no appropriate place for a festal throng to dramatize a ballad; nor is the refrain "Row, knights, near the land," if it be one, a suitable refrain for a dance song. Cnut's song comes from a date early enough to illustrate ballad origins, but it is of doubtful availability for the communalists. It did not originate in the dance and we do not know that
Here are two songs which are presumably dance songs, from the fifteenth century, the first unusually spirited: 24
Icham of Irlaunde, Am of the holy londe Of Irlande; Good sir, pray I ye For of Saynte Charite, Come ant daunce wyt me In Irlaunde. The second also sounds suitable for its purpose:
Holi with his mery men they
can daunce in hall; Ivy & her ientyl women can not daunce at all,
But lyke a meyne of bullokes
in a water fall Or on a whot Homer's day Whan they be mad all.
Nay, nay, ive, it may not be, iwis; For holy must haue the mastry, as the maner is. Neither of these has the stanzaic pattern of the ballads.
A song certainly used as a dance song, and very animated
and lyrical, is the familiar The Hunt is Up of the time of
it was, or ever became, a ballad in theme and structure. If it was ever used as a dance song, it was long after it was composed and at the time when — to conform to theories concerning it — it should have been "divorcing itself from the dance" and becoming epic. See King Cnut's Song and Ballad Origins, Modem Language Notes, March, 1919.
2* The first is from MS. Rawlinson, D. 913, f. 1, the second from MS. Balliol, 354, f. 229, b.
Henry VIII. The lines are short, and they throw the hearer into the dancing mood. Some examples of Old English dance songs, lively and appropriate in melody, coming from the sixteenth century, are given in Chappell's Old English Popular Music. An especially popular one was John, Come Kiss Me Now.
Jon come kisse me now, now, Jon come kisse me, now, Jon, come kisse me by and by, and make no more adow. The following is a Morris-dance song from Nashe's play of Summer's Last Will and Testament: —
Trip and goe, heave and hoe, Up and down, to and fro, From the towne to the grove Two and two, let us rove, A-Maying, a-playing; Love hath no gainsaying, So merrily trip and goe." None of these genuine dance songs cited exhibits the septenar rhythm of the ballads; indeed neither the couplet form of the older ballads nor the quartrain form of the newer seems especially appropriate for the dance.
Both nobly-born groups from castle or court and village peasant groups had their dance songs in the Middle Ages; but surely these songs were not contemporaneously of identical type; and it is very improbable that either type was the Child type. There is a great deal of unmistakable testimony as to the use of lyrical, song-like pieces, in England, for dance songs. Next to none exists — not to dwell upon their smaller intrinsic appropriateness — for the staple use of narrative songs for such purpose.
There is evidence, from recent times, that in a few cases well-known Child pieces have been ritualized into dance songs. W. W. Newell speaks of Barbara Allen as used in "play party" games in the early part of the nineteenth century in England. This ballad was an actress's song, in the seventeenth century, when we first hear of it. According to Professor Child, The Maid Freed from the Gallows has known game-song usage.25 A version recovered in Nebraska of The Two Sisters has obviously been used as a dance song. The following are specimen stanzas:
There was an old woman lived on the seashore Bow down There was an old woman lived on the seashore,
Balance true to me And she had daughters three or four, Saying I'll be true to my love If my love is true to me . . . The oldest and youngest were walking the seashore, Bow down The oldest and youngest were walking the seashore,
Balance true to me The oldest pushed the youngest o'er, Saying I'll be true to my love If my love is true to me . . . Such might not have been the case, yet one feels as though, if any of these pieces had been orally preserved for some generations as a dance song, for throngs on the village
25 See also Gilchrist and Broadwood, Journal of the Folk-Song Society, v, pp. 228 ff.
green, the narrative element would have become yet more fragmentary and inconsequential than it is in the quoted dance-song version of The Two Sisters; the refrain meantime assuming greater and greater prominence, and becoming the stable and identifying feature of the song. For dance songs proper, preserved in tradition, one expects a strong refrain formula and a fading or utterly absent narrative element.
That the Child pieces should be utilized, though infrequently, as dance or game songs is not to be wondered at; for popular songs of all kinds are so employed occasionally, alongside the more appropriate inherited dance songs. Mediaeval dancing throngs, like their descendants now, were no doubt likely to utilize any new song as a dance song; as The Hunt is Up, of the time of Henry VIII, according to The Complaynt of Scotland (1549). We are told that in the fast-dying-out play-party or ring-dance songs of our own rural communities, songs like John Browns Body, Captain Jinks, Little Brown Jug, and the negro minstrel Jim along Jo, or Buffalo Gals, have been so used. Indeed, the minstrel Old Dan Tucker has died out of memory as a minstrel song, and has been kept alive as a ring-game song. But if the Child ballads had been dance songs par excellence, they would have come down to us very differently in tradition. They played a large role in popular recital and song in the Middle Ages, and had the role they played as dance songs been proportionately large, we should have unmistakable evidence of it; both external testimonies, and evidence within the songs themselves. We should know from the changes which they developed in structure, from internal allusions to the dance, and from the lore of traditional dance songs.
The dance may well have started many forms of mediaeval lyrism with refrain formulas, whether of the artistic or of the more popular type. Such derivation is usually assigned to many of them. But it is the more lyrical forms, rather than the verse-tales, which were most closely bound up with the dance. We also associate with the dance the spontaneous popular lyrics, dance songs proper, which have been preserved for us here and there in printed form, or those which have descended to us in our ring-dance or game songs. Both the art lyrics with refrains, and the more popular and impersonal lyrics with refrains, like Sumer is icumen in, make their appearance in literature before ballads of the Child type do.
If dance origin, or connection with the dance, is an essential feature of "ballads," the name belongs with better right to mediaeval art lyrics, to the surviving dance songs proper, or to the type remaining in our play-party songs and ring games, for which we have no specific name, aside from the inclusive and ambiguous "folk-song." It is always a safe thing to test our theories as to older conditions for popular song — mediaeval conditions, for example— by usages in living society, where these afford analogies; for human procedure, whether in language, action, or song, has remained pretty constant from primitive times onward. The ring games of young people of the present day preserve many of the dramatic elements of the communal dance, and the songs used in them seem to preserve many of the features of the old dance songs. It was the form of these songs, not that of the Child pieces, which was conditioned by dance usage, and bears the marks of such usage. If the Child pieces were primarily evolved in the dance, they ought to show more signs of it,
and to be structurally more suitable; for instance, they should suggest more swing and movement. And to think of them as evolved via dances of commoners, not of aristocrats, is difficult indeed.
A disciple of the communal theory of ballad origins, Dr. Arthur Saalbach,26 after special study of the ballad of Thomas Rymer (Thomas of Erceldoune) decides that it had its origin in gatherings of the mediaeval dwellers of Earlston for song and dance. They proceeded, he thinks, to give dramatic rendition of the old story of their local hero, Thomas. Some participant improvised a few lines about Thomas to a familiar or an improvised melody. The chorus of bystanders joined in for the refrain or for repetition of the last line of the strophe. Perhaps a man took the role of Thomas and a woman the role of the Fairy for the whole occasion. The choric-ballad arising in this manner, found favor, and was repeated at the next gathering. He finds additional evidence for such origin in the dramatic handling of the dialogue in the ballad.
But there is nothing suggesting dance-song origin in the structure of Thomas Rymer, as it remains to us. It is not even built about a refrain; indeed it seems intrinsically inappropriate as a dance song. And if we argue from the analogies of modern folk-throngs, those at Earlston danced probably to familiar matter — in which case the level of life treated in the subject-matter of their dance song might be higher than their own. Or, if they improvised, their improvisation probably concerned themselves, or something in their immediate horizon, their own
2« Entstehungsgeschichte der Schottischen Volksballade, Thomas Rymer. Diss. Halle (1913), pp. 63-65.
humble interests and station, or the latest occurrence among them. It would not be heroic or a fairy story but something satirical or personal and something contemporary; and, judging from known folk-efforts, it would probably so lack cohesion and finished structure as to be one of the first of their songs to die. Thomas Rymer sounds as though composed for the delectation of the aristocratic, not for and certainly not by villagers.
Let us look at some of the dance songs remaining in present tradition, and then apply our observations backward. Children's game songs, and the play-party songs of young folks on the green and in the parlor, in rural communities, have been collected, in England chiefly by Mrs. Gomme, and in the United States by W. W. Newell for New England, and by many collectors for the central west. It is generally agreed that our traditional dance and game songs descend from those of the middle ages and preserve many ancient features; especially the dances in circle form which are executed to the singing of the participants, not to the music of instruments. A number of these pieces seem surely to be of high descent, and many even reflect the old environment of grove and green. Some of the texts sound as though they accompanied the dances of the high born. Eecall the many references to "ladies " or " my fair lady "—" lady " is not yet a democratic noun in England — to kings and princes, or dukes, to solid gold rings, to "He wore a star upon his breast," and the like. Most of the songs suggest that they are movement songs by their very wording, or structure. In most cases a typical stanza only will be cited; for the songs are pretty familiar, and they have become accessible, in late years, in game books for school usage. The citations are from Mrs. Gomme's Dictionary of British FolkLore.21
Here we go round the mulberry bush, The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, Here we go round the mulberry bush, On a cold and frosty morning. Mulberry Bush, I, p. 404.
Round and round the village, Round and round the village, Round and round the village, As we have done before. In and out the windows, In and out the windows, In and out the windows, As we have done before. Bound and Bound the Village, n, p. 122.
Tripping up the green grass,
Dusty, dusty day, Come all ye pretty fair maids, Come and with me play. . . .
Naughty man, he won't come out,
He won't come out, he won't come out,
"Mrs. Gomme gives a list of dance games, n, p. 465, and of circle-form games, with singing and action, n, p. 476. The songs cited here are recognized by her as descending in traditional dance usage.
"In den Kinderreigen," says Bohme, Oeschichte des Tanees, ch. Xvii, "werden wir noch alten tiberresten von Tanzliedern der Vorzeit begegnen." As ring-dances were given up by the mature they lingered among children. One should not infer, however, that all children's play songs were originally game or dance-songs of grownups. Childhood is as ancient as maturity, and even the savagest children have their own songs.
Naughty man, he won't come out, To help us in our dancing. Green Grass, I, p. 156. From another text of the same song: Here we go up the green grass, The green grass, the green grass, Here we go up the green grass, So early in the morning. Ibid., 1, p. 160.
A ring, a ring o' roses, A pocket full of posies; A curtsey in and a curtsey out, And a curtsey all together. A Ring of Roses, u, p. 108.
Green gravel green gravel, the grass is so green, The fairest young damsel that ever was seen. . . . Green Gravel, 1, p. 171.
The material is too abundant and too familiar for much illustration to be needed. A few more miscellaneous stanzas are: Here we come a-piping, First in spring and then in May, The Queen she sits upon the sand, Fair as a lily, white as a wand: King John has sent you letters three, And begs you'll read them unto me, We can't read one without them all, So, pray, Miss Bridget, deliver the ball. Queen Anne, n, p. 91.
Here's a soldier left his lone, Wants a wife and can't get none, Merrily go round and choose your own, t
Choose a good one or else choose none, Choose the worst or choose the best, Or choose the very one you like best. Here's a Soldier, I, p. 206.
Poor Mary, what're you weepin' for, A-weepin' for, a-weepin' for, Pray, Mary, what're you weepin' for? On a bright summer's day. Poor Mary Sits A-Weeping, u, p. 47.
The following dramatic song is listed by Mrs. Gomme as a circle-form song; though she thinks it originally a harvest-song:
Oats and beans and barley grow! Oats and beans and barley grow! Do you or I or anyone know How oats and beans and barley growl First the farmer sows his seed, Then he stands and takes his ease, Stamps his foot, and claps his hands, Then turns round to view the land "Waiting for a partner, waiting for a partner! Open the ring and take one in. Oats and Beans and Barley, n, p. 1.
Let us turn next to some of the ring-dance songs of young people in the United States, surviving in our fastdying-out play-party songs. The dancing, as in the mediaeval dance songs, is to the singing of the dancers, not to instrumental music. Old World importations are easily recognized. The refrains remain the same as in their British cognates:
Come honey, my love, come trip with me, In the morning early Heart and hand we'll take our stand; "lis true, I love you dearly. Weevilly Wheat.2*
Oh, the jolly old miller boy, he lived by the mill, The mill turned round with a right good will, And all that he made, he put it on the shelf, At the end of the year he was gaining in his wealth, One hand in the hopper, and the other in the sack, Gents step forward and the ladies step back. The Jolly Old Miller29 ,
Go out and in the window, Go out and in the window, Go out and in the window, For we shall gain the day. We're Marching Bound the Levy.30
Lost your partner, what'll you do? Lost your partner, what'll you do? Lost your partner, what'll you do? Skip to My Lou, my darling. Skip to My Lou.31
Come all ye young people that's wending your way, And sow your wild oats in your youthful day, For the daylight it passes, and night's coming on, So choose you a partner, and be marching along, marching along.32 Professor E. F. Piper points out33 that in songs which.
28 Mrs. L. D. Ames, The Missouri Play-Party, Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxiv (1911), p. 302. wlbid., p. 306. 3o Ibid., p. 306. si Ibid., p. 304. 82 Ibid., p. 314.
33 Some Play-Party Games of the Middle West, Journal of American Folk-Lore, cix, p. 264.
describe the progress of a game, like The Miller Boy (The Jolly Miller of Mrs. Gomme) and Juniper Tree:
0 dear sister Phoebe, how happy were we, The night we sat under the juniper tree! The juniper tree, heigho, heigho! The juniper tree, heigho! Then rise you up, Sister, go choose you a man, Go choose you the fairest that ever you can, Then rise you up, Sister, and go, and go, Then rise you up, Sister, and go. . . . the form remains fairly constant. In such songs one cannot easily change the words without changing the formula. In the same way, Oats, pease, beans, remains fairly constant. Weevilly Wheat and Kilmacrankie perhaps afford examples of " the decay of ballad matter under the usage of the singing game, or dance."34 Many of the songs he lists show the influence of quadrilles and other dances, illustrating once more the tendency of the imported, or higher, or newer, to descend and linger among the humbler and more remote. A few more illustrations of genuine communal dance songs should suffice:
We come here to bounce around, We come here to bounce around, We come here to bounce around, Tra, la, la, la!
Ladies, do, si, do,
Gents, you know,
s*This seems the natural process; but compare Professor Gummere's latest theories of ballad growth and "improvement," cited a little farther on. The process which, to collectors of folk dancesongs, brings ballad degradation, to Professor Gummere is the process by which are evolved "good" ballads. At other times, however,
Swing to the right, And then to the left, And all promenade.35 Up and down the center we go, Up and down the center we go, Up and down the center we go, This cold and frosty morning. Chase that Squirrel.39
When popular songs, or street songs, are utilized as dance songs, they are handled like this:
Captain Jinks
I'm Captain Jinks of the horse marines, I feed my horse on corn and beans, And court young ladies in their teens, For that's the style of the army. We'll all go round and circle left, We'll circle left, we'll circle left, We'll all go round and circle left, For that's the style of the army. The ladies right and form a ring, And when they form you give'm a swing, And when you swing you give'm a call, And take your lady and promenade all.37
Jim Along Jo
Hi, Jim along, Jim along, Josie Hi, Jim along, Jim, along Jo Hi, Jim along, Jim along Josie Hi, Jim along, Jim along Jo.38 he continued to make reference to the "degradation" and "decay" due to tradition.
35 Ames, p. 296. "Ames, p. 309.
s« Piper, p. 266. 3s Piper, p. 268.
Little Brown Jug Sent my brown jug down in town, Sent my brown jug down in town, Sent my brown jug down in town, So early in the morning.39 Not one of these pieces is a ballad, just as the vocal accompaniments to old British dances round the Maypole were not ballads. One of the latter has survived in the ring games of the Georgia negroes, again illustrating the survival, in outlying places, among the humble and remote, of matter assimilated from the usage, in bygone vogue, of people of another social class:
All around the May-pole,
The May-pole, the May-pole, All around the May-pole. Now, Miss Sally, won't you bow? etc.40
Repetition and interweaving of lines, is much more pervasive and essential in communal dance songs than in pieces of the Child type, and it is of a different kind. It shows us, however, the type of repetition to be expected in such dance songs. There is no evidence that ballads are ever built up from dance songs, but a great deal that dance songs may be built upon popular songs of all types. Mrs. Gomme notes that many English circle-game songs have evidently been derived from love ballads, drinking songs, and toasts, and that some of the dance games are of this origin.
8» Goldy M. Hamilton, The Play-Party in Northeast Missouri, Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxvn, pp. 269, 297 (The Girl 1 heft Behind Me), p. 301.
*o Loraine Darby, Ring Games from Georgia, Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxx (1917), p. 218.
If the ballads had been used typically in popular dances, collections like those made by Mrs. Gomme and Mr. Newell should reveal many traces of such usage. On the other hand, when we do not assume that ballads were the staple material of mediaeval dance songs, what has come down to us in tradition is of just the character which we should expect. There are many " situation" songs among these traditional dance and game songs, and there are dialogue pieces; 41 but one finds no traces of the development of dialogue songs into ballads proper, or of the " divorcing" of dance songs from the dance, on the way toward becoming lyric-epics.
When we examine genuine dance songs, it becomes clear that their most important element is the repetitional element. The texts of most of them shift even more than do the ballad texts, for there is no story to hold them together; but the repeated element, or the refrain, is stable.42 They are lyrical, and they tempt to movement. And, as suggested above, no matter how long they have been preserved in usage as dance songs, they have never developed into anything like Child ballads, nor have they been transformed into narrative pieces of any type. They show no signs of the evolution sketched by Professor Gum
41 Mrs. Gomme thinks that the dialogue songs are of later development, n, p. 500. Professors W. M. Hart and G. H. Stempel think that dialogue songs represent a very early stage, in the history of ballads proper.
42 A remark made by Professor C. S. Baldwin concerning the ballad is much truer of the dance song, "The refrain, then, is not a poetic embellishment; it is a kind of nucleus; it determines the structure. The tale is built around the refrain," English Mediwval Literature (1914), p. 237. For the rOle played by refrains in the English ballads, see p. 188.
mere, in his chapter in the Cambridge History of English Literature:
The structure of the ballad — what makes it a species, the elements of it — derives from choral and dramatic conditions; what gives it its peculiar art of narrative is the epic process working by oral tradition and gradually leading to a new structure.
Or in his The Popular Ballad: 43
. . . the course of the popular ballad is from a mimetic choral situation, slowly detaching itself out of the festal dance and coming into the reminiscent ways of tradition in song and recital.
Or in Democracy and Poetry:
Development of narrative poetry out of repetition is an obvious process easily proved by the facts and consists simply in a decrease of verbal repetition and a corresponding increase of the verbal increment." ..." An epic element, accretional and explanatory, has in many cases been added to the choral and dramatic nucleus." 44
The songs cited in the foregoing pages have survived under the right conditions, oral and communal, but they show no signs of an "epic process" leading to a new structure. The Child ballads, on the other hand, show something quite different from the dance songs. For them, the refrain is the variable element. Their texts
« P. 84. It is rather surprising to find, on pp. 68-69, that " narrative is not a fixed fundamental primary fact in the ballad scheme." This means that the very thing that makes a ballad a ballad, not verse of some other lyric type, is not a fundamental or primary feature of its structure.
« Pp. 186, 190.
remain as constant as the conditions of transmission allow; but the refrain does not remain constant within the same ballad. The test of living folk-song, examination of the kind of thing which the folk can improvise now, and the character of the songs which are genuinely and primarily dance songs, preserved in oral transmission, ought to show the fatuity of seeking an identical genesis for these types and for pieces like the English and Scottish popular ballads.45 It is a safer hypothesis that the Child type of piece, once established in popularity, might at times be fitted to well-known dance tunes, or be utilized, like nearly any other kind of song, as a dance song, than that dancegenesis evolved the Child type — that the Child type represents, par excellence among poetic types, an evolution from dance origin.
Ill NARRATIVE SONGS AND THE DANCE
It would be going much too far, would indeed be contrary to the facts, to affirm that there is never dancing to narrative songs. Among European peoples where the narrative song has established itself as a leading type of popular song, instances of it occur, and there should be occasional instances of it anywhere among advanced peoples.46 This should be especially true of the shorter
«Andrew Lang, in his article on Ballads in the Encyclopedia Britannica wrote: "It is natural to conclude that our ballads too were first improvised and circulated in rustic dances." He held at the time the views still held by the majority of American scholars. But in his article on the same subject in the last edition of Chambers's Oyclopwdia of English Literature (1904), he has given up this theory of ballad origins, and indeed, from his article, is hardly recognizable as still a communalist.
«" Narrative, too, are most of the dance songs in a modern and more tuneful ballads. There was perhaps some dancing to heroic narrative songs, if not to "histories," probably to romantic tales, in England. We have seen that in American ring-dance or " play-party" games, the descendants of mediaeval dance-modes, narrative songs are utilized occasionally, as Barbara Allen's Cruelty, referred to earlier, to accompany the dance. Songs of all types have undergone this experience, probably ballads along with the others, especially when the words were fitted to some familiar dance tune. But in a majority of cases the narrative pieces would be less suitable. Such utilization — this is my point — would not represent an original stage, but would be exceptional rather than normal.
Our best evidence for early European dance songs comes from France. The Erench dance songs which remain to us are lyric, not lyric-epic, and they are aristocratic.47 Indeed, admits Professor Gummere, " all the Old French
Russian cottage," writes Professor Gummere, Old English Ballads, p. lxxix, and cites Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 1872. But the examples given by Ralston are not narrative; they are not ballads but lyrics, and of the expected type. Professor Gummere's solitary example of a dance ballad is from the Ditmarsh folk of Holstein, but even that is more lyric than lyric-epic. It labels itself as a dance song, and might well be an older song which has been fitted to the dance, not one made in the dance. The Popular Ballad, p. 97, footnote.
Strictly, what are called "dances" among savages are in large part drama, and there is abundance of histrionic or mimetic action accompanied by songs of which action is the illustration, i. e., there are songs suggesting ideas, and these are to some extent enacted. Over against these are the rhythmic chants and ejaculatory refrains that form simple motor suggestions or reverberations. The latter are the only ones "danced" in our modern sense of "dance."
47 Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poisie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age, 1904; Bedier, Les Plus Anciennes Danses FranQaises, Revue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 15, 1906, p. 398.
dances were aristocratic to the point of making modern investigators doubt the existence of the 'popular' customs." 48 English dance songs have already been examined. Let us turn to Icelandic usage. Vigfusson 49 tells us that the "dance, in full use accompanied by songs which are described as loose and amorous" — lyrical pieces these seem to be — appears at the end of the eleventh century. Icelandic danz comes to mean song; and flimt, loose song, and danz are synonymous words. The rinvur, or epical paraphrases, with matter like that of our ballads, first appear about the middle of the fourteenth century. Almost all Icelandic sagas and romances, even the historical books of the Bible, were turned, we are told, into such lays or ballads. "The heathen heroic poems were certainly never used," says Vigfusson, "to accompany a dance. Their flow and meter are a sufficient proof of that." The word dance points, wherever found, to a new fashion introduced from France and spreading quickly over Europe. The old words would not serve for this new French art, which brought its own name even to Iceland. Icelandic evidence is the earliest that we have for the dance songs of Scandinavian countries, and the early Icelandic dance songs were, it would appear, lyrical and amatory, like the early French and English dance songs. The employment of heroic romantic narrative material belongs to a later stage.
In Denmark, courtly society of the later middle ages danced to narrative ballads, and the pieces closely resemble the Child ballads. But Danish literature seems to know no other song, no body of purely lyrical movement songs.
«s The Popular Ballad, p. 97.
« Cleasby-Vigfusson, Icelandic Dictionary, under danz.
The wealth of lyric poetry appearing in England and France and Germany was unknown in Denmark. It has no erotic lyric poetry. The ballad was practically the only form, we are told, in which the people expressed their feelings. The Danish ballads are very valuable. "We possess," says Steenstrup, "40 ballad manuscripts of the period prior to 1750, while Sweden possesses 10, the oldest antedated by many Danish." The Danish ballads were preserved by high-born ladies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who did fine service in collecting into manuscripts the songs current in the castles of the period.
The Danish pieces show their connection with the dance, as do most dance songs, in their very texts, and they even show how the dance was conducted. Here are some specimen lines:50
Midsummer night upon the sward, Knights and squires were standing guard. In the grove a knightly dance they tread With torches and garlands of roses red. In sable and martin before them all Dances Sir Iver, the noblest of all. To the king in his tower strong Floats the noise of the dancing throng. "Who is yon knight that leads the dance, And louder than all the song he chants?" Proud Elselille, No. 220.
no These and other examples are cited by Steenstrup, The Mediwval Popular Ballad, p. 12. Translated by B. G. Cox.
Now longs the king himself
To step the danee; The hero Hagen follows after, For them the song he chants. So stately dances Hagen. Eagen's Dance, No. 465.
It was Mettelil, the count's daughter, She stepped the danee for them. No. 261.
There dances Sir Stig, as light as a wand, With a silver cup in his white hand. No. 76.
Individual ballads reveal by internal testimony that they were used for the dance:
Step lightly o'er the green plain — The maid must follow me; Step up holdly, young knight; Honor the maidens in the dance. No. 241.
No. 244.
Stand up, stand up, my maidens all, And dance for me a space; And sing for me a ballad About the sons of Lave's race. No. 366.
An account of the Ditmarsh folk of Holstein by Johann
Adolfi (Neocorus) written in 1598, says that the people
have adapted nearly all their songs to the damce, in order
to remember them better, and to keep them current.51
5i Chromic des Landes Dithmarschen, edited by F. C. Dahlmann, i, p. 177; "Nichtess weiniger iest tho vorwunderen (den up dat de The dances he describes are like the Danish dances, with singing by a "foresinger," and choral response and refrain. There were also, as in our own ring-dance songs, whole pieces where all the participants sang as they danced.
There is little or nothing of the Danish type of selflabeled dance songs among the Child pieces. All but a few of the Danish ballads have refrains. Those lacking them are mostly late importations or translations. The movement is often nimble and rapid. On the other hand, of 1250 versions of the English ballads, about 300, i. e., a fourth, have refrains.52
As to origins, the Danish ballads do not help the com
munalists, but the contrary. The dancing for which they
were used — some were employed for entertainment of
other kinds, like riding or rowing — was the dancing of
the high-born; both in content and movement, they seem
suitable for this purpose. Both Grundtvig and Steen
strup seem to be satisfied with the hypothesis of minstrel
authorship for them. They offer no suggestion of the
responsibility, for the type, of festal village throngs, or
of the throngs of primitive times. And it is interesting
to note that when Steenstrup seeks to restore the Danish
ballads to their older and truer form, and to rid them of
spurious accretions, one of his first steps is to shear away
various types of repetition, as "padding." 53
Gesenge edder Geachichte deste ehr gelehret unnd beter beholden worden unnd lenger im Gebruke bleven, hebben se de alle fast den Dentzen bequemet), dat se nha Erf ordering der Wortt und Wise des Gesanges," etc.
52 The Popular Ballad, p. 74.
63 The Mediceval Popular Ballad, pp. 75-77.
At this point, something should, no doubt, be said with reference to the ballads of the Faroe Islands. They have been brought much into the foreground, in the discussions of the genesis of the ballads, and afford to communalists their chief stronghold;54 although Steenstrup advises caution 55 in using them for help in understanding older ballad forms. Their recollection of Saga and Eddie poetry is strong, and this knowledge must have blended with knowledge of the poetry of the middle ages. Moreover popular ballads, he says, were taken up by priests and learned people. Several types of verse are to be noted in Faroe folk-song; but mostly the introduction of Danish ballads, supposed to have begun in the sixteenth century, has affected them. In the Faroes, in the preceding century at least, as, in less degree, in our own fast-dying-out ring-game or play-party songs of young people, throng dancing of the old circle type, with linked hands, was still preserved. The dancing is to singing rather than to instrumental music, again as in our ring-games; and as in the latter, all take part in the singing and all join in the refrain. Sometimes spontaneous improvised lines or verses, still as in our ring-games, arise out of the occasion itself.
The classic report of the Faroe dances was made by Pastor Lyngbye in 1822, who left descriptions of them. Their dance-themes are derived from Norwegian or Icelandic sources, a favorite subject being the "hero
M " The ballad-genesis is more plainly proved for the Faroes than for any other modern people" (Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p. 69).
55 See The Mediceval Popular Ballad, p. 7.
Sigurd." They dance to historical ballads, like the Danes,58 but to religious and lampooning ballads as well. There are many lyric-epics, like the Danish ones we have mentioned. Indeed, the Icelanders know and use ballads in the Danish language. The fishermen also have rude dances, sometimes to songs of their own creation. Pastor •Lyngbye tells of one, often utilized for argument by Professor Gummere, concerning a fisherman, pushed by his comrades into the center of the throng, while they improvised verses upon a recent mishap which had befallen him. The text of the song is not preserved, so we cannot place its type. We have no right to call it a ballad; most probably it was not From what we are told of them, these improvised fishermen pieces sound analogous to our own ranch-hand, cowboy, lumberman, or negro improvisations, or to the occasional spontaneous ventures of our own ring-dances. They are upon events of the moment, of interest to members of the circle involved. They are fashioned on or are imitations of, songs of better type, of higher descent, and they are markedly crude and poor. Further, the Faroe fishermen pieces are sung to hymn tunes or to familiar airs, not to invented melodies, or to traditional melodies — not at least to melodies traditional
68 Our earliest testimony concerning the Faroe dances is to be found in the Faroa Reserata of Lucas Debes, Kopenhagen, 1673. He writes, p. 251, that "the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands are little inclined toward useless pastimes or idle gaiety, but content themselves mostly with singing psalms . . . only at marriages or at Christmas time do they seek amusement in a simple circle dance, one grasping another by the hand while they sing old hero-songs." Pastor Lyngbye's much-quoted Fwrpishe Quceder, etc., was published in 1822. See also N. Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, Oxford, 1905. The whole matter of Faroe folk-song was cleared up satisfactorily by H. Thuren in his Folke Saangen paa Faerperne, 1908.
from ancient times.57 The Faroe songs teach us nothing as to the genesis of the lyric-epic type, for they themselves preserve and continue imported fashions. All in all, there is nothing to be learned from the Faroe dancesong customs that runs contrary to evidence from other sources. Rather do they bear it out. And certainly we cannot look to them as mirroring par excellence what is oldest.58
67 The type of song now used by Shakers, Holy Rollers, and other dancing religious sects ought to be a point of corroborative interest. They probably resemble the Salvation Army type of hymn.
68 For German, an excellent display of dance-song material may be found in Franz Bohme's Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland, Leipzig, 1886. In chapter XV, "t)ber Tanzlieder," he groups his material into classes, to show the varied character of the content. He gives amatory songs first place, as the most frequent accompaniment of the dance, with many examples. Historical songs, old hero songs, and mythic pieces (his second class), were sung, he thinks, in the oldest period, for the dance. But his evidence for this is the hero songs of the Faroes, concerning which we have evidence from the seventeenth century, and the testimony of Neocorus (1598) concerning the Ditmarsh folk of Holstein. The bearing of this evidence has already been considered. The third class he names consists of ballads or epic folk-songs, for which his examples for Germany are meager. This class, he says, was "in full bloom" in the Romance languages and in England, as sung at the dance — a hasty and mistaken generalization. A fourth class consists of lampoons, vituperations, satires, etc., abundantly illustrated. This is the class of dance songs which is often improvised. His next class consists of bird and animal songs, as of the nightingale, cuckoo, heron, owl, fox, etc. Riddle, wishing, and wager songs, and (rarely) religious songs constitute the last classes. In the second part of his history, the author prints 356 specimens of dance songs and melodies, in chronological sequence. Among these illustrative dance songs the epic folk-song, the ballad of the Child type, is the type playing the least conspicuous rdle. How any scholar who examines Bohme's display of mediaeval dance-song material — it is strikingly parallel to English dance-song material — can retain the belief that lyric-epic pieces like the Child
In the Child pieces, the story, not suggestion of movement or suitability for movement, is the main thing. When a refrain is present, the only sure inference to be made from its presence is that the piece was made to be sung, or possibly to be recited orally. The refrain is present in mediaeval as in modern songs which have no connection with the dance. But the refrain itself is not an essential in the Child pieces as it is in the Danish; we have just pointed out that hardly a fourth, by Professor Gummere's count, have refrains. In those which are surely old, like The Battle of Otterbourne, The Hunting of the Cheviot, or Judas, no refrain is present. It is not then a constant feature, but occurs variably. Nor is it constant even for individual ballads, but fluctuates, apparently, with the melodies to which they were sung. If the Child ballad, or its archetype, was a dance song, the refrain formula ought to persist above all else, through oral tradi
pieces were conditioned first of all by mediaeval dances, is hard to understand. They seem to be a lyric type least to be associated with Buch usage.
It is true that Professor Bohme, whose book was published in 1886, begins with the view that "Tanzlieder waren die ersten Lieder," "Beim Tanze wurden die altesten epischen Dichtungen (erzShlende Volkslieder) gesungen, durch den Tanz sind sie veranlasst worden . . .," "Die alteste Poesie eines jeden Volkes ist eine Verbindung von Tanz, Spiel, und Gesang." But his material does not bear out his preliminary statements, nor is he insistent upon the narrative song as the earliest dance song, as his book proceeds. He tells us, p. 230, that we learn the origin and the form of dance songs best from the South German Schnadahiipftn, short two- or four-line songs, to familiar melodies, often improvised (see his fourth class) by singers and dancers. Among these songs, the heroic element hardly appears, and the historic never. A careful survey of the citations in Bohme's Oeschichte des Tanzes should disillusion believers in the ballad as the characteristic type of mediaeval dance song, or as the leading lyric type of dance genesis.
tion and dance usage, as it does in the dance or ring-game songs of which we are sure. It is what should identify the individual ballads. Moreover, refrains appear very abundantly in the later pieces and in broadsides; that is, they are not distanced, the farther we get from the hypothetical dance-throngs with which they are supposed to be bound up.
When the English and Scottish ballads do use the refrain, they use it in the art way, not in the folk way. It is something extraneous, introduced from the outside, varying for the same ballad, subject to modification or replacement at the will of the singers, not part of the fabric of the song. And like the refrains of the art songs of the middle ages, carols, or roundels, or ballades, it comes at regular intervals. It is not handled like the repetitions of traditional dance songs, usually the most stable element of the song, nor in the crude way of much of the repetition in unlettered folk-improvisations. Nor should it be confused with the one-word and two-word songs chanted in the choral repetitions of savage tribes. The latter are not refrains, but the whole song.
Refrains and choral repetitions are more necessary to other kinds of mediaeval lyric verse than they are to ballads. It is not, in fact, the presence of a refrain, or of choral repetition that makes the Child pieces ballads. What is essential, if pieces are to be classified as ballads, is that they tell a story in verse. If they are ballads of the Child type they probably exhibit structural or lyrical repetition in their presentation of narrative material; but no amount of structural or lyrical repetition makes a piece a ballad unless a narrative element is present. Repetition of both types is a striking characteristic, for example, of revival hymns, and these had their origin neither as ballads nor as dance songs,59 and it is characteristic, most of all, of game and dance songs proper; yet these are not ballads. In practice, it is conceded by everybody, communalists too, that a lyric may have a refrain, or repeated lines, as do many of the lyrics from the Elizabethan dramatists, yet not be a ballad. Sumer is icumen in has a refrain, but is not a ballad; the Bannockburn song has a refrain, but is not a ballad. On the other hand, a lyric may have no refrain or choral repetition, like King Estmere, or Thomas Rymer, yet be a ballad. As already pointed out, the name ballad attached itself to a type of lyric which is pretty far removed from the mediaeval lyric type of early dance employment. If we are to insist on a dance element in a lyric which we are to classify as a ballad, we might apply the name, with better right, to art lyrics, or to folk lyrics of the fluid traditional type, held to unity and memorableness by the refrain, which persist in the ring-games of young people and in children's songs; or we should restrict it to genuine dance songs, of which we have many of equal age with the majority of ballads which have come down to us.
In the English and Scottish ballads, dancing plays hardly any role. It is referred to a fair number of times; but as a recreation for the lords and ladies who appear in the ballads it plays a less striking part than does the game of ball, its rival and a recreation with which it was
6» Compare "Incremental repetition made up the whole frame of The Maid Freed from the Gallows simply because such ballads were still part and parcel of the dance" (The Popular Ballad, p. 117). Repetition is emphasized as the most characteristic feature of ballads, pp. 117-134, etc.
often combined. It is far less frequent than reference to songs and to minstrelsy. Mostly the allusions are to dancing of the more modern type, accompanied by the music of instruments; and they bear testimony to the coming of dance-modes from France. A few typical passages are the following:
Seek no minstrels to play, mother,
No dancers to dance in your room; But tho your son comes, Leesome Brand, Yet he comes sorry to the town.
Leesome Brand.
There was two little boys going to the school,
And twa little boys they be, They met three brothers playing at the ba, And ladies dancing, hey.
Get dancers here to dance, she sais,
And minstrels for to play; For here's my young son, Florentine, Come here wi me to stay.
The Earl of Mar's Daughter.
Two might have reference to dancing of the older type:
Her father led her through the ha' Her mither danced before them a'. The Cruel Brother.
When dinner it Was past and done,
And dancing to begin We'll go take the bride's maidens, And we'll go fill the ring.
0 ben then cam the auld French lord, Saying, Bride, will ye dance with me? "Awa, awa, ye auld French lord, Your face I wowna see." Fair J met.
Fair Janet, with its theme of probation by dancing, closely resembles certain Scandinavian and German ballads, but has lessened the part played by the dance test.
The internal evidence that the English and Scottish ballads were used as dance songs is very meager, compared, for example, with the very abundant internal evidence that they were sung. But in practice, few scholars would now make special claim that they were used as dance songs. No doubt they were, here and there, as in late times, we have seen, were Barbara Allen and The Two Sisters, in this country. The refrains of several might connect them with the dance, as Mrs. Brown's The Bonny Birdy (no. 82), or The Maid and the Palmer (no. 21). But most sound more suitable for recital or singing than to accompany rhythmic motion. Fitted to dance tunes they might be used as dance songs, but typically they were composed for other purposes. It is pretty hard for the student of real dance song to feel that the
mass of the Child pieces, or their archetypes, developed from the folk-dance. Mediaeval rural throngs, like their descendants to-day, probably danced mostly to something already familiar, and in itself suitable; more rarely they may have danced to their own spontaneous but inconsequential and impermanent improvisations. The typical mediaeval dance song was, however, more lyric than epic. The English and Scottish ballads are as epic as they are lyric.
There is a classic passage in The Complaynt of Scotland/0 1549, by which we can check pretty well our assumptions and conclusions. The author of The Complaynt makes his "shepherds" (pretty literary and classical shepherds they are, genuine shepherds of the "Golden Age") tell tales, sing songs, and afterwards dance in a ring. Among the 48 tales with which they amused themselves, alongside Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Arthurian romance, and classical stories, as of Hercules, or of Hero and Leander, are listed the tale of "robene hude and litil ihone," and the tale of the " zong tamlene" (Tamlane). Among the 36 songs, are the Henry VIII Pastance with gude companye, The frog cam to the myl dur, The battel of the hayrlau, and The hunttis of cheuet — probably the song that Sidney praised; also The perssee and the mongumrye met, i. e., The Battle of Otterbourne. The Child pieces referred to thus far have been either told or sung, as we should expect. Then comes a list of 30 dance pieces — most of them obviously such, as Al cristyn mennis dance, The gosseps dance, The alman haye, The dance of kyrlrynne, Schaik a trot, etc. The
so Edited by J. A. H. Murray, for the Early English Text Society, 1872, vol. 1, p. 63.
list is headed by The Hunt Is Up, the tune of which is well fitted for dancing. No Child pieces appear. Number 92, Robene hude, is probably a chanson de Robin (see Cotgrave), or Robin Hood and Maid Marian piece. There were many Robin Hood dances, and they are not to be identified with the Robin Hood ballads. Number 93, Thorn of lyn, is not the ballad Tamlane, listed among the recited pieces, but the very different and wholly appropriate song of Young Thomlin, licensed in 1557-58. Number 108, Ihonne ermistrangis dance, is the one possible Child piece of the 30; but neither Mr. Furnivall nor Mr. Murray believes it to be identical with any of the four ballads involving Armstrongs (Johnny Armstrong, Johnny Armstrong's Last Goodnight, Jock o' the Side, Dick of the Cow) which have come down to us. The Armstrong ballads in Child's collection are hardly suitable as dance songs.
Should not the Complaynt's roll of tales, songs, and dance songs, read very differently, had the English and Scottish ballads been the typical songs for the dances of rural throngs? The ballads which are mentioned are not mentioned as dance songs, and they are in highly literary and aristocratic company. The dance songs which are mentioned seem to be exactly of the suitable type which we should expect.
Much dance-song material, primitive, mediaeval, and modern — the latter in our still-existent ring-dance songs — is available, from which to make observation and to generalize. The tendencies to be inferred from it are exactly the reverse of those assumed by Professor Gummere, and currently accepted in America.81
81 That belief in dance origin, emergence from the illiterate, com
1. When songs already existent are used as communal dance songs, t'iey tend to retrograde to simple repetitions of striking lines or titles. If narrative, they are likely to lose the story. As for primitive dance songs, they are never narrative.
2. The repetitions of communal dance songs are much more abundant than the repetitions of the ballads, and they belong more genuinely to the fabric of the song. They are not of the symmetrical art type, of regular recurrence, the refrain type proper, but are cruder, or more pervading. Often some striking formula recurs over and over, and is the main song. For ballads proper, the refrain is not the most stable element but the most fluctuating.
3. There is no tendency for dance songs, whether situation songs or dialogue songs, to develop epic elements or to become "refined and ennobled by tradition," i. e., to become real ballads.62 Real ballads used as dance songs tend to decay, through the wearing process of dance usage. Songs used as dance songs do not tend to develop into ballads, but rather to become simplified to some striking line or formula.
4. As regards form, genuine communal dance songs are not necessarily or invariably in ballad stanza, but of
munal improvisation, epic development, and the priority of dialogue and situation songs, has current American acceptance, is shown by the fact that such belief is set forth, without hesitation or question, in the two latest American ballad anthologies: Professor W. M. Hart's English Popular Ballads, 1916, and Professor G. H. Stempel's A Book of Ballads, 1917.
62 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p. 76, "The refining and ennobling processes of tradition" . . . "ennobled and enriched in its traditional course," p. 28, etc.
more fluid and variable pattern. They exhibit no one fixed stanzaic type. Sometimes they consist of but one short stanza.
We are hardly justified by the evidence, then, in saying that the English ballads represent a lyric type which has been "divorced from the dance, originally their vital condition." The process is not that ballads, originating in the dance, find permanence and gain epic character when cut loose from it. Bather do already existing ballads find themselves utilized for, adapted to, and mutilated in dance song usage. There is no testimony that the structure of the English ballads rests upon the dance, but rather the contrary; for theirs is not the structure of the normal and more appropriate dance song. That the dance songs of primitive peoples, and the earliest dance songs that we have in English, and our latest surviving dance songs are all three lyric, not lyric-epic, does not point to the origin of the English ballad type by "divorce from the dance."
There are three forms of psychic suggestion in poetry; first, emotional, as in the simple lyric; second, ideational, as in the narrative; third, motor, as in the refrain type, coupled with simple imperatives. The first and second types may be associated with action in the sense of conduct, and they are so associated in primitive poetry. They are sometimes continued traditionally in what are called "dances," but are really drama; that is, they become histrionic. The third type is the only form fundamentally associated with the dance, and it is psychologically simple, i. e., presentative not representative. This psychical distinction should be borne in mind in study of the subject. Not all lyrics tempt to movement, and narratives (ballads proper) never, one would think, tempt to measured movement of the dance type.
Association with the dance of the festal multitude may be in place for the Erench ballade, or for the Italian ballata, but our own ballads do not include pieces which were primarily dance songs. That the English ballad type had its genesis in the folk-dance seems to be not only unproved but unlikely. Those who believe in dance genesis for the lyric in general may find in the dance the ultimate genesis of the lyric-epic type which we call ballad. But, in that case, no attempt should be made so sharply to differentiate the ballad in origins from other types of lyric verse. Those scholars who hold both positions at the same time, affirming that ballads originated as dance songs, yet that they were manifestly composed in some way utterly different from other lyric verse, are maintaining positions which are incompatible.
To the present writer, the gift of song seems as instinctive in man as the gift of rhythmic motion, not a development from the latter. Both were his from the first. No festal dancing chorus of a unanimous throng is needed to account for the song of birds, and song, the expression of emotion, not motion, may well be as instinctive in man as in birds. Other lyric forms, as lullabies, conjuring or healing songs, labor songs, love songs, are as primitive as choral dance songs, not offshoots of the latter. Children sing instinctively, and they make their own songs, without waiting for the communal inspiration of group dancing; and it is commonly assumed that the development of the child mirrors that of the race. The beliefs that from the dance emerged music and rhythmical utterance,
or song, that dance songs are the earliest lyrics, that narrative songs are the earliest dance songs, and that the English ballad type had its genesis in the dance, are neither borne out by the evidence, nor intrinsically probable.