Bluegrass Messengers

The English Ballads and the Church
by Louise Pound
PMLA, Vol. 35, No. 2 (1920), pp. 161-188

PUBLICATIONS OF THE
Modern La nguage As sociation of A merica 1930
VOL. XXXV, 2 NEW SERIES, VOL. XXVIII, 2

IX.-THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH

Many origins have been suggested for the type of narrative song appearing in the English and Scottish traditional
ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, improvisations
of mediaeval peasant communes, or descent
from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothesis
of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it
has always retained supporters. There remains a possibility
not yet brought forward which deserves to be presented
for what it is worth, since the problem, though it
may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student.
We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of
pre-Elizabethan days, and we can get but little farther
with the study of the ballads by way of research into
medieval music. Moreover the earliest texts remaining
to us seem to have been meant for recital rather than for
singing. In general, the melodies of ballads are more
shifting, less dependable, than are the texts, in the sense
161
LOUISE POUND
of the plots and the characters which the texts present.
This is true of contemporary folk-songs and it was probably
true earlier. One text may be sung to a variety of airs
or one air may serve for many texts. Nor can we get much
farther with the study of ballads by way of the minstrels.
They have had much attention already; and nothing has
ever been brought out really barring them from major
responsibility for ballad creation and diffusion in the earlier
periods. Again, we can get but little farther by studying
the mediaeval dance, or folk-improvisations, or the
dance songs of primitive peoples, all of which have been
associated with the Child ballads to an exaggerated degree.
It is time to try a new angle of approach-the last remaining-
although the hypothesis which it suggests is far removed
from the theory of genesis enjoying the greatest acceptance
at the present time, and although it-like its predecessors-
may not take us very far.
It has been customary among theorizers completely to
discard the chronological order of the ballad texts remaining
to us, and to argue toward origin and development
from a type of ballad like Lord Randal and Edward, of
comparatively late appearance, when such reversal of
chronology best suited the theory to be advanced. The
contrary procedure, theorizing from the facts of chronology,
is the logical one. If the ballad texts which are
oldest are given attention and emphasis, actual fact adhered
to and conjecture omitted, can anything distinctive
be reached ? This method of approach is one to which the
ballads have never been subjected in more than a cursory
way. If it is tried, in what direction does it lead ?
162
TIIE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCIt
I
THE EARLIEST BALLAD TEXTS
If we accept the body of English and Scottish ballad
material as defined by Professor F. J. Child, the oldest
ballad texts existing have to do rather strikingly with the
church. They have unmistakably an ecclesiastical stamp,
and sound like an attempt to popularize Biblical history
or legend. By our oldest texts are meant those to be found
in early manuscripts of established date, not texts recovered
from an oral source or found in manuscripts of later
centuries.1 The earliest remaining English ballad is conceded
to be the Judas, a narrative of 36 lines in rhyming
couplets, which endows him with a wicked sister, refers to
his betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of silver, and reflects
some of the curiosities of mediaeval legend concerning
him.2 The manuscript preserving it, in the library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, is certainly of the thirteenth
century. The same manuscript contains A Ballad of the
Twelfth Day, a ballad of the same general nature as the
Judas and written in the same hand.3 It has probably
escaped general recognition as a ballad because composed
in monorhyme quatrains, a more elaborate form, instead
of in the couplets of the Judas.
From the fifteenth century comes Inter Diabolus et
1 For the dating of ballad texts, see E. Flilgel, Zur Chronologie der
englischen Balladen, Anglia, vol. xxI (1899), pp. 312 ff.
Compare P. F. Baum, "The English Ballad of Judas Iscariot,"
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol.
xxxI (1916), p. 181, and "The Mediaeval Legend of Judas Iscariot,"
ibid., p. 481.
8 Printed, with editorial notes, by W. W. Greg, The Modern Language
Review, vol. viii, p. 64, and vol. IX (1913), p. 235.
163
LOUISE POUND
Virgo, ancestor of many riddling ballads, preserved in the
Bodleian library at Oxford, a piece in which the devil is
worsted by a clever and devout maiden. The questions
and answers reach their climax in "God's flesh is better
than bread " and " Jesus is richer than the King." Likewise
from the fifteenth century is St. Stephen and Herod,
in the Sloane manuscript of about the middle of the century,
which incorporates the widespread mediseval legend
of the cock crowing from the dish Cristus natus est, a
legend which appears also in the well-known carol or religious
ballad, The Carnal and the Crane. Als I yode on a
Mounday, in 8-line stanzas, preserved in a fourteenthcentury
manuscript in the Cotton collection, is hardly a
ballad, but a poem to which the later ballad, The Wee Wee
Man, may be related. It is not admitted among ballads by
Professor Child. Thomas Rymer is generally accounted
old, since its hero is Thomas of Erceldoune; we do not
have it, however, in early form, but from the eighteenth
century, and there is no determining the time of its composition.
There is a fifteenth-century poem, in ballad
stanza, Thomas of Erseldoune, preserved in the Thornton
manuscript, but it is usually classified as a romance or a
romantic poem, never as a ballad. The existing ballad, on
the same theme, is probably not a legacy from the romance,
but an independent creation telling the same story. Possibly
it is based on the romance. Among earlier texts are
left, then, only a few greenwood and outlaw pieces from
no farther back than the middle of the fifteenth century.
The first is Robin and Gandeleyn, a greenwood ballad from
about 1450, which opens in the reporter's manner of so
many of the chansons d'aventure:-
I herde the carpynge of a clerk
Al at yone wodes ende.
164
THEI ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH 165
Others are Robin Hood and the Monk (which has a reverdi
opening), Robin Hood and the Potter of about 1500, and
A Gest of Robin Hood of perhaps a few years later. There
were earlier songs and rhymes, just as there were later
songs and rhymes of Robin Hood,4 but whether he was
celebrated in the ballad manner prior to the fifteenth century
we do not know.5 The ecclesiastical pieces are in the
couplet form usually recognized by scholars as the older
for ballads, while Robin and Gandeleyn and the Robin
Hood pieces are in the familiar four-line stanza which became
the staple ballad stanza. We should, very likely, go
somewhat earlier than the thirteenth-century Judas for the
genesis of the lyric type which it represents;. but there is
no doubt that, in respect to chronological appearance, our
oldest ballads deal not with themes of love, romance, domestic
tragedy, adventure, chronicle, or even outlawrythough
the latter come as early as the fifteenth centurybut
instead are strikingly ecclesiastical.
It need hardly be pointed out that this scrutiny is a
logical one to make, though it would be idle to think its
results decisive. It seems to suggest that the ballad as a
4 Like the " rhymes " of Robin Hood mentioned in Piers Plowman.
6 The music of some of the Robin Hood songs, sometimes at least,
seems to have been church music, or music of the same type. See a
passage on "pryksong" in the Interlude of The Four Elements,
dated by Schelling about 1517. (Halliwell edition, Percy Society
Publications, 1848, pp. 50, 51.) See also pricksong in The Oxford
Dictionary. There should be nothing surprising in the singing of
ballads to music of ecclesiastical type, if such was the case. In contemporary
folk-song, hymn tunes are constantly utilized, in the
United States and elsewhere-as in the Faroe Islands, according to
Thuren. The words of John Brown, in the period of the Civil War,
were put together to a popular Methodist camp-meeting tune. Jean
Beck (La Musique des Troubadours, Paris, 1910, pp. 19-24) leans to
the opinion that the source of troubadour music, hence of Romance
lyric poetry in general, is to be found in the music of the church.
LOUISE POUND
poetic type, a story given in simple lyrical or singable
form, may have received impetus from, or have been
evolved through the desire to popularize a scriptural story
or legend. In other words, it is as though the ballad, like
the religious carols and the miracle plays and a great mass
of ecclesiastical lyrics and narrative poetry, might be a part
of that great mediaeval movement to popularize for edifying
reasons biblical characters and tales, a movement
having its first impulse in the festival occasions of the
church. Then, again like the drama, it passes from ecclesiastical
hands, with edification the purpose, into secular
hands, with the underlying purpose of entertainment. To
follow farther the possibilities, once the type was popularized
and mainly in'the hands of the minstrels, as the
drama passed into the control of the guilds, a variety of
material was assimilated, and (still like the drama) the
religious material, having historically initial place, became
submerged and ultimately well-nigh lost to view. The
minstrels of great houses sang of the martial deeds of those
houses, as of the Percys, the Stanleys, the Howards.6
Popular outlaws were celebrated, though in a somewhat
upper-class way, in the Robin Hood pieces, in the period
when outlaws were popular figures in literature; while for
the entertainment of aristocratic mixed audiences, for
which so many of the literary types of the Middle Ages
were developed, all kinds of material, romantic and legendary
and the like, were utilized. In its period of full development,
the ballad shades off into many types, the epic
chanson in Robin, Hood, the allegory in The Rose of England,
the verse chronicle in The Battle of Otterbourne, the
romance in Sir Aldingar and Earl Brand, the aube in The
8 In The Hunting of the Cheviot; The Rose of England and Flodden
Field; Sir Andrew Barton.
166
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
Gray Cock, the lament in Johnny Ccampbell, the carol in
The Cherry Tree Carol, and theological discussion in verse
in The Carnal and the Crane.7 The ecclesiastics and the
minstrels, between them, were responsible for all or nearly
all the new types of mediaeval poetry, and (possibly
enough) for the ballads too.8 Another illustration of the
passing of an ecclesiastical mode into secular hands, is the
Mary worship of the church, which was secularized in Provengal
poetry and crossed to England in the woman worship
of the chivalric code, reflected in the romances and
the romantic lyrics.
7Other "literary" features of the ballads, the popular spring
morning (reverdi) opening of the outlaw pieces and the frequent
chanson d'aventure opening, were mentioned in connection with the
discussion of fifteenth-century texts.
8If ecclesiastical ballads are the earliest ballads, The Carnal and
the Crane, a theological discussion between birds of the type liked, in
the Middle Ages, in which the Crane instructs her interrogator on
the childhood and life of Jesus and in several apocryphal incidents,
might be a ballad of earlier type than Lord Randal. Though itself
first recorded in an eighteenth-century text, this ballad-carol has
unmistakably early affiliations, as with St. Stephen and Herod, and
early legendary matter concerning Christ. And the ballads Dives
and Lazarus, traceable to the sixteenth century, The Maid and the
Palmer of the Percy Manuscript, and Brown Robin's Confession of
Buchan's collection, might represent an older type of material than
Edward or Babylon. But this is purely speculative, and of no value
as argument.
The ballad Huglh of Lincoln, or The Jew's Daughter, which still
has vitality, though its earliest texts come from the middle of the
eighteenth century, takes us back in its tragic story and its discovery
of murder by miracle to the thirteenth century. The story of Hugh
of Lincoln first appears in The Annals of Waverley, 1255, and in
Matthew of Paris. It has parallels in the twelfth century and a
cognate in Chaucer's The Prioresse's Tale. Hugh of Lincoln refers
us to an old story of definite date more certainly than do most
of the ballads. It deserves mention among those exhibiting, it would
appear, material of older type than the outlaw, chronicle, or romantic
ballads.
167
LOUISE POUND
It is certain that the earliest ballad texts do not sound
as though they ever had any connection with the dance.
Religious material sometimes appeared in mediceval dance
songs, but it was the rarest of the many types of material
found in such songs.9 There are traces of sporadic connection
between the church and liturgical dancing in the
AMiddle Ages, but established or widespread liturgical
dancing is extremely doubtful. Testimonies are too abundant
as to the stand taken by the mediaeval church against
dancing, whether by professional dancers or by the folk.
The application of the name "ballad," which means
dance song, to the traditional lyric-epic did not come in a
specific way until the eighteenth century; hence an etymological
argument from the name, as indicating a dance
origin for the species, should have no weight. A " ballad "
in the fourteenth century was usually the artificial species
which we now call the " ballade," a species which is to be
associated with the dance. The name which we have fixed
upon for them is perhaps responsible for our long association
of the English and Scottish type with the dance, and
for our refusal to look elsewhere for its genesis. In a manner
exactly parallel, the word carol was applied late to religious
songs of the Nativity and of Christmas (French
noels). When the word carol first appeared in English it
meant a secular dance song of spring and love. We name
religious songs of Christmas by a word that first meant
dance song, as we do our traditional lyric-epics in verse.
But for the definite suggestion of their name, it might
seem less surprising that our earliest ballad texts associate
themselves with biblical edification, not with dancing
throngs on the village green.
There are no earlier ballad documents in other countries
Bohme, Geschichte des Tanzes (1888), pp. 244 ff.
168
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
than in England, so that the chronology of the ballad's
appearance is the only certain test that we have concerning
the time of composition of a ballad text. The age of the
story or theme of a ballad and the age of the ballad itself may
be quite different matters. Besides, not all nations show a
liking for ballads. The South African Dutch are said to
have folk-tales, but no ballads. Italian folk-song, except
in the extreme north, had no ballads, and French folk-song
has no such wealth of ballad poetry as English has. Some
parts of Spain have no ballads. The Danish ballads are
those most closely related to the English. The oldest Danish
manuscript collection of ballads comes from about
1550, although there are fragments of ballads and references
to ballads which take us back somewhat earlier. One
not very significant ballad, Ridderen i Hjorteham, is of
about 1450. A systematic examination of Scandinavian
ballads from the angle of approach of the role played by
ecclesiastical material or by ecclesiastical agents of composition
and diffusion, might have some bearing for or
against the conjectures of the present paper; but probably
it would yield little or nothing decisive. Also to be desired
is an investigation of the religious narrative lyric for Old
French popular verse, since the mediaeval English lyric
owes so much to French sources.
The terminus a quo for ballad origin must be the beginning
of the twelfth century. Ballads of the rhyming
form of the English and Scottish type cannot in origin
antedate the Norman Conquest. If the Anglo-Saxons had
ballads they were of the character of Old Teutonic verse,
in some respects like the Brunanburh song, or the Battle
of Maldon, or possibly like some of the Charms; in any
case they were not in the rhyming form of the later ballads,
the lyrical type which is under discussion here. The musical
pliability of the lyric came from the south, across the
169
LOUISE POUND
Channel, modifying the stubbornness of the Old Northern
verse and its sameness of movement. Some old lore may
have been handed on into the rhymed forms, old wine passing
into new bottles, but the old song modes made way in
general for the newer. Ballads of the rhyming Child pattern
must have arisen, like modern poetry and prosody in
general, after 11001. We have one ballad, Judas, and possibly
a second, A Ballad of Twelfth Night, from the thirteenth
century; and in general from 1200 onward much
popular verse remains. It would help if more remained,
but we need be at no loss as to what was in lyrical currency
or what suited the popular taste. It will not do to assume
that a type of ballad verse, the Child type, existed among
the folk long before verse of its rhyming lyrical pattern, a
new mediaeval type, makes its appearance in the lyric in
general. The folk are more likely to have adhered to the
old alliterative verse with its dual movement long after it
had lost popularity in higher circles than they are to have
invented new rhyming forms before these appear from professional
hands.
II
SOME BALLAD AFFILIATIONS
If ballad literature began with the religious ballads of the
clericals, earlier ballads might be expected to show affinities
with miracle plays and various types of scriptural
and saints'-legend and other theological matter in verse and
with religious lyrics. This they do show; and the resemblances
are far stronger than they are to secular matter
coming from the same early periods. Many of our existing
Child ballads are on the border line between ballads and
carols (French noels), like The Bitter Withy, The Holy
WVell, The Cherry-Tree Carol, The Carnal and the Crane,
170
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
so that they appear in illustrative collections of both types
of verse. They are easily accessible in collections of
both ballads and carols, are included in the Child collection,
and they need not be reproduced here. They deserve
either classification and make clear that the ballad and the
religious carol may be related forms. There is also obvious
relationship to the miracle plays and their cognates. The
opening and the end of the thirteenth-century Harrowing
of Hell 10 exhibit ballad-like stanzas:-
Alle herkneth to me nou,
A strif wolle y tellen ou
of ihesu ant of sathan,
tho ihesu wes to helle ygan . . .
in godhed tok he then way
that to helle gates lay.
The he come ther tho saide he
asse y shal nouthe telle the.
The Brome Abraham and Isaac is often suggestive of the
ballad manner. It is familiar, and space need not be given
to quotation from it. The ballads also show affinities to
scriptural and saints'-legend matter in verse of narrative
type.11
10 Ed. all versions, W. H. Hulme, E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 100
(1907).
11 Compare in The Minor Pieces of the Vernon Manuscript, vol. I,
ed. Horstmann, E. E. T. S., No. 98 (1892) "The Miracles of Our
Lady," p. 138, "The Saving of Crotey City," "The Child Slain by
the Jews," "A Jew Boy in an Oven," etc., the opening of "The
Visions of Seynt Poul wan he was rapt into Paradys," etc.; vol. II,
ed. Furnivall (1901), "Susannah, or Seemly Susan," p. 626; and in
the Sloane Manuscript 2593, " St. Nicholas and Three Maidens " and
"Nowel, Mary moder cum and se," etc. Also many pieces in Ms.
Balliol 354.
The religious tag stanzas at the end of older ballads-often
dropped in later texts-account for themselves better if emerging
from ecclesiastical influence than if emerging from the purely secular
minstrelsy condemned for its influence by the church. Examples are
171
LOUISE POUND
Among the earlier minstrels, the dramatic instinct
brought impersonation in which monologue and dialogue
were given dramatically, by one individual, perhaps sometimes
in special costume. There are religious pieces like
the thirteenth-century Harroiting of lell, or like Judas
(it may well be) or St. Stephen and Herod, which suggest
that they were to be given dramatically. The dramatic
element is strong in ballads and also in carols and in many
religious poems intended to be given for instruction.
Most striking, however, is the fact that in lyrical quality
and style 12 the closest affinities of the ballads of the pre-
Elizabethan period seem to be with carols and with religious
songs. It is in manuscripts containing religious lyrical
pieces that some of the oldest ballads and the nearest
approaches to ballads are found.13 Impose the lyrical
the endings of The Battle of Otterbourne or The Hunting of the
Cheviot:
Now let us all for the Perssy praye
to Jhesu most of myght,
To bryng hys sowlle to the blysse of heven
for he was a gentyll knight.
Or-
Jhesue Crist our balys bete,
and to the blys vs brynge.
Thus was the hountyng of the Chivyat:
God send vs alle good endyng.
But this is uncertain ground. Such passages appear in the romances,
as Sir Orpheo, as well as in sermons, like the old Kentish
sermons of the thirteenth century. In the Danish ballads, Steenstrup
thinks these tag stanzas a sign of lateness.
12The influence of the song of the early church has often been
pointed out. " The lyric art, it is hardly too much to say," declares
Rhys, "was in English kept alive for nearly three centuries by the
hymns of the monks and lay brothers " (Lyric Poetry [1913], p. 19).
13The English religious lyric of the Middle Ages far exceeds in
quantity that of secular verse and it appears much earlier. The
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries afford many specimens. That
many were written in this period is clear from the number which
172
TIIE ENGLISII BALLADS AND TIlE CHIURCII
quality of some types of carols upon a variety of narrative
themes, or situation themes, and the type of ballad is
reached which emerges in such abundance in the later sixteenth
and earlier seventeenth centuries. The early Tudor
period was one of great musical impulse, and the singing
of ballads to melodies might then have won in favor over
the older recital. Be this as it may, it is in the sixteenth
century that the ballad texts which remain to us 14 first
assume the lyrical refrains that both the religious and the
older secular carols exhibited earlier. The Sloane mantuscript
of the middle of the fifteenth century is the richest
in ballads or ballad-like pieces before the Percy manuscript,
and it contains mainly religious and moral songs,
three in Latin, nearly one hundred with Latin refrains,
and numerous Christmas carols. The earliest approaches
to the song manner of ballads which remain to us are
ecclesiastical.
There is lyrical or structural repetition in the ballad
manner in the early fourteenth-century Song of the Incarnation:-
15
I syng of a mayden that is makeles;
Kyng of alle kynges to here sone che ches.
he cam also stylle ther his moder was,
as dew in aprylle that fallyt on the gras.
yet remain to us. Before the thirteenth century, most religious
lyrics were in Latin.
4 With the possible exception of Robin and Gandeleyn. I have
not been able to see the Harvard doctorate thesis of J. H. Boynton,
Studies in the English Ballad Refrain, with a Collection of Ballad
and Early Song Refrains (1897), for the thesis remained unpublished.
15 From the Sloane MS. 2593. And compare A Song of Joseph and
Mary in a manuscript of the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh, dated
1372, first printed by Professor Carleton F. Brown, Selections from
Old and Middle English (1918); also Lamentacio Dolorosa and
Lzllaby to the Infant Jesus, first printed (from the same manuscript)
by Professor Brown.
173
LOUISE POUND
he cam also stylle to his moderes bowr
as dew in aprille that fallyt on the flour.
he cam also stylle ther his moder lay,
as dew in aprille that fallyt on the spray.
moder & maydyn was neuer non but che;
wel may swych a lady godes moder be.
There is something of the lyrical quality of the ballads
in- 16
Adam lay y-boundyn, boundyn in a bond
fowr thousand wynter thowt he not to long
and all was for an appil, an appil that he took ....
and in carols like "A new yer, a new yer, a chyld was iborn,"
and in many others. And surely there are close
ballad affinities to be found in a song like this, written
down in the reign of Henry VIII:- 17
Lully lulley
The faucon hath stolen my make away.
1. He bare him up, he bare him down,
He bare him into an orchard brown. Lully, etc.
2. In that orchard there was an hall,
Which was hanged with purpill and pall. Lully, etc.
3. And in that hall there was a bed,
It was hanged with gold so red. Lully, etc.
4. And in that bed there lith a knight,
His woundes bleding day and night. Lully, etc.
6 Bernhard Fehr, Die Lieder der HS. Sloane 2593, Archiv, vol.
cix, p. 51. Compare also some of the short religious pieces edited
by Furnivall, E. E. T. S., vol. xv (1866), as "Christ Comes," p. 259,
from the Harleian MS. 7322.
17 MS. Balliol 354. Richard Hill's Commonplace Book, E. E. T. S.,
Extra Series 101 (1907). This book contains many sacred songs and
carols and many moral didactic and historical pieces and a few
worldly and humorous pieces. It abounds in approaches to the
ballad manner.
174
THE ENGLISIH BALLADS AND THE CHURCHI
5. By that bedside kneleth a may,
And she wepeth both night and day. Lully, etc.
6. And by that bed side there stondeth a stone,
Corpus Christi wreten there on. Lully, etc.
(Lully lulley, lully lulley
The faucon hath borne my make away.)
This song with a burden like a ballad, or like that of a
Christmas carol, was interpreted by Professor Fliigel as
the story of Christ's Passion, and his interpretation was
borne out by a discovery of a modern traditional carol by
F. Sidgwick.18 The song is a religious song. The tendency
in criticism has been to associate the ballads with
older heroic poetry or with romance, or with dance songs;
but comparison will show that, in the texts earliest to appear,
a closer connection in lyrical quality and in the use
of refrains and repetition is afforded by the religious lyrics.
The closest approaches which one finds to the ballad manner
are the religious pieces like those in the Sloane-and the
Hill manuscripts.
Lyrical narratives in couplet and quatrain form are admitted
as ballads. If the three-line carol stave - which
dropped from use because a less suitable form for narrative
verse 19-were recognized also, such pieces as the following
narrative carol 20 might be termed ballads. Both the couplet
and the carol stave had wide lyrical popularity earlier
than the quatrain.
18 See Notes and Queries, 1905. Christ is referred to again and
again as a " knight" in many religious songs from the Love Rune of
Thomas de Hales onward.
19 The iteration of triple rhyme brings monotony and checks the
speed of the narrative. Just as with the ballad, so with the popular
hymn stanza, the three-line form was replaced by the quatrain.
20 MS. Balliol 354. Richard Hill's Commonplace Book. Ed. Dyboski,
E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 101 (1907), p. 1.
175
LOUISE POUND
Owt of the est a sterre shon bright
For to shew thre kingis light,
Which had ferre traveled day & nyght
To seke that lord that all hath sent.
Therof hard kyng Herode anon,
That III kingis shuld cum thorow his regyon,
To seke a child that pere had non,
And after them sone he sent.
Kyng Herode cried to them on hye:
" Ye go to seke a child truly;
Go forth & cum agayn me by,
& tell me wher that he is lent."
Forth they went by the sterres leme,
Till they com to mery Bethlehem;
Ther they fond that swet barn-teme
That sith for vs his blode hath spent.
Balthasar kneled first a down
& said: " Hayll, Kyng, most of renown,
And of all kyngis thou berist the crown,
Therfor with gold I the present."
Melchior kneled down in that stede
& said: " Hayll, Lord, in they pryest-hede.
Receyve ensence to thy manhede,
I brynge it with a good entent."
Jasper kneled down in that stede
& said: "Hayll, Lord, in thy knyghthede,
I offer the myrre to thy godhede,
For thou art he that all hath sent."
Now lordis & ladys in riche aray,
Lyfte vp your hartis vpon this day,
& ever to God lett vs pray,
That on the rode was rent.
The following from the Hill manuscript 21 is not included
or mentioned by Professor Child, yet, if instead of
being narrated in the first person like a few of the ballads
21 Ed. Dyboski, E. E. T. S., 101, p. 40.
176
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
it were narrated in the third, like most of them, and if it
were in couplet or in the more usual quatrain form instead
of in monorhyme quatrains, who would hesitate to classify
it as a ballad ? It is clearly akin to the Judas which is so
classified.
"0 my harte is wo! " Mary she sayd so,
"For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."
"Whan that my swete son was XXXti wynter old,
Than the traytor Judas wexed very bold;
For XXXti platis of money, his master he had sold;
But whan I it wyst, lord my hart was cold.
O, my hart is woo! " [Mary, she sayd so,
" For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."]
"Vpon Shere Thursday than truly it was,
On my sonnes deth that Judas did on passe;
Many were the fals Jewes that folowed hym by trace,
& ther, beffore them all, he kyssed my sonnes face.
O, my hart is wo! " [Mary, she sayd so,
" For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."]
"My son, beffore Pilat browght was he;
& Peter said III tymes he knew hym not perde.
Pylat said vnto the Jewes: 'What say ye?'
Than they cried with on voys: 'Crucyfyge!'
O, my hart is woo! " [Mary, she sayd so,
" For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."]
"On Good Friday at the mownt of Caluary
My son was don on the crosse, nayled with naylis III,
Of all the frendis that he had, neuer on could he see,
But jentill the evangelist, that still stode hym by.
O, my hart is woo! " [Mary, she sayd so,
"For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."]
"Thowgh I were sorowfull, no man haue at yt wonder;
for howge was the erth-quak, horyble was the thonder;
I loked on my swet son on the cross that stod vnder;
Than cam Lungeus with a spere & clift his hart in sonder.
O, my hart is woo! " [Mary, she sayd so,
"For to se my dere son dye; & sonnes haue I no mo."]
2
1177
LOUISE POUND
Its relation to the Judas is seen when the two are read
side by side. The latter opens:-
Hit wes upon a Scerethorsday that vre louerd aros;
Ful milde were the wordes he spec to Iudas.
"Iudas, thou most to Iurselem, oure mete for to bugge;
Thritti platen of seluer thou here up othi ruggi. . ."
It is a somewhat arbitrary distinction which admits the
second piece as a ballad and denies to the more lyrical one
such classification. The pieces might well have emerged
from the same types of authorship and audience. The
thirteenth-century ballad of The Twelfth Night in the
same Trinity College manuscript and in the same handwriting
as the Judas, but in more elaborate stanza form,
has already been mentioned. It opens:-
Wolle ye iheren of twelte day, wou the present was ibroust.
In to betlem ther iesus lay, ther thre kinges him habbet isoust.
a sterre wiset hem the wey, sue nas neuer non iwroust,
ne werede he nouther fou ne grey, the louerd that us alle hauet
iwroust.
It seems difficult to believe that such religious pieces as
the Judas and the St. Stephen and Herod represent a type
to be developed by the addition of narrative from the
secular carol or dance song, as suggested by Professor
Ker.22 They owe much to religious songs. Perhaps if we
note that refrains of both types, of secular dance songs and
of religious songs, precede the appearance of refrains in
the English and Scottish ballads (these appear mostly in
the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries); if we
recognize as most essential in the ballads a narrative elemient
to be presented in the manner of the religious pieces;
and if we impose the somewhat arbitrary condition of
22 English Literature: Mediceval (1912). Home University Library
edition, p. 159.
178
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
couplet or quatrain form, barring the three-line carol stave,
quatrain monorhyme, and related forms, we are on fairly
safe ground. Certainly it seems quite unnecessary to retain
the hypothesis of connection with dance-song origin,
whether aristocratic, like the secular carols of Chaucer's
time, or of the folk. Behind the earliest ballad texts which
remain to us one finds no traces of affiliation with secular
dance songs.
The handling of the refrain is striking in the following
piece, also from the Hill manuscript, which, except for its
brevity and for our traditional rejection of narratives in
carol-stave form, we should classify as a ballad.23
THES TONINOGF S T. STEPHEN
Whan seynt Stevyn was at Jeruzalem,
Godis lawes he loved to lerne;
That made the Jewes to cry so clere & clen,
Lapidaverunt Stephanum,
Nowe syng we both all & sum:
Lapidauerunt Stephanum.
The Jewes that were both false & fell,
Agaynst seynt Stephyn they were cruell,
IHym to sle they made gret yell,
& lapidaverunt Stephanum
Nowe syng we, etc.
They pullid hym with-owt the town,
& then he mekely kneled down,
While the Jewes crakkyd his crown,
Quia lapidaverunt Stephanum.
Nowe syng we, etc.
Gret stones & bones at hym they caste,
Veynes & bones of hym they braste,
& they killed hym at the laste,
Quia lapidaverunt Stephanum.
Nowe syng we, etc.
E. E. T. S., 101 (1907), p. 32. The Stoning of St. Stephen is
not mentioned by Professor Child. Both the St. Stephen pieces are
probably to be classed as St. Stephen day songs or carols.
179
LOUISE POUND
Pray we all that now be here,
Vnto seynt Stephyn, that marter clere,
To save vs all from the fendis fere.
Lapidauerunt Stephanum.
Nowe syng we, etc.
It arrays itself alongside St. Stephen and IHerod. The two
lyrics, one adjudged to be a ballad, the other not to be one,
are at least not so different in type as to make necessary the
hypothesis of an utterly different mode of origin for the
second. The Stoning of St. Stephen is the more lyrical of
the two narratives and, unlike the earlier piece, it is provided
with a refrain.
The following affords yet another illustration of an ecclesiastical,
or semi-ecclesiastical, narrative song, from the
period when 'Child ballads were not yet abundant.24
THE MURDER OF THOMAS A BEKET
Lystyn, lordyngis both gret & small,
I will you tell a wonder tale,
Howe holy chirch was browght in bale
Cum magna iniuria.
A, a, a, a nunc gaudet ecclesia.
The grettest clark in this londe,
Thomas of Canturbury, I vnderstonde,
Slayn he was with wykyd honde,
Malorum potencia.
A, a, a, a nunc gaudet ecclesia.
The knyghtis were sent from Harry the kynge,
That day they dide a wykid thynge,
Wykyd men, with-owt lessynge,
Per regis imperia.
A, a, a, a nunc gaudet ecclesia.
They sowght the bisshop all a-bowt,
With-in his place, and with-owt,
Of Jhesu Crist they had no dowght
Per sua malicia.
A, a, a, a nunc gaudet ecclesia.
24 Balliol MS. 354. The triple rhyme stanza of these ecclesiastical
ballads appears also in Miracle plays, e. g., the Chester Noah's Flood.
180
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
They opened ther mowthes wonderly wide,
& spake to hym with myche pryde:
"Traytor, here thow shalt abide,
Ferens mortis tedia."
A, a, a, a nunc gaudet ecclesia.
Beffore the auter he kneled down,
& than they pared his crown,
& stered his braynes vp so down,
Optans celi gawdia.
A, a, a, a nunc gaudet ecclesia.
Recognition of song-narratives in carol stave, as well as
those in couplet and quatrain form, would admit this piece
also among ballads.
III
BALLADS AND CLERICALS
Clericals are known to have composed and sung religious
lyrics; but an alternative hypothesis from that of direct ecclesiastical
creation is that a lyric type successfully developed
by minstrels, namely the song-story-existing alongside
the songs of eulogy, of derision, the love songs, and
other matter which they had in stock for entertainmentwas
adopted and made use of for its own ends by the
church. There would be abundant parallels for such a
taking over. Ritson 25 speaks of the utilization of popular
airs by the Methodists of his day, much as they had been
utilized earlier by the Puritans. The practice was not unknown
to the evangelists Moody and Sankey and is not extinct
among revivalists of the present time. Sumer is icumen
in of the thirteenth century perhaps owes its preservation
to the religious words written below the secular
ones in the manuscript which has come down to us, and
"Dissertation on Ancient Songs and Music, prefixed to Ancient
Songs and Ballads. Vol. I (ed. of 1829), p. lxxviii.
181
LOUISE POUND
there are other examples in old manuscripts of religious
adaptation of secular lyrics. To find illustration farther
back, Ealdhelm is described by William of Malmesbury 26
as sometimes standing in gleeman's garb on a bridge and
inserting words of scriptural content into his lighter songs
-an early example of the connection between the church
and songs for the common folk. After the Conquest, with
the coming of a new type of song, the employment of the
short recited tale or of the sung story for popularizing religious
material might well have produced pieces like the
thirteenth-century Judas or the later St. Stephen and
Herod or Inter Diabolus et Virgo. If the modes of the
church were often utilized for secular poetry, the contrary
tendency, the adoption of what was popular by the
church, is also marked. The great days of the minstrels
were the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and
the days of their break-up the fifteenth and the sixteenth
centuries. Warton thought that "some of our greater
monasteries kept minstrels of their own in regular pay." 27
The class of minstrels indicated by Thomas de Cabham, a
thirteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury, as to be tolerated
while other classes deserved to be condemned, was
the class which sang the deeds of princes and the lives of
saints.28 When minstrels had ecclesiastical audiences, re-
28 De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum. Chronicles and Memorials of
Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages. Published under
the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 1858-99, p. 336.
2 There are many records of payments to minstrels extant in
account books of Durham Priory, from the thirteenth century onward,
and from Maxtoke and Thetford Priories from the fifteenth
century.
28 Penitential, printed by B. Haur6au, Notices et Extraits de
Manuscrits, xxiv, ii, 284, from Bib. Nat. Lat. 3218 and 3529. Sunt
autem alii, qui dicuntur ioculatores, qui cantant gesta principum et
vitam sanctorum, et faciunt solatia hominibus vel in aegritudinibus
182
TIHE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCH
ligious matter or national or heroic matter might come
from them appropriately. A testimony remains concerning
the songs of a minstrel Herbert before the prior of St.
Swithin's when he entertained his bishop at Winchester in
the fourteenth century (1338), and they were songs of
Colbrand (Guy of Warwick) and of the deliverance by
miracle of Queen Emma.29 From the fifteenth century is
a record of a song of the early Christian legend of the
Seven Sleepers of Ephesus given at an Epiphany entertainment
at Bicester in 1432.30 These may not have been
ballads, but they fall in the ballad period and their material
is of the type, the deeds of princes and the lives of
saints and martyrs, which was countenanced by de Cabham.
A piece of first-hand evidence concerning the value of
the harper and his harp to a discriminating prelate is related
by Robert Manning of Brunne in an account of Robert
Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253.
Bishop Grosseteste wrote in English as well as Latin,
translating the allegorical Castel of Love into English for
the sake of the ignorant. He recognized that the common
people had to be reached in their own tongue. Robert
AManning's testimony is as follows: 31
Y shall you tell as I have herd
Of the bysshop seynt Roberd,
His toname is Grosteste
Of Lyncolne, so seyth the geste,
He lovede moche to here the harpe,
For mans witte yt makyth sharpe.
suis vel in angustiis . . . et non faciunt etc.... Si autuem non
faciunt talia, sed cantant in instrumentis suis gesta principum et
alia talia utilia ut faciant solatia hominibus, sicut supradictum est,
bene possunt sustineri tales, sicut ait Alexander papa.
29 See Warton, History of English Poetry, ed. of 1840, pp. 81, 82.
8 Kennet, Parochial Antiquities (1695), ed. of 1818.
EH andlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, E. E. T. S., 119.
183
LOUISE POUND
Next hys chamber, beside hys study,
Hys harper's chamber was fast therby.
Many tymes, by nightes and dayes,
He hadde solace of notes and layes,
One askede hem onys resun why
He hadde delyte in mynstrelsy?
He answerde hym on thys manere
Why he helde the harper so dere.
The virtu of the harp, thurgh skyle and ryght
Wyll destrye the fendys myght;
And to the cros by gode skylle
Ys the harp lykened weyl . . .
Tharefore, gode men, ye shall lere
When ye any gleman here,
To worshepe God at your power,
As Davyd seyth in the sauter.
Yn harpe, yn tabour, and symphan gle
Worship God in trumpes and sautre:
Yn cordes, yn organes, and belles ringyng,
Yn all these worship the levene kyng.
Yf ye do thus, y sey hardly,
Ye mow here youre mynstralsy.
The alternative possibilities (granting that religious ballads
are an early type) are: that short narrative lyrics on
ecclesiastical themes emerged directly from clericals and
that the type was later secularized; or that they emerged
from the minstrels, and ecclesiastics availed themselves of
the type; or that minstrels were solely responsible for the
early religious ballads, composing them for audiences for
whom they were especially suitable. But when lingering
over these hypotheses, one is inclined to give the church a
greater share of responsibility for the earliest ballads than
the third hypothesis assumes.
If the earliest mediaeval ballads, meaning by ballads
lyrical stories of the type collected by Professor Child,
were contemporaneously on both religious and heroic subjects,
it is chance, or else the interest of ecclesiastics, that
has preserved for us specimens of the one type and not of
184
THE ENGLISHI BALT,LATS AND THE CHURCtI
the other. If the heroic type, chronicle or legendary, was
as early as the religious, early examples have not remained
to show it. Against the hypothesis of contemporaneousness
is the circumstance that songs of all other kinds, minstrel
and popular, satires, eulogies of princes and heroes,
songs of victories, love songs, songs of disparagement or
derision, humorous songs, drinking songs, and the like,
have descended to us from the Middle Ages. If ballads of
the heroic type existed early, they should have appeared at
least as early as the thirteenth century. The wish to impress
sacred story may well have afforded the impulse to
present such narratives in a short lyrical way, and the
presence of narrative is the fundamental differentia, the
quality distinguishing it from other folk-song, of the ballad
as a lyric type.
A refrain is not present in the earliest ballad texts nor
in the fifteenth-century ballads,32 including the Robin
Hood pieces. Refrains do not appear in ballads until the
sixteenth century, though they are frequent in early lyrics
of other types. Moreover, they are sufficiently accounted
for in the proportion of ballads in which they are present
(not more than a fourth) by the fact that the ballads were
sung. Hymns and carols and many love songs have refrains,
and the ballad refrains were handled on the whole
in their way. They do not resemble the fundamental iterative
lines of dance songs, around which the latter songs as
a class are built.33 Ballad refrains are added from the outside
and are not stable even for the same text, while the
2 Unless in Robin and Gandeleyn. If a refrain is present in this
ballad it is extraneous to the stanza structure, not part of it. The
stanzas of the ballad so vary in form and length as to make them
seem more suitable for recital than for singing.
3 See "The Ballad and the Dance," Publications of the Modern
Language Association, vol. xxxIv, p. 360.
185
LOUISE POUND
refrain is the most identifying feature of the average
traditional dance song. It is well established that the earliest
mediaeval dance songs were not ballads; though the
latter came to be used occasionally as dance songs, consistently
as such in Denmark. The fundamental characteristic
of ballads, the point of departure for their differentiation
as a lyric type, would be their presentation of characters
and story in a lyrical way, suitable for short recital or for
song. It would not be the presence of a refrain, nor of incremental
repetition, nor parallelism of line structure; for
both are often absent from ballads and often present in
other types of folk-song. A " situation" mode of narration
is not perhaps fundamental, but such a mode would be
natural in a lyric to be recited dramatically like the Judas
perhaps, or like St. Stephen and Herod; or it might be developed,
like repetition and parallelism, in traditional preservation.
Ballad creation has for its motivating impulse
:he circumstance that characters and their story are to be
brought before hearers, not in a narrative to be read, but
briefly and memorably and dramatically in a recitational
or song way. Only stories which lend themselves well to
such handling are eligible material.
It is possible that very widespread diffusion for the ballads,
especially for the secular ballads, their composition in
quantity and their popular currency, may have come later
than is generally assumed. They cannot have been very
abundant when the makers of the Sloane Ms. 2593 and the
Balliol MS. 354 made their collections. These men obviously
had a taste for popular verse, yet compared to their
display of related types of folk-verse, of approaches to ballads,
their showing of ballads proper is meager. Had
many ballads of the Child type been in general circulation
in Southern England before the Elizabethan period, had
this type of verse been so recognized, so distinctive and
186
THE ENGLISH BALLADS AND THE CHURCII
current as it was in the later sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries, the makers of these, like the makers of later
manuscript books, might have been expected to give proportionate
space to ballads in their pages.
The number of early religious ballads remaining is somewhat
slender, too slender for a very solid structure to be
based upon them; but their evidence is the most authentic
that we have. The subject of ballad origins may well be
re-examined from the angle of approach which these, our
earliest ballad texts, suggest. The species next to fix attention
upon itself is the outlaw ballad of the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries; but the outlaw ballads come too late
for dependable significance. Some were plainly to be recited;
34 in general they lack the refrain element; and they
afford no help in explaining the origin of the lyrical species.
The suggestion which relates the early ballads to the
religious, not the secular, carols as a type of folk-song,
which assumes ecclesiastical emergence for the ballads
prior to their minstrel popularity, or else early adoption by
ecclesiastics of a new minstrel lyric type, has the distinction
of novelty, whether or not it seem likely. And it is
based on fact, not conjecture. The possibility that ballad
literature began with clericals deserves to be taken into
account, alongside the hypotheses of ballad origin which
have been brought forward in the past.
Few having knowledge of the shifting types and styles
of popular song would maintain that the folk-songs, the
dance songs, if you will, of the Anglo-Saxons before the
Norman Conquest were of the structure and type of the
'Child ballads. The patterns which these exhibit arose
later. Nor were the old heroic lyrics of the Germanic
34 See the testimony concerning a robene hude and litil ihone " and
the tale of the " zong tamlene " listed in The Complaynt of Scotland,
1549. Edited by J. A. H. Murray, E. E. T. S. (1872), vol. I, p. 63.
187
188 LOUISE POUND
peoples, whether narratives or not, of the type of the Child
ballads. In the hypothesis that mediaeval ballad literature
emerged under the influence of clericals, or in something
like it, may perhaps be found the explanation best
satisfying all the conditions. Examination is desirable,
from this angle of approach, of the early lyrical verse of
other leading European peoples. The ballad documents
of Continental literatures are no earlier than the English,
if so early; but the more the available evidence, the better
for the investigator. A scrutiny of them might lend support
to the suggestions of this paper, or it might contradict
them, or it might bring light from some unexpected source.
LOUISE POUND.