Book of Old Ballads | Page 2

mysteries have gone. We know, all too well, what lies on the other side of the hill. The scientists have long ago puffed out, scornfully, the golden lamp of the night ... leaving us in the uttermost darkness. The giants and the monsters have either skulked away or have been tamed, and are engaged in writing their memoirs for the popular press. And so, in a world where everything is known (and nothing understood), the modern lyric-writer wearily averts his eyes, and stares into his own heart.
That way madness lies. All madmen are ferocious egotists, and so are all modern lyric-writers. That is the first and most vital difference between these ballads and their modern counterparts. The old ballad-singers hardly ever used the first person singular. The modern lyric-writer hardly ever uses anything else.
II
This is really such an important point that it is worth labouring.
Why is ballad-making a lost art? That it is a lost art there can be no question. Nobody who is painfully acquainted with the rambling, egotistical pieces of dreary versification, passing for modern "ballads", will deny it.
Ballad-making is a lost art for a very simple reason. Which is, that we are all, nowadays, too sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought to receive emotions directly, without self-consciousness. If we are wounded, we are no longer able to sing a song about a clean sword, and a great cause, and a black enemy, and a waving flag. No--we must needs go into long descriptions of our pain, and abstruse calculations about its effect upon our souls.
It is not "we" who have changed. It is life that has changed. "We" are still men, with the same legs, arms and eyes as our ancestors. But life has so twisted things that there are no longer any clean swords nor great causes, nor black enemies. And the flags do not know which way to flutter, so contrary are the winds of the modern world. All is doubt. And doubt's colour is grey.
Grey is no colour for a ballad. Ballads are woven from stuff of primitive hue ... the red blood gushing, the gold sun shining, the green grass growing, the white snow falling. Never will you find grey in a ballad. You will find the black of the night and the raven's wing, and the silver of a thousand stars. You will find the blue of many summer skies. But you will not find grey.
III
That is why ballad-making is a lost art. Or almost a lost art. For even in this odd and musty world of phantoms which we call the twentieth century, there are times when a man finds himself in a certain place at a certain hour and something happens to him which takes him out of himself. And a song is born, simply and sweetly, a song which other men can sing, for all time, and forget themselves.
Such a song was once written by a master at my old school, Marlborough. He was a Scot. But he loved Marlborough with the sort of love which the old ballad-mongers must have had-the sort of love which takes a man on wings, far from his foolish little body.
He wrote a song called "The Scotch Marlburian".
Here it is:--
Oh Marlborough, she's a toun o' touns?We will say that and mair,?We that ha' walked alang her douns?And snuffed her Wiltshire air.?A weary way ye'll hae to tramp?Afore ye match the green?O' Savernake and Barbery Camp?And a' that lies atween!
The infinite beauty of that phrase ... "and a' that lies atween"! The infinite beauty as it is roared by seven hundred young throats in unison! For in that phrase there drifts a whole pageant of boyhood--the sound of cheers as a race is run on a stormy day in March, the tolling of the Chapel bell, the crack of ball against bat, the sighs of sleep in a long white dormitory.
But you may say "What is all this to me? I wasn't at Maryborough. I don't like schoolboys ... they strike me as dirty, noisy, and usually foul-minded. Why should I go into raptures about such a song, which seems only to express a highly debatable approval of a certain method of education?"
If you are asking yourself that sort of question, you are obviously in very grave need of the tonic properties of this book. For after you have read it, you will wonder why you ever asked it.
IV
I go back and back to the same point, at the risk of boring you to distraction. For it is a point which has much more "to" it than the average modern will care to admit, unless he is forced to do so.
You remember the generalization about the eyes ... how they used to look out_, but now look _in? Well, listen to this....
I'm