Book of Old Ballads | Page 6

the level of the lowest, to the level of the pavement ... nay, lower ... to the gutter itself. And in the gutter, with agony, he learned the meaning of song.
Ballads begin and end with the people. You cannot escape that fact. And therefore, if I wished to collect the ballads of the future, the songs which will endure into the next century (if there is any song in the next century), I should not rake through the contemporary poets, in the hope of finding gems of lasting brilliance. No. I should go to the music-halls. I should listen to the sort of thing they sing when the faded lady with the high bust steps forward and shouts, "Now then, boys, all together!"
Unless you can write the words "Now then, boys, all together", at the top of a ballad, it is not really a ballad at all. That may sound a sweeping statement, but it is true.
In the present-day music-halls, although they have fallen from their high estate, we should find a number of these songs which seem destined for immortality. One of these is "Don't 'ave any more, Mrs. Moore."
Do you remember it?
Don't 'ave any more, Mrs. Moore!?Mrs. Moore, oh don't 'ave any more!?Too many double gins?Give the ladies double chins,?So don't 'ave any more, Mrs. Moore!
The whole of English "low life" (which is much the most exciting part of English life) is in that lyric. It is as vivid as a Rowlandson cartoon. How well we know Mrs. Moore! How plainly we see her ... the amiable, coarse-mouthed, generous-hearted tippler, with her elbow on countless counters, her damp coppers clutched in her rough hands, her eyes staring, a little vacantly, about her. Some may think it is a sordid picture, but I am sure that they cannot know Mrs. Moore very well if they think that. They cannot know her bitter struggles, her silent heroisms, nor her sardonic humour.
Lyrics such as these will, I believe, endure long after many of the most renowned and fashionable poets of to-day are forgotten. They all have the same quality, that they can be prefaced by that inspiring sentence, "Now then, boys--all together!" Or to put it another way, as in the ballad of George Barnwell,
All youths of fair England?That dwell both far and near,?Regard my story that I tell?And to my song give ear.
That may sound more dignified, but it amounts to the same thing!
VIII
But if the generation to come will learn a great deal from the few popular ballads which we are still creating in our music-halls, how much more shall we learn of history from these ballads, which rang through the whole country, and were impregnated with the spirit of a whole people! These ballads are history, and as such they should be recognised.
It has always seemed to me that we teach history in the wrong way. We give boys the impression that it is an affair only of kings and queens and great statesmen, of generals and admirals, and such-like bores. Thousands of boys could probably draw you a map of many pettifogging little campaigns, with startling accuracy, but not one in a thousand could tell you what the private soldier carried in his knapsack. You could get sheaves of competent essays, from any school, dealing with such things as the Elizabethan ecclesiastical settlement, but how many boys could tell you, even vaguely, what an English home was like, what they ate, what coins were used, how their rooms were lit, and what they paid their servants?
In other words, how many history masters ever take the trouble to sketch in the great background, the life of the common people? How many even realize their existence, except on occasions of national?disaster, such as the Black Plague?
A proper study of the ballads would go a long way towards remedying this defect. Thomas Percy, whose Reliques must ever be the main source of our information on all questions connected with ballads, has pointed out that all the great events of the country have, sooner or later, found their way into the country's song-book. But it is not only the resounding names that are celebrated. In the ballads we hear the echoes of the street, the rude laughter and the pointed jests. Sometimes these ring so plainly that they need no explanation. At other times, we have to go to Percy or to some of his successors to realize the true significance of the song.
For example, the famous ballad "John Anderson my Jo" seems, at first sight, to be innocent of any polemical intention. But it was written during the Reformation when, as Percy dryly observes, "the Muses were deeply engaged in religious controversy." The zeal of the Scottish reformers was at its height, and this zeal found vent in many a