A Burst of Balladry.
I have brought my readers through a waste literary country to-day; but we cannot reach the oases of bloom without going across the desert spaces. In looking back upon this moil and turmoil—this fret and wear and barrenness of the fifteenth century, in which we have welcomed talk about Caxton’s sorry translations, and the wheezing of his press; and have given an ear to the hunting discourse of Dame Juliana, for want of better things; and have dwelt with a certain gleesomeness on the homely Paston Letters, let us not forget that there has been all the while, and running through all the years of stagnation, a bright thread of balladry, with glitter and with gayety of color. This ballad music—whose first burst we can no more pin to a date than we can the first singing of the birds—had lightened, in that early century, the walk of the wayfarer on all the paths of England; it had spun its tales by bivouac fires in France; it had caught—as in silken meshes—all the young foragers on the ways of Romance. To this epoch, of which we have talked, belongs most likely that brave ballad of Chevy Chase, which keeps alive the memory of Otterbourne, and of that woful hunting which
“Once there did, in Chevy Chase befal.
“To drive the deare with hounde and horne
Erle Percy took his way;
The child may rue, that is unborn
The hunting of that day.”
Hereabout, too, belongs in all probability the early English shaping of the jingling history of the brave deeds of Sir Guy of Warwick; and some of the tales of Robin Hood and his “pretty men all,” which had been sung in wild and crude carols for a century or more, now seem to have taken on a more regular ballad garniture, and certainly became fixtures in type. This is specially averred of “Robin Hood and the Monk,” beginning:—
“In summer when the shawes be sheyne
And levès be large and long,
Hit is full merry, in feyre forést,
To here the foulé’s song;
To see the dere draw to the dale,
And leve the hillés hee,
And shadow them in the levés green,
Under the grenwode tree.”
But was Robin Hood a myth? Was he a real yeoman—was he the Earl of Huntington? We cannot tell; we know no one who can. We know only that this hero of the folk-songs made the common people’s ideal of a good fellow—brave, lusty—a capital bowman, a wondrous wrestler, a lover of good cheer, a hater of pompous churchmen, a spoiler of the rich, a helper of the poor, with such advices as these for Little John:—
“Loke ye do no housbande harme
That tylleth with his plough;
No more ye shall no good yeman
That walketh by grenewode shawe,
Ne no knyght, ne no squyèr,
That wolde be a good felawe.”
That very charming ballad of the Nut-Brown Maid must also have been well known to contemporaries of Caxton: She is daughter of a Baron, and her love has been won by a wayfarer, who says he is “an outlaw,” and a banished man, a squire of low degree. He tries her faith and constancy, as poor Griselda’s was tried in Chaucer’s story—in Boccaccio’s tale, and as men have tried and teased women from the beginning of time. He sets before her all the dangers and the taunts that will come to her; she must forswear her friends; she must go to the forest with him; she must not be jealous of any other maiden lying perdue there; she must dare all, and brave all,—
“Or else—I to the greenwood go
Alone, a banished man.”
At last, having tormented her sufficiently, he confesses—that he is not an outlaw—not a banished man, but one who will give her wealth, and rank, and name and fame. And I will close out our present talk with a verselet or two from this rich old ballad.
The wooer says—
“I counsel you, remember howe
It is no maydens law
Nothing to doubt, but to ren out
To wed with an outlaw:
For ye must there, in your hand bere
A bowe ready to draw,
And as a thefe, thus must you live
Ever in drede and awe
Whereby to you grete harme might growe;
Yet had I lever than
That I had to the grenewode go
Alone, a banished man.”
She:
“I think not nay, but as ye say
It is no maiden’s lore
But love may make me, for your sake
As I have say’d before,
To come on fote, to hunt and shote
To get us mete in store;
For so that I, your company
May have, I ask no more,
From which to part, it maketh my hart
As cold as any stone;
For in my minde, of all mankinde
I love but you alone.”
He:
“A baron’s child, to be beguiled
It were a cursèd dede!
To be felawe with an outlawe
Almighty God forbid!
Yt better were, the poor Squyère
Alone to forest yede,
Than ye shold say, another day
That by my cursed dede
Ye were betrayed; wherefore good maid
The best rede that I can
Is that I to the grenewode go
Alone, a banished man.”
She:
“Whatever befal, I never shall
Of this thing you upraid;
But if ye go, and leve me so
Then have ye me betrayed;
Remember you wele, how that ye dele
For if ye, as ye said
Be so unkynde to leave behinde
Your love the Nut Brown Mayd
Trust me truly, that I shall die
Soon after ye be gone;
For in my minde, of all mankinde
I love but you alone.”
He:
“My own deare love, I see thee prove
That ye be kynde and true:
Of mayd and wife, in all my life
The best that ever I knewe
Be merry and glad; be no more sad
The case is chaunged newe
For it were ruthe, that for your truthe
Ye should have cause to rue;
Be not dismayed, whatever I said
To you when I began;
I will not to the grenewode go
I am no banished man.”
And she, with delight and fear—
“These tidings be more glad to me
Than to be made a quene;
If I were sure they shold endure
But it is often seene
When men wyl break promise, they speak
The wordes on the splene:
Ye shape some wyle, me to beguile
And stele from me I wene;
Then were the case, worse than it was
And I more woebegone,
For in my minde, of all mankynde
I love but you alone.”
Then he—at last,—
“Ye shall not nede, further to drede
I will not disparàge
You (God defend!) syth ye descend
Of so grate a linèage;
Now understand—to Westmoreland
Which is mine heritàge
I wyl you bring, and with a ryng
By way of marriàge
I wyl you take, and lady make
As shortely as I can:
Thus have you won an Erly’s son
And not a banished man.”
In our next chapter we shall enter upon a different century, and encounter a different people. We shall find a statelier king, whose name is more familiar to you: In place of the fat knight and Prince Hal, we shall meet brilliant churchmen and hard-headed reformers; and in place of Otterbourne and its balladry, we shall see the smoke of Smithfield fires, and listen to the psalmody of Sternhold.