XXI. CHILDREN’S SINGING-GAMES
The tunes used by children in the traditional singing-games rank as folk-music, and are always of the most simple and marked character. Having these qualities they are easily remembered, and capable of being passed from one generation of children to another with but little chance of corruption. Although certain games have the same rhymes and tunes in different parts of the country, yet there are others where the airs are not so fixed.
A very high antiquity has been allotted to the origin of these games. It is claimed that many are reflexes of pagan marriage and burial customs, and even of sacrificial rites. Into this question it is outside the province of this book to inquire, but whatever may be adduced as to the great age the games themselves possess, it seems doubtful whether any exceptional degree of antiquity can be safely assigned to the existing tunes, though they are all pretty and charming, and well worth preservation, apart from their antiquarian association.
Many collections of these singing-games have been published; details of these will be found in the bibliography. Miss A. G. Gilchrist, of Southport, has noted a very great number from children in different parts of the country. Her collection, up to the present, remains in manuscript.
A number of the singing-game tunes resemble in a greater or less degree certain published airs, as “Nancy Dawson,” “Sheriff Muir,” and some others. Whether the children have taken these airs for their games, or whether the composers of the printed tunes have gone to the children’s games for inspiration, is a problem not easily solved.
XXII. THE BALLAD SHEET
AND SONG GARLAND
When the folk-song singer did not get his song by oral transmission he took it from a ballad sheet, or from those small collections of songs which, for at least three centuries, were called “Garlands.” The words of most of our folk-songs were generally printed either on the ballad sheet (otherwise “broadside”), or included among those that formed the contents of the “Garland,” and nowhere else, except in the rarest instances. Regular song books were too dignified to admit songs or ballads of the folk-song class. As a consequence the folk-songs that survive in an early printed form are chiefly found on broadsides.
Technically, the broadside is a printed piece of paper (the size is immaterial) meant to be read unfolded. A tradesman’s hand-bill, for example, is a broadside. Folded, the broadside becomes folio, quarto, or octavo. The “garlands” were small folded booklets of either eight or sixteen pages, and contained ten or twelve songs, the outer page being generally decorated with a woodcut, and having a list of the songs contained within.
The reason why the broadside ballad was printed on one side only appears to be this—It was the practice to paste them on cottage walls, inside cupboard doors, chest lids, and such like places. There are many references in literature to this method of displaying the ballad, as for example—
“I will now lead you to an honest ale-house where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the window, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.”—Walton’s Compleat Angler, 1653.
No wonder that the old angler and his pupil found so many delightful snatches of quaint old song current where ballads and songs were so fostered. The Spectator shows that the usage had not died out in Queen Anne’s reign—
“I cannot for my heart leave a room before I have thoroughly studied the walls of it, and examined the several printed papers which are usually pasted upon them.”—No. 85, vol. ii.
Although the ballad was freely hawked about the streets of towns, and carried into the country by “flying stationers” and pedlars (witness Autolycus in the Winter’s Tale), yet the pastings upon walls and the constant foldings of loose ballad sheets soon destroyed existing copies, for few of the old ballad lovers were like Mr Pepys and Captain Cox. Laneham, it will be remembered, tells in his “Letter,” 1575, describing the festivities at Kenilworth Castle, that Cox’s ballads numbered more than a hundred, and were “all ancient,” and were “fair wrapt in parchment, and tied with a whip cord.” Would there had been more of the Captain’s careful disposition.
Broadside ballads must have come among the people with the first dawn of printing, and in Henry the Eighth’s reign they had become of such weight in political influence that one or more royal edicts were levied against them. The earliest known English printed ballad is, in date, about 1540. Ballad printing was generally done by small local printers, or else by those larger London printers who made a speciality of the work, and who supplied the whole country with ballads and with “garlands.”
Gough, Redman, Bankes, Walley, and many others who worked in London during the sixteenth century were noted printers of ballads. In the seventeenth century ballad printing became more general, and many of the publishers clubbed together, so that we find several names on one imprint. Henry Gosson printed in 1616, and John Trundle, his contemporary, was so noted as a ballad vendor that he is named in Ben Jonson’s play, “Every Man in His Humour.” In 1642 Francis Coles (or Coules) flourished and issued ballads in conjunction with William Gilbertson, having a shop on Saffron Hill. Of this period also were Alexander Milbourn, Francis Grove, J. Wright, William Onley, and the “Assignees of Thomas Symcocke.” At a later date William Thackeray, at the “Angel in Duck Lane,” issued, with Passenger, at the “Three Bibles on London Bridge,” many interesting ballads, garlands, and chap-books. One of their dates is 1687.
All these seventeenth century ballads, or the chief part of them, were printed in “black-letter,” a type of Gothic character which was specially reserved for law books, bibles, and romances long after its discontinuance as ordinary text. They were generally printed on rather large paper, about 14 inches by 10 inches, and, of course, only on one side of the paper. The name of the tune was frequently given, and on some a few musical notes, professing to be the tune, were appended to the verses. These musical notes, however, were a fraudulent inducement to purchasers, for they were merely set at random. Rude woodcuts, which more or less illustrated the theme of the ballad, generally headed the whole.
The most noted collections of this period of ballad are the Roxburghe collection in the British Museum, and the Pepysian at Cambridge. It must be pointed out that a great number of these ballads were scarcely folk-songs—that is, they were not “born of the people”—and only a certain proportion were current among them. There were professional ballad writers who supplied rhymed narratives to order for the ballad seller, not only upon topical events, but re-dishings of earlier romances, and other matter.
Whether at the opening of the eighteenth century printed ballads began to be out of favour, or whether the ballads have not been so carefully preserved, is not quite clear, but they are certainly more rare of this period.
The chief ballad printer of this date was John Cluer, who was printing ballads in 1720, and shortly after this date was established as a music publisher of repute. He worked in Bow Church Yard, Cheapside, and was succeeded by William Dicey, who had been in partnership with Robert Raikes, at Northampton, in the ballad and chap-book printing business. Robert Raikes removed to Gloucester, where he established the first Gloucester newspaper. He was father to Robert Raikes, the originator of Sunday Schools.
An important range of ballad sheets were those which issued from the Aldermary Church Yard press. In 1793 J. Marshall was at this address, printing engraved song sheets with pictorial headings. There was also a J. Marshall at Newcastle-on-Tyne, who published song garlands about 1820.
One of the best-known ballad printers at the end of the eighteenth century was John Evans, of 42 Long Lane, Smithfield. He printed broadside ballads, chap-books, and garlands. He and his sons at a later date printed for the Religious Tract Society, producing such quaint religious stories as The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. The Evans family, and successors, were in full vigour as printers as late as 1815.
It was at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the great ballad printer J. Pitts appeared. It is said that “Johnny Pitts” was a female who had been a bumboat woman. The ballad sheets that issued from the Pitts’ press are all of interest, and many genuine folk-songs appear on them. A rival to Pitts came from Alnwick in the person of James Catnach, the son of a printer in that small Northumbrian town. James Catnach first commenced business in 1813, at 2 and 3 Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, and he made a complete revolution in ballad sheet printing. The early ballad-mongers used a rough grey, or blue tinted, paper and their type was none of the best, or clearest. Catnach changed the shape of the ballad sheet into Large Post Quarto (about 10 × 8 inches), used good, though thin, white paper, and clear type. Many of his wood-blocks were either by the Bewick brothers, or by their pupils. He put forth an enormous quantity of ballads and songs, and seems to have not only employed men to write songs on topical events, but also to have for the first time put into print many a stray folk-song which the ballad-singers, who flocked to buy his ballads, would recite to him. This latter fact accounts for a certain amount of ignorant mistakes that occur in the text.
After founding an immense business he retired in 1838, and died in 1841. His married sister, Anne Ryle, took over the business and advertised that she had “4000 sorts” of ballad sheets. Her manager, James Paul, appears to have been some sort of an editor for her, and it is believed that he wrote, or re-wrote, certain of the ballads and songs she printed. He was, with others, proprietor of the business at one time, but finally it became the property of W. S. Fortey, who reprinted from Catnach’s old stereotypes. T. Batchelor, Piggot, and T. Birt were other ballad printers, a little later than Catnach.
The broadsides printed by Henry Such are of considerable interest to the collector, as they contain versions of folk-songs which are generally good. He was printing in 1849, and his successors of the same surname reprinted his ballad sheets up to a recent date. Provincial ballad sheet printers are Walker of Durham (flourishing in 1839), and Harkness of Preston, of a somewhat later date. R. Barr of Leeds and J. Bebbington of Manchester were broadside printers of forty or fifty years ago, while Shelmerdine & Co. of Manchester date from about 1815.
The folk-song collector cannot ignore the ballad sheet, for upon it are found the words of many folk-songs of which he may only obtain very fragmentary versions from the singer. It is not to be understood that the ballad sheet version of a folk-song is always an accurate one, but it is worth having, for the folk-song singer has generally learned his words, or at any rate refreshed his memory, from the broadside copy.
The ballad printer was too wise a business man to print on the sheet only folk-songs. He printed a popular lyric side by side with an old traditional song, for the sheet had room for at least two sets of verses, and he, by this means, catered for two classes of customers.