“Twenty pence are one and eightpence;
Twenty-four pence two shillings;
Thirty-pence are two and sixpence;
Thirty-six pence three shillings.”
I suggested “Three Bob” as more suitable to the metre, which requires a monosyllable at the end of the fourth line; but the amendment was lost; like the well-meant suggestion of Fitz James, it “added but fuel to his hate”; I was told (in effect) that “Llwyn On” should be sung dolce, cantabile, con molta tenerezza; and the children sang it staccato, alla marcia, giocoso. I fear that school got a poor report.
This unhallowed wedding of trivial verse to immortal melody often disturbed even my placid temper. I remember in one school, after listening for some time to some moral sentiments sung to a tune that haunted me with memories of my youth, I recovered the “Lost Chord,” and enquired of the Lady of the Manor, who (suspendens omnia naso) was keeping an eye on my movements, whether she recognized the air. She failed to do so, and I had the pleasure of informing her that it was “Villikins and Dinah,” a tune which, about the time of the Crimean War, divided popularity with “Partant pour la Syrie,” and preceded “The Ratcatcher’s Daughter.” How did it go fifty years since?
“As Villikins was a vallikin in his garden around,
He saw his fair Dinah lay dead on the ground;
A cup of cold poison lay close by her side,
And a billet-dow wot said as how ’twas of poison she died.”
Little did I think to meet Dinah again in a Public Elementary School. The Lady of the Manor sniffed scornfully: probably the mistress heard of it next day. I am sorry I did not ask for a copy of the amended words.
In another school I was cheered by the sound of “Nelly Bly,” a nigger song (shall we say negro melody?) of the Early Carolina period, say 1858-9. There I did ask for a copy of the words, and here they are:
“In Asia and in Africa
The elephant is found:
He larger is than any beast
That walks upon the ground:
When tame he is gentle and mild,
And does what he’s desired,
But if he’s mocked or treated ill,
With anger he is fired.”
I forget the rest, but this is genuine. There should have been a chorus of Hi Jumbo, Ho Jumbo; but it was before the days of the popular beast.
In an old Blue Book, more than thirty years ago, I read a lamentation of an Inspector in this district that he had heard “A Southerly Wind” to an extent that would have sickened a Cheshire fox-hunter, and “The Neat Little Clock” till he could wish that time were no more. The latter was a drivelling piece of morality sung to the beautiful old tune of “The Woodpecker”: it lasted well into my epoch, but it seems to be extinct now.
At times one attempted to guide the popular taste. In a fishing village, where there was a lighthouse, I persuaded the master to teach Kingsley’s “Three Fishers”: and in an Irish school I urged Moore’s Melodies. But in neither case was the result encouraging, and the attempt was not repeated. Then it occurred to me one day, as it did with a more satisfactory result to Juvenal, “am I always to be only a hearer?” or as to Fletcher of Saltoun’s “very wise man,” if a man were permitted to make all the school songs, he need not care who should make the Code. And I wrote for a friendly infant school a parody of Gilbert’s Minstrel’s Song, in the “Yeomen of the Guard”: it was arranged antiphonally for boys and girls, and the second verse ran thus: