English Folk Songs
Most of the English folk songs are very practical accounts of the doings of the people. The English seemed more interested in human beings than in Nature, like the Scotch and Irish, or in romantic love songs like the Latin races in Spain, France and Italy. The English had to be practical for they were always leaders and at the head of things, while the Scots and Irish were further away from the center and rush of life and so went to Nature for their subjects.
There are about five thousand English folk songs which sing of the English milk-maid and her work, the carpenter, the hunter and his hounds, and hunting calls. They have the Morris Dance tunes, the May-day songs, the sailor’s chanties, they even sing of criminals famous in history and always very definitely tell the full name and whereabouts of a character in a song. They also have songs of poachers (those who hunt on land forbidden them), of murderers and hangmen as well as shepherds and sailors. But England’s finest songs are the Christmas carols which sing of the birth of Jesus. So, if they sang little of Nature they did sing of man and God and have given us much that is beautiful and worth while.
OLD ENGLISH CAROL
From the Time of Henry IV, or Earlier
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, myn owyn dere fode,
How xalt thou sufferin be nayled on the rode.
So blyssid be the tyme!
Lullay! lullay! lytel child, myn owyn dere smerte,
How xalt thou sufferin the sharp spere to Thi herte?
So blyssid be the tyme!