John Helmore.
Richard Hard.
On the south of Dartmoor live two men also remarkable in their way—Richard Hard and John Helmore. The latter is an old miller, with a fine intelligent face and a retentive memory. He can read, and his songs have to be accepted with caution. Some are very old, others have been picked up from song-books. Hard is a poor cripple, walking only with the aid of two sticks, with sharply-chiselled features,—he must have been a handsome man in his youth,—bright eyes, a gentle, courteous manner, and a marvellous store of old words and tunes in his head. He is now past stone-breaking on the roadside, and lives on £4 per annum. He has a charming old wife; and he and the old woman sing together in parts their quaint ancient ballads. That man has yielded up something like eighty distinct melodies. His memory, however, is failing; for when the first lines of a ballad in some published collection is read to him, he will sometimes say, "I did know that some forty years ago, but I can't sing it through now." However, he can very generally "put the tune to it."
The days of these old singers is over. What festive gatherings there are now are altered in character. The harvest home is no more. We have instead harvest festivals, tea and cake at sixpence a head in the school-room, and a choral service and a sermon in the church. Village weddings are now quiet enough, no feasting, no dancing. There are no more shearing feasts; what remain are shorn of all their festive character. Instead, we have cottage garden produce shows. The old village "revels" linger on in the most emaciated and expiring semblance of the old feast. The old ballad-seller no more appears in the fair. I wrote to a famous broadside house in the west the other day, to ask if they still produced sheet-ballads, and the answer was, "We abandoned that line thirty years ago;" and no one else took it up.
"I love a ballad but even too well," says the Clown in Winter's Tale, and "I love a ballad in print, a'-life!" sighs Mopsa; but there are no Clowns and Mopsas now. Clever Board School scholars and misses who despise ballads, and love dear as life your coarse, vulgar, music-hall buffoonery.
[9] "I reckon the days is departed
When folks 'ud 'a listened to me;
I feels like as one broken-hearted,
A thinking of what used to be.