Laneham, in 1575, thus describes his evening amusements: “Sometimes I foot it with dancing; now with my gittern, and else with my cittern, then at the virginals (ye know nothing comes amiss to me); then carol I up a song withal; that by and by they come flocking about me like bees to honey; and ever they cry, ‘Another, good Laneham, another!’”
In the great agitation of minds caused by the Reformation, the itinerant minstrels were an element of danger to the Crown, for they kept alive the popular feeling against the changes in religion, and the despotic measures of the Sovereign. Moreover, an immense number of ballads were printed, having a religious or political character, were set to the old ballad airs, and sung in place of the traditional lays, and then hawked by the singers. Accordingly, in 1543, an Act was passed “for the advancement of true religion,” and it recites that, forasmuch as certain froward persons have taken upon them to print “ballads, rhymes, etc., subtilly and craftily to instruct His Highness’ people untruly, for the reformation whereof His Majesty considereth it most requisite to purge the realm of all such books, ballads, rhymes, and songs.” The Act contains a list of exceptions; but it is noticeable that no ballads of any description were excepted.
Fig. 38.—BALLAD SINGERS, FROM A BROADSIDE.
In the reign of Queen Elizabeth another Act was passed, in 1597, against “minstrels wandering abroad,” by virtue of which they were to be whipped, put in the stocks, and imprisoned, if caught going from place to place with their ballads.
Then came the period of Puritan domination under the Commonwealth, when every engine was set to work to suppress popular music and ballad singing, and to sour the English character. The first Act levelled against them and stage players was in 1642. In the following year a tract was issued complaining that this measure had been ineffective, in which the writer says, “Our musike that was held so delectable and precious that they scorned to come to a tavern under twenty shillings salary for two hours, now wander with their instruments under their cloaks (I mean such as have any), to all houses of good fellowship, saluting every room where there is company with, Will you have any musike, gentlemen?” But even the license to go round the country was to be denied the poor wretches. In 1648 Captain Bertham was appointed Provost Marshall, “with power to seize upon all ballad-singers, and to suppress stage-plays.” The third Parliament of Cromwell struck the heaviest blow of all. It enacted that any minstrel or ballad-singer who was caught singing, or making music in any alehouse or tavern, or was found to have asked anyone to hear him sing or play, was to be haled before the nearest magistrate, whipped and imprisoned.
With the Restoration came a better time for ballad-singing; but the old romantic ballad was almost dead, and though many of the ancient melodies remained, to them new ballads were set. Of these vast numbers poured from the press. The printed ballad which supplanted the traditional ballad was very poor in quality. It turned on some moral or religious topic; it satirised some fashion of the day; it recorded in jingling rhymes some fire, earthquake, flood, or other accident. Above all, it narrated the story of a murder. Now for the first time did the vulgar assassin stand forward as the hero of English poetry and romance.
Many an old song or ballad was parodied. Thus the famous song of “The Hunt is up,” was converted into a political ballad in 1537; and a man named John Hogon was arrested for singing it. “An Old Woman Clothed in Grey” was the tune to which all England rang at the Restoration, with the words, “Let Oliver now be forgotten.” “Grim King of the Ghosts” was made use of for “The Protestants’ Joy,” a ballad on the coronation of King William and Queen Mary; and “Hey, then, up go we!” served, with parodied words against the Rump Parliament, as the “Tories’ Delight,” as an anti-Papal ballad, and even as a ballad on the great frost of the winter of 1683-4.
The dissociation of the old tunes from the ballads that had given them their names, and to which they had been composed, did much to occasion the loss of our early ballads. Not only so, but with James I.’s reign there came in a fashion for recomposing the old themes in the new style; and the new editions caused the disappearance of the earlier ballad. There can be little doubt that the romantic and historic ballad, which has been happily preserved in Scotland, was common to all English-speaking people. These ballads are called Scottish, because they have been preserved in Scotland, but it is more than doubtful that they are of Scottish origin. Ballads travelled everywhere. We have in Thomas of Erceldoune’s “Sir Tristram,” an instance of a French metrical romance turned into a long poem in Scotland, in the thirteenth century. Many of the Scottish ballads have, as their base, myths or legends common to all the Norse people, and found in rhymes among them.
At the beginning of this century, Mr. Davis Gilbert published a collection of Cornish Christmas Carols, and subjoined a couple of samples of the ballads sung by the Cornish people. One is “The Three Knights.” It begins—