If tunes have souls they are shut out by death from ever again vibrating in a human tenement. They are like the gabel-rachels, the souls of unbaptised infants whom men in Yorkshire used to hear crying round the church as though begging
to be let in. But the traditional tunes of England are no longer homeless; they have a safe refuge in the printed page. They have become immortal, or as near immortality as modern paper can insure.
Mr. Sharp has done wonderful things; he is like a naturalist who should discover that we are unconsciously surrounded by whole races of beautiful things as unknown to us as elves and fairies. In the Commemoration Service we speak gratefully of all those who “found out musical tunes.” If ever a man deserved remembrance for literally finding out tunes it is Mr. Sharp.
But to return to the musical instruments of the Morris dancers—the Pipe and Tabor. I am told that the little drum on which the piper accompanies his tune should be pronounced ‘tabber.’ I have no doubt this is right. The Oxfordshire name Dub suggests it, and the old French word Tabour is something of an argument in the same direction. In Wright’s Dialect Dictionary it is said that the lesser spotted woodpecker is called the “tabberer” from its habit of drumming on tree trunks. I should like to call my pipe a “tabberer’s” pipe if only out of affection for the little black and white bird and his drum, but the modern pronunciation, with a long a, has a strong hold and can hardly be ousted. We nowadays put the pipe before the tabor, but in Shakespearian days this was not so. In The Tempest Ariel plays the tune “Flout ’em and scout ’em” on a tabor and pipe—and the artist was called a taborer [98] not a piper. In the same way
the Provençal performer on the two instruments was (according to Daudet), and I hope still is, known as the tabourinaire.
Morris dancing, for which the tabor and pipe once supplied the music, is now an everyday accomplishment. At Cambridge one may see Fellows of Colleges dancing, waving handkerchiefs and knocking sticks in the old manner, and I hope the same is true of Oxford.
But piping is not so common. Some of us have heard Mr. Sharp at a lecture, or Mr. Haydn Coffin on the stage. But it is not an art likely to spread rapidly, because the old English is pipe rare and hard to come by, and copies are not common either.
I began to learn the taborer’s art on a French or Basque galoubet obtained in Oxford from that kind friend of many musicians, the late Mr. Taphouse. But it was only quite recently, when Mr. Manning lent me an old Oxfordshire instrument and allowed me to have it copied, that I made any kind of progress.
I do not know when playing the “whittle and dub” (as they were called) became extinct as a village art. It certainly existed thirty years ago, and for all I know there are still some living who could hand on the grand manner of taboring. Mr. Taphouse remembered very well the days when the pipe and drum were heard all round Oxford at fairs and village festivals. I remember his showing me a whittle with a crack in it where it had been broken over the head of a reveller by a drunken taborer.
The two instruments have been generally associated with dancing. Tans’ur, [100a] writing in 1772, speaks of this. “The Tabor and Pipe are two musical Instruments that always accompany each other, and are mostly used at Wakes by Country People, and at their Dancings and innocent Diversions, and often with Morris Dancers.” He speaks of the pipe as played with the left hand, “on which Wrist hangs a small drum, braced in Tune to the Pipe, and beat by the Right Hand as a Bass in Time to it: both of which being well managed make pretty Harmony.”