Do you remember it?
Don't 'ave any more, Mrs. Moore!
Mrs. Moore, oh don't 'ave any more!
Too many double gins
Give the ladies double chins,
So don't 'ave any more, Mrs. Moore!
The whole of English "low life" (which is much the most exciting part of
English life) is in that lyric. It is as vivid as a Rowlandson cartoon.
How well we know Mrs. Moore! How plainly we see her ... the amiable,
coarse-mouthed, generous-hearted tippler, with her elbow on countless
counters, her damp coppers clutched in her rough hands, her eyes
staring, a little vacantly, about her. Some may think it is a sordid
picture, but I am sure that they cannot know Mrs. Moore very well if
they think that. They cannot know her bitter struggles, her silent
heroisms, nor her sardonic humour.
Lyrics such as these will, I believe, endure long after many of the most
renowned and fashionable poets of to-day are forgotten. They all have
the same quality, that they can be prefaced by that inspiring sentence,
"Now then, boys--all together!" Or to put it another way, as in the
ballad of George Barnwell,
All youths of fair England
That dwell both far and near,
Regard my story that I tell
And to my song give ear.
That may sound more dignified, but it amounts to the same thing!
VIII
But if the generation to come will learn a great deal from the few
popular ballads which we are still creating in our music-halls, how much
more shall we learn of history from these ballads, which rang through
the whole country, and were impregnated with the spirit of a whole
people! These ballads are history, and as such they should be
recognised.
It has always seemed to me that we teach history in the wrong way. We
give boys the impression that it is an affair only of kings and queens
and great statesmen, of generals and admirals, and such-like bores.
Thousands of boys could probably draw you a map of many pettifogging
little campaigns, with startling accuracy, but not one in a thousand
could tell you what the private soldier carried in his knapsack. You
could get sheaves of competent essays, from any school, dealing with
such things as the Elizabethan ecclesiastical settlement, but how many
boys could tell you, even vaguely, what an English home was like, what
they ate, what coins were used, how their rooms were lit, and what they
paid their servants?
In other words, how many history masters ever take the trouble to sketch
in the great background, the life of the common people? How many even
realize their existence, except on occasions of national
disaster, such as the Black Plague?