The England of Elizabeth was devoted to lyric poetry, and folk-song must have flourished along with its rival of the schools. Few of these songs, however, have been preserved; and indeed there is no final test for the communal quality in such survivals. Certainly some of the songs in the drama of that time are of popular origin; but the majority, as a glance at Mr. Bullen's several collections will prove, are artistic and individual, like the music to which they were sung. Occasionally we get a tantalizing glimpse of another lyrical England, the folk dancing and singing their own lays; but no Autolycus brings these to us in his basket. Even the miracle plays had not despised folk-song; unfortunately the writers are content to mention the songs, like our Acts of Congress, only by title. In the "comedy" called 'The Longer Thou Livest the More Foole Thou Art,' there are snatches of such songs; and a famous list, known to all scholars, is given by Laneham in a letter from Kenilworth in 1575, where he tells of certain songs, "all ancient," owned by one Captain Cox. Again, nobody ever praised songs of the people more sincerely than Shakespeare has praised them; and we may be certain that he used them for the stage. Such is the 'Willow Song' that Desdemona sings,—an "old thing," she calls it; and such perhaps the song in 'As You Like It,'—'It Was a Lover and His Lass.' Nash is credited with the use of folk-songs in his 'Summer's Last Will and Testament'; but while the pretty verses about spring and the tripping lines, 'A-Maying,' have such a note, nothing could be further from the quality of folk-song than the solemn and beautiful 'Adieu, Farewell, Earth's Bliss.' In Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle,' however, Merrythought sings some undoubted snatches of popular lyric, just as he sings stanzas from the traditional ballad; for example, his—
Go from my window, love, go;
Go from my window, my dear;
The wind and the rain
Will drive you back again,
You cannot be lodged here,—
is quoted with variations in other plays, and was a favorite of the time,[30] and like many a ballad appears in religious parody. A modern variant, due to tradition, comes from Norwich; the third and fourth lines ran:—
For the wind is in the west,
And the cuckoo's in his nest.
From the time of Henry VIII. a pretty song is preserved of this same class:—
Westron wynde, when wyll thou blow!
The smalle rain downe doth rayne;
Oh if my love were in my armys,
Or I in my bed agayne!
This sort of song between the lovers, one without and one within, occurs in French and German at a very early date, and is probably much older than any records of it; as serenade, it found great favor with poets of the city and the court, and is represented in English by Sidney's beautiful lines, admirable for purposes of comparison with the folk-song:—
"Who is it that this dark night
Underneath my window plaineth?"
"It is one who, from thy sight
Being, ah, exiled! disdaineth
Every other vulgar light."
The zeal of modern collectors has brought together a mass of material which passes for folk-song. None of it is absolutely communal, for the conditions of primitive lyric have long since been swept away; nevertheless, where isolated communities have retained something of the old homogeneous and simple character, the spirit of folk-song lingers in survival. From Great Britain, from France, and particularly from Germany, where circumstances have favored this survival, a few folk-songs may now be given in inadequate translation. To go further afield, to collect specimens of Italian, Russian, Servian, modern Greek, and so on, would need a book. The songs which follow are sufficiently representative for the purpose.
A pretty little song, popular in Germany to this day, needs no pompous support of literary allusion to explain its simple pathos; still, it is possible that one meets here a distant echo of the tragedy of obstacles told in romance of Hero and Leander. When one hears this song, one understands where Heine found the charm of his best lyrics:—