To stand, at last, the nearer to thy throne.”
SONGS OF THE PEOPLE.
Without going back to abstruse speculations on the origin of music in England (there is a mania in our century for discovering the “origin” of everything, and theorizing on it, long before a sufficient number of facts has been collected even to make a pedestal for the most modest and limited theory), we gather from the mention of it in old English poems, and books on ballads and songs, glees and catches, that it existed in a very creditable form at least eight hundred years ago. Indeed, there was national and popular music before this, and the Welsh songs, the oldest of all, point far back to a legendary past as the source of their being. The first foreign song that mingled with the rude music of the early Britons was doubtless that of the Christian missionaries in the first century of our era, and after that there can have been little music among the converted Britons but what was more or less tinged with a foreign and Christian element. We know, too, that at various times foreign monks either came or were invited to the different kingdoms in England to teach the natives the ecclesiastical chant. Gardiner, in his Music of Nature, says that “as the invaders came from all parts of the Continent, our language and music became a motley collection of sounds and words unlike that of any other people; and though we have gained a language of great force and extent, yet we have lost our primitive music, as not a single song remains that has the character of being national.” He also says that before music was cultivated as an art, England, in common with other countries, had its national songs, but that these, with the people who sang them, were driven by the conquerors into Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. This assertion is rather a sweeping one, and the recognized formula about the ancient inhabitants of Britain being all crowded into certain particular districts is one that will bear modifying and correcting. The British Anthropological Society has, during the last ten years, made interesting researches in the field of race-characteristics in different parts of England, and an accumulation of facts has gone far to prove the permanence of some Gaelic, Cymric, and Celtic types in other parts, exclusive of Wales and Cornwall. Dr. Beddoe and Mr. Mackintosh have published the result of their observations, and the latter concludes that “a considerable portion of the west Midland and southwestern counties are scarcely distinguishable from three of the types found in Wales—namely, the British, Gaelic, and Cymrian. In Shropshire, and ramifying to the east and southeast, the Cymrian type may be found in great numbers, though not predominating.… In many parts of the southwest the prevailing type among the working classes is decidedly Gaelic.… North Devon and Dorset may be regarded as its headquarters in South Britain.” Then, again, the district along the borders of Wales, especially between Taunton and Oswestry, and as far east as Bath, shows a population more naturally intellectual than that of any other part of England, and that without any superiority of primary education to account for it. The people are what might be called Anglicized Welsh, and there is among them a greater taste for solid knowledge than in the heart of England. Lancashire is to a great extent Scandinavian, and also somewhat Cymrian, as we have seen, and there the people are known as a shrewd, hardy race, thoughtful and fond of study, and great adepts in music.
At a large school in Tiverton, Devonshire, nine-tenths of the boys presented the most exaggerated Gaelic physiognomy; while at another, near Chichester, the girls were all of the most unmistakable Saxon type. We need not go further in this classification, and only introduced it to show that massing together all British types in Wales and Cornwall is a fallacy, such as all hasty generalizations are. It is not so certain, therefore, that there exists no indigenous element in the old songs that have survived, though in many an altered form, in some of the rural districts of England. Then, again, how is the word “national” used—in the sense of indigenous, or of popular, or of exclusively belonging to one given country? English music was, before the Commonwealth, at least as indigenous as the English language, as that gradually grew up and welded itself together. As to popularity, there was a style of song—some specimens of which we shall give—which was known and used by the poorest and humblest, and a style, too, far removed from the plebeian, though it may have been rather sentimental. Then glees and catches are, though of no very great antiquity, essentially English, and are scarcely known in any other country. If “national” stands for “political,” as many people at this day seem to take for granted, then, indeed, England has not much to boast of. That music is born rather of oppression and defeat, and loves to commemorate a people’s undying devotion to their own race, laws, customs, and rulers. Irish and Welsh and Jacobite songs exhibit that style best, though only the first of the three have any present significance, the two other kinds having long ago become more valuable for their intrinsic or historical merit than for their political meaning. Certain modern English songs, such as “Ye Mariners of England,” “Rule Britannia,” “The Death of Nelson,” might be called national songs in the political sense; but “God Save the King,” though patriotic and loyal, is thoroughly German in style and composition, and therefore hardly deserves the title national.
The Welsh have kept their musical taste pure. Mr. Mackintosh, in his paper on the Comparative Anthropology of England and Wales, says of the quiet and thoughtful villagers of Glan Ogwen, near the great Penrhyn slate quarries, that “their appreciation of the compositions of Handel and other great musicians is remarkable; and they perform the most difficult oratorios with a precision of time and intonation unknown in any part of England, except the West Riding of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Worcester, Gloucester, and Hereford.” The three latter are towns where the musical festivals are so frequent that the taste of the people cannot help being educated up to a good standard. Hereford, too, is very near the Welsh border. “The musical ear of the Welsh is extremely accurate. I was once present in a village church belonging to the late Dean of Bangor, when the choir sang an anthem composed by their leader, and repeated an unaccompanied hymn-tune five or six times without the slightest lowering of pitch. The works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart are republished with Welsh words at Ruthin and several other towns, and their circulation is almost incredible. At book and music shops of a rank where in England negro melodies would form the staple compositions, Handel is the great favorite; and such tunes as ‘Pop goes the Weasel’ would not be tolerated. The native airs are in general very elegant and melodious. Some of them, composed long before Handel, are in the Handelian style; others are remarkably similar to some of Corelli’s compositions. The less classical Welsh airs, in 3-8 time, such as ‘Jenny Jones’ are well known. Those in 2-4 time are often characterized by a sudden stop in the middle or at the close of a measure, and a repetition of pathetic slides or slurs.”
Much of this eulogium might be equally applied to the people of Lancashire, especially the men, who know the great oratorios by heart, and sing the choruses faultlessly among themselves, not only at large gatherings, but in casual reunions, whenever three or four happen to meet. Their part-singing, too, in glees, both ancient and modern, is admirable, and they have scarcely any taste for the low songs which are only too popular in many parts of England.
The songs of chivalry were another graft on the stock of English music, and the honor paid to the bards and minstrels was a mingling of the love of a national institution at least as old as the Druids—some say much older—and of the enthusiasm produced by the metrical relation of heroic feats of arms. The Crusades gave a great impulse to the troubadours’ songs, while the ancient British custom of commemorating the national history by the oral tradition and the music of the harpers, seemed to merge into and strengthen the new order of minstrels. Long before the bagpipe became the peculiar—almost national—instrument of Scotland, the harp held that position, as it has not yet ceased to do, in Ireland and Wales. The oldest harp now in Great Britain is an Irish one, which was already old in 1064. It is now in the museum of Trinity College, Dublin. These ancient instruments were very different from the modern ones on which our grandmothers used to display their skill before the pianoforte became, to its detriment, the fashionable instrument for young ladies; and even now the Irish and Welsh harps are made exactly on the old models, and have no pedals. But the use of the harp was not confined to the Welsh, and in the reign of King John, in the XIIth century, on the occasion of an attack made on the old town of Chester by the Welsh during the great yearly fair, it is recorded in the town annals that the commandant assembled all the minstrels who had come to the place upon that occasion, and marched them in the night, with their instruments playing, against the enemy, who, upon hearing so vast a sound, were filled with such terror and surprise that they instantly fled. In memory of this famous exploit, no doubt suggested by the Biblical narrative of Gideon’s successful stratagem, a meeting of minstrels is annually kept up to this day, with one of the Dutton family at their head, to whom certain privileges are granted. In the reign of Henry I. the minstrels were formed into corporate bodies, and enjoyed certain immunities in various parts of the kingdom. Gardiner[162] says that “the most accomplished became the companions and favorites of kings, and attended the court in all its expeditions.” Perhaps we may refer the still extant office of poet-laureate to this custom of retaining a court minstrel near the person of the sovereign. In the time of Elizabeth the profession of a harper had become a degraded one, only embraced by idle, low, and dissolute characters; and so it has remained ever since, through the various stages of ballad-monger, street-singer and fiddler, in which the memory of the once noble office has been merged or lost. In Scotland the piper, a personage of importance, has taken the place of the harper since the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, who introduced the pipes from France; but in Wales the minstrel, with his harp, upheld his respectability much longer, and even now most of the old families, jealous and proud of their national customs, retain their bard as an officer of the household. The writer has seen and heard one of these ancient minstrels, in the service of a family living near Llanarth, the mistress (a widow) making it her special business to promote the keeping up of all old national customs. She was an excellent farmer, too, and had a pet breed of small black Welsh sheep, whose wool she prepared for the loom herself, and with which she clothed her family and household. In the neighboring town she had got up an annual competition of harpers and choirs for the performance of Welsh music exclusively. The concert was always the occasion of a regular country festivity, ending with a ball, and medals and other prizes were given by her own hand to the best instrumental and vocal artists.
In Percy’s Reliques a description is given of the dress and appearance of a mediæval bard, as personated at a pageant given at Kenilworth in honor of Queen Elizabeth. The glory of the brotherhood was already so much a thing of the past that it was thought worth while to introduce this figure into a mock procession. This very circumstance is enough to mark the decline of the art in those days, but already a new sort of popular song had sprung up to replace the romances of chivalry. “A person,” says Percy, “very meet for the purpose, … his cap off; his head seemly rounded tonsure-wise, fair-kembed [combed], that with a sponge daintily dipt in a little capon’s grease was finely smoothed, to make it shine like a mallard’s wing. His beard smugly shaven; and yet his shirt, after the new trink, with ruffs fair starched, sleeked and glittering like a pair of new shoes; marshalled in good order with a setting stick and strut, that every ruff stood up like a wafer.[163] A long gown of Kendal-green gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore with a white clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily, for heat, to undo when he list. Seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle; from that a pair of capped Sheffield knives hanging at two sides. Out of his bosom was drawn forth a lappet of his napkin [handkerchief] edged with a blue lace, and marked with a true-love, a heart, and D for Damain; for he was but a bachelor yet. His gown had long sleeves down to mid-leg, lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of black worsted; upon them a pair of poynets [wristlets, from poignet] of tawny chamlet, laced along the wrist with blue threaden points; a wealt towards the hand of fustian-a-napes. A pair of red neather stocks, a pair of pumps [shoes] on his feet, with a cross cut at the toes for corns; not new, indeed, yet cleanly blackt with soot, and shining as a shoeing-horn. About his neck a red riband suitable to his girdle. His harp in good grace dependent before him. His wrest [tuning-key] tyed to a green lace, and hanging by. Under the gorget of his gown, a fair chain of silver as a squire minstrel of Middlesex, that travelled the country this summer season, unto fairs and worshipful men’s houses. From his chain hung a scutcheon, with metal and color, resplendent upon his breast, of the ancient arms of Islington.” The peculiarities marking his shoes no doubt referred to the long pedestrian tours of the early minstrels.