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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Many origins have been suggested for the type of narrative song appearing in the English and Scottish traditional ballads: minstrel genesis, origin in the dance, improvisations of mediaeval peasant communes, or descent from the dance songs of primitive peoples. The hypothesis of minstrel origin was that first to be advanced and it has always retained supporters. There remains a possibility not yet brought forward which deserves to be presented for what it is worth, since the problem, though it may be insoluble, has its attraction for critic and student. We have but meager knowledge of the ballad melodies of pre-Elizabethan days, and we can get but little farther with the study of the ballads by way of research into mediaeval music. Moreover the earliest texts remaining to us seem to have been meant for recital rather than for singing. In general, the melodies of ballads are more shifting, less dependable, than are the texts, in the sense of the plots and the characters which the texts present. This is true of contemporary folk-songs and it was probably true earlier. One text may be sung to a variety of airs or one air may serve for many texts. Nor can we get much farther with the study of ballads by way of the minstrels. They have had much attention already; and nothing has ever been brought out really barring them from major responsibility for ballad creation and diffusion in the earlier periods. Again, we can get but little farther by studying the mediaeval dance, or folk-improvisations, or the dance songs of primitive peoples, all of which have been associated with the Child ballads to an exaggerated degree. It is time to try a new angle of approach—the last remaining—although the hypothesis which it suggests is far removed from the theory of genesis enjoying the greatest acceptance at the present time, and although it—like its predecessors—may not take us very far.
1 For the dating of ballad texts, see E. Flügel, Zur Chronologie der englischen Balladen, Anglia, vol. xxi (1899), pp. 312 ff.
2 Compare P. F. Baum, “The English Ballad of Judas Iscariot,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xxxi (1916), p. 181, and “The Mediaeval Legend of Judas Iscariot,” ibid., p. 481.
3 Printed, with editorial notes, by W. W. Greg, The Modern Language Review, vol. viii, p. 64, and vol. ix (1913), p. 235.
4 Like the “rhymes” of Robin Hood mentioned in Piers Plowman.
5 The music of some of the Robin Hood songs, sometimes at least, seems to have been church music, or music of the same type. See a passage on “pryksong” in the Interlude of The Four Elements, dated by Schelling about 1517. (Halliwell edition, Percy Society Publications, 1848, pp. 50, 51.) See also pricksong in The Oxford Dictionary. There should be nothing surprising in the singing of ballads to music of ecclesiastical type, if such was the case. In contemporary folk-song, hymn tunes are constantly utilized, in the United States and elsewhere—as in the Faroe Islands, according to Thuren. The words of John Brown, in the period of the Civil War, were put together to a popular Methodist camp-meeting tune. Jean Beck (La Musique des Troubadours, Paris, 1910, pp. 19-24) leans to the opinion that the source of troubadour music, hence of Romance lyric poetry in general, is to be found in the music of the church.
6 In The Hunting of the Cheviot; The Rose of England and Flodden Field; Sir Andrew Barton.
7 Other “literary” features of the ballads, the popular spring morning (reverdi) opening of the outlaw pieces and the frequent chanson d'aventure opening, were mentioned in connection with the discussion of fifteenth-century texts.
8 If ecclesiastical ballads are the earliest ballads, The Carnal and the Crane, a theological discussion between birds of the type liked in the Middle Ages, in which the Crane instructs her interrogator on the childhood and life of Jesus and in several apocryphal incidents, might be a ballad of earlier type than Lord Randal. Though itself first recorded in an eighteenth-century text, this ballad-carol has unmistakably early affiliations, as with St. Stephen and Herod, and early legendary matter concerning Christ. And the ballads Dives and Lazarus, traceable to the sixteenth century, The Maid and the Palmer of the Percy Manuscript, and Brown Robin's Confession of Buchan's collection, might represent an older type of material than Edward or Babylon. But this is purely speculative, and of no value as argument.
The ballad Hugh of Lincoln, or The Jew's Daughter, which still has vitality, though its earliest texts come from the middle of the eighteenth century, takes us back in its tragic story and its discovery of murder by miracle to the thirteenth century. The story of Hugh of Lincoln first appears in The Annals of Waverley, 1255, and in Matthew of Paris. It has parallels in the twelfth century and a cognate in Chaucer's The Prioresse's Tale. Hugh of Lincoln refers us to an old story of definite date more certainly than do most of the ballads. It deserves mention among those exhibiting, it would appear, material of older type than the outlaw, chronicle, or romantic ballads.
9 Böhme, Geschichte des Tanzes (1888), pp. 244 ff.
10 Ed. all versions, W. H. Hulme, E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 100 (1907).
11 Compare in The Minor Pieces of the Vernon Manuscript, vol. i, ed. Horstmann, E. E. T. S., No. 98 (1892) “The Miracles of Our Lady,” p. 138, “The Saving of Crotey City,” “The Child Slain by the Jews,” “A Jew Boy in an Oven,” etc., the opening of “The Visions of Seynt Poul wan he was rapt into Paradys,” etc.; vol. ii, ed. Furnivall (1901), “Susannah, or Seemly Susan,” p. 626; and in the Sloane Manuscript 2593, “St. Nicholas and Three Maidens” and “Nowel, Mary moder cum and se,” etc. Also many pieces in ms. Balliol 354.
The religious tag stanzas at the end of older ballads—often dropped in later texts—account for themselves better if emerging from ecclesiastical influence than if emerging from the purely secular minstrelsy condemned for its influence by the church. Examples are But this is uncertain ground. Such passages appear in the romances, as Sir Orpheo, as well as in sermons, like the old Kentish sermons of the thirteenth century. In the Danish ballads, Steenstrup thinks these tag stanzas a sign of lateness.
12 The influence of the song of the early church has often been pointed out. “The lyric art, it is hardly too much to say,” declares Rhys, “was in English kept alive for nearly three centuries by the hymns of the monks and lay brothers” (Lyric Poetry [1913], p. 19).
13 The English religious lyric of the Middle Ages far exceeds in quantity that of secular verse and it appears much earlier. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries afford many specimens. That many were written in this period is clear from the number which yet remain to us. Before the thirteenth century, most religious lyrics were in Latin.
14 With the possible exception of Robin and Gandeleyn. I have not been able to see the Harvard doctorate thesis of J. H. Boynton, Studies in the English Ballad Refrain, with a Collection of Ballad and Early Song Refrains (1897), for the thesis remained unpublished.
15 From the Sloane ms. 2593. And compare A Song of Joseph and Mary in a manuscript of the Advocate's Library, Edinburgh, dated 1372, first printed by Professor Carleton F. Brown, Selections from Old and Middle English (1918); also Lamentacio Dolorosa and Lullaby to the Infant Jesus, first printed (from the same manuscript) by Professor Brown.
16 Bernhard Fehr, Die Lieder der HS. Sloane 2593, Archiv, vol. cix, p. 51. Compare also some of the short religious pieces edited by Furnivall, E. E. T. S., vol. xv (1866), as “Christ Comes,” p. 259, from the Harleian MS. 7322.
17 ms. Balliol 354. Richard Hill's Commonplace Book, E. E. T. S., Extra Series 101 (1907). This book contains many sacred songs and carols and many moral didactic and historical pieces and a few worldly and humorous pieces. It abounds in approaches to the ballad manner.
18 See Notes and Queries, 1905. Christ is referred to again and again as a “knight” in many religious songs from the Love Rune of Thomas de Hales onward.
19 The iteration of triple rhyme brings monotony and checks the speed of the narrative. Just as with the ballad, so with the popular hymn stanza, the three-line form was replaced by the quatrain.
20 ms. Balliol 354. Richard Hill's Commonplace Book. Ed. Dyboski, E. E. T. S., Extra Series, 101 (1907), p. 1.
21 Ed. Dyboski, E. E. T. S., 101, p. 40.
22 English Literature: Mediæval (1912). Home University Library edition, p. 159.
23 E. E. T. S., 101 (1907), p. 32. The Stoning of St. Stephen is not mentioned by Professor Child. Both the St. Stephen pieces are probably to be classed as St. Stephen day songs or carols.
24 Balliol ms. 354. The triple rhyme stanza of these ecclesiastical ballads appears also in Miracle plays, e. g., the Chester Noah's Flood.
25 Dissertation on Ancient Songs and Music, prefixed to Ancient Songs and Ballads. Vol. I (ed. of 1829), p. lxxviii.
26 De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum. Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages. Published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 1858-99, p. 336.
27 There are many records of payments to minstrels extant in account books of Durham Priory, from the thirteenth century onward, and from Maxtoke and Thetford Priories from the fifteenth century.
28 Penitential, printed by B. Hauréau, Notices et Extraits de Manuscrits, xxiv, ii, 284, from Bib. Nat. Lat. 3218 and 3529. Sunt autem alii, qui dicuntur ioculatores, qui cantant gesta principum et vitam sanctorum, et faciunt solatia hominibus vel in aegritudinibus suis vel in angustiis … et non faciunt etc. … Si autuem non faciunt talia, sed cantant in instrumentis suis gesta principum et alia talia utilia ut faciant solatia hominibus, sicut supradictum est, bene possunt sustineri tales, sicut ait Alexander papa.
29 See Warton, History of English Poetry, ed. of 1840, pp. 81, 82.
30 Kennet, Parochial Antiquities (1695), ed. of 1818.
31 Handlyng Synne, ed. F. J. Furnivall, E. E. T. S., 119.
32 Unless in Robin and Gandeleyn. If a refrain is present in this ballad it is extraneous to the stanza structure, not part of it. The stanzas of the ballad so vary in form and length as to make them seem more suitable for recital than for singing.
33 See “The Ballad and the Dance,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. xxxiv, p. 360.
34 See the testimony concerning “robene hude and litil ihone” and the tale of the “zong tamlene” listed in The Complaynt of Scotland, 1549. Edited by J. A. H. Murray, E. E. T. S. (1872), vol. I, p. 63.
