Читать книгу Merrie England in the Olden Time - George Daniel - Страница 7

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Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” was the admirable reply of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio when he would have marred his Christmas * merrymaking with Sir Andrew and the Clown. And how beautiful is Olivia's reply to the self-same precisian when the searching apophthegms of the “foolish wise man, or wise foolish man,” sounded like discords in his ears. “O, you are sick of selflove, Malvolio, and taste all with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.”

* Christmas being the season when Jack Frost commonly takes

us by the nose, the diversions are within doors, either in

exercise, or by the fire-side. Viz. a game at blind-man's-

buff, puss-in-the-corner, questions and commands, hoop-and-

hide; stories of hobgoblins, Tom-pokers, bull-beggars,

witches, wizards, conjurors, Doctor Faustus, Friar Bacon,

Doctor Partridge, and such-like horrible bodies, that

terrify and delight!

“O you merry, merry souls,

Christmas is a-coming:

We shall have flowing bowls,

Dancing, piping, drumming.

Delicate minced pies,

To feast every virgin;

Capon and goose likewise,

Brawn, and dish of sturgeon.

We hate to be everlastingly bewailing the follies and vices of mankind; and gladly turn to the pleasanter side of the picture, to contemplate something that we can love and emulate. We know

Then for Christmas-box,

Sweet plum-cake and money;

Delicate holland smocks,

Kisses sweet as honey.

Hey for Christmas ball,

Where we will be jolly;

Coupling short and tall,

Kate, Dick, Ralph, and Molly.

To the hop we go,

Where we'll jig and caper;

Cuckolds all a-row—

Will shall pay the scraper.

Tom must dance with Sue,

Keeping time with kisses;

We'll have a jolly crew

Of sweet smirking Misses!”—Old Song.

There are such things as opaque wits and perverse minds, as there are squinting eyes and crooked legs; but we desire not to entertain such guests either as companions or foils. We come not to the conclusion that the world is split into two classes, viz. those who are and those who ought to be hanged; that we should believe every man to be a rogue till we find him honest. There is quite virtue enough in human life to make our journey moderately happy. We are of the hopeful order of beings, and think this world a very beautiful world, if man would not mar it with his pride, selfishness, and gloom.

It has been a maxim among all great and wise nations to encourage public sports and diversions. The advantages that arise from them to a state; the benefit they are to all degrees of the people; the right purposes they may be made to serve in troublesome times, have generally been so well understood by the ruling powers, that they have seldom permitted them to suffer from the assaults of narrow-minded and ignorant reformers.

Our ancestors were wise when they appointed amusements for the people. And as religious services (which are the means, not the end—the road to London is not London) were never intended for a painful duty, the “drum ecclesiastic,” which in latter times called its recruits to pillage and bloodshed, often summoned Punch, Robin Hood, and their merry crew, to close the motley ceremonies of a holy-appointed day! Then was the calendar Devotion's diary and Mirth's manual! Rational pleasure is heightened by participation; solitary enjoyment is always selfish. Who ever inquires after a sour recluse, except his creditors and next heir? Nobody misses him when there are so many more agreeable people to supply his place. Of what use is such a negative, “crawling betwixt earth and heaven?” If he hint that Diogenes, * dying of the dumps, may be found at home in his tub, who cares to disinter him? Oh, the deep solitude of a great city to a morose and selfish spirit! The Hall of Eblis is not more terrible. Away, then, with supercilious exclusiveness! 'Tis the grave of the affections! the charnel-house of the heart! What to us is the world, if to the world we are nothing?

We delight to see a fool ** administer to his brethren.

* Diogenes, when he trod with his dirty cobbled shoes on the

beautiful carpets of Plato, exclaimed triumphantly, “I tread

upon the pride of Plato!”—“Yes,” replied Plato, “but with

a greater pride!”

** “A material fool,” as Jacques describes Touchstone. Such

was Dr. Andrew Borde, the well-known progenitor of Merry

Andrews; and the presumed author of the “Merry Tales of the

Wise Men of Gotham,” composed in the early part of the

sixteenth century. “In the time of Henry VIII. and after,”

(says Anthony à Wood,) “it was accounted a book full of wit

and mirth by the scholars and gentlemen.” It is thus

referred to in an old play of 1560:—

“Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

I must needs laughe in my slefe.

The wise men of Gotum are risen againe.”

If merriment sometimes ran riot, it never exhibited itself in those deep-laid villanies so rife among the pretenders to sanctity and mortification. An appeal to “clubs” among the London apprentices; the pulling down of certain mansions of iniquity, of which Mrs. Cole, * in after days, was the devout proprietress; a few broken heads at the Bear Garden; the somewhat opposite sounds of the “belles tolling for the lectorer, and the trumpets sounding to the stages,” ** and sundry minor enormities, were the only terrible results of this national licence. Mark what followed, when masking, morris-dancing, ***

* Foote's “Minor.” Act i. scene 1.

** Harleian MSS. No. 286.

*** The morris-dance was one of the most applauded

merriments of Old England. Robin Hood, Little John, Friar

Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May, the fool,

the piper, to which were afterwards added a dragon, and a

hobbyhorse, were the characters that figured away in that

truly ancient and grotesque movement. Will Kempe, “the

comical and conceited jest-monger, and vicegerent to the

ghost of Dicke Tarleton,” who “raised many a roar by making

faces and mouths of all sorts,” danced the morris with his

men of Gotham, in his “Nine daies' wonder from London to

Norwich.” Kempe's “new jigg,” rivalled in popularity his

Peter in Romeo and Juliet; Dogberry, in “Much ado about

nothing;” and

Justice Shallow, of which he was the original performer. In

“Jacke Drum's Entertainment,” 4to. 1601, is the following

song:

ON THE INTRODUCTION OF A WHITSUN MORRIS-DANCE.

“Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly,

Tickle it, tickle it lustily,

Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour,

Tickle it, tickle it, lustily.

Let us be seene on Hygate Greene,

To dance for the honour of Holloway.

Sing we are come hither, let us spare for no leather,

To dance for the honour of Holloway.”

May games, stage-plays, * fairs, and the various pastimes that delighted the commonalty, were sternly prohibited. The heart sickens at the cant and cruelty of these monstrous times, when fanaticism, with a dagger in one hand, and “Hooks and Eyes for an Unbeliever's Breeches,” in the other, revelled in the destruction of all that was intellectual in the land.

* Plays were suppressed by the Puritans in 1633. The actors

were driven off the stage by the soldiers; and the only

pleasantry that Messrs. “Praise-God-Barebones” and “Fight-

the-good-fight,” indulged in, was “Enter red coat, exit hat

and cloak;” a cant phrase in reference to this devout

tyranny. Randolph, in “The Muses' Looking-glass,” makes a

fanatic utter this charitable prayer:

“That the Globe,

Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,

Had been consum'd, the Phoenix burnt to ashes;

The Fortune whipp'd for a blind—Blackfriars!

He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing I' the time of

Reformation: lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the

Thames to the Bear Gardens, And there be soundly baited.

In 1599 was published “The overthrow of Stage Playes, by way

of controversie betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainolde, where-

in all the Reasons that ean be made for them are notably

refuted, the objections answered, and the case so clear and

resolved as that the judgment of any man that is not froward

and perverse may casilic be satisfied; wherein is

manifestly proved that it is not onely unlawfull to bee an

actor, but a beholder of those vanities, &e. &c.”

When the lute, the virginals, the viol-de-gambo, were hushed for the inharmonious bray of their miserable conventicles, * and the quaintly appropriate signs ** of the ancient taverns and music shops were pulled down to make room for some such horrible effigy as we see dedicated to their high priest, John Knox, on a wall in the odoriferous Canongate of Modern Athens. ***

* “What a poor pimping business is a Presbyterian place of

worship; dirty, narrow and squalid: stuck in the corner of

an old Popish garden such as Linlithgow, and much more,

Melrose.”—Robert Burns.

** Two wooden heads, with this inscription under it: “We

three loggerheads be.” The third was the spectator. The

tabor was the ancient sign of a music shop. Tarleton kept an

eating-house with this sign. Apropos of signs—Two Irishmen

beholding a hatchment fixed against a house, the one

inquired what it was? “It's a bad sign!” replied the other

mysteriously. Paddy being still at fault as to the meaning,

asked for further explanation.—“It's a sign,” cried his

companion with a look of immeasurable superiority, “that

somebody is dead!”

*** Those who would be convinced of the profaneness of the

Cameronians and Covenanters have only to read “Scotch

Presbyterian Eloquence displayed, or the Folly of their

teaching discovered from their Books, Sermons, and Prayers,”

1738—a volume full of ludicrous impieties. We select one

specimen.

Mr. William Vetch, preaching at Linton, in Tiviotdale, said,

“Our Bishops thought they were very secure this long time.

“Like Willie Willie Wastel,

I am in my castel.

All the dogs in the town

Dare nor ding me down.

“Yea, but there is a doggie in Heaven that has dung them all

down.”

Deep was the gloom of those dismal days! The kitchens were cool; the spits motionless. * The green holly and the mystic mistletoe ** were blooming abominations. The once rosy cheeks of John Bull looked as lean as a Shrove-Tuesday pancake, and every rib like the tooth of a saw.

* “The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster, and

Ruleroast the Cook,” 4to. 1641.

* The magical properties of the mistletoe are mentioned both

by Virgil and Ovid; and Apuleius has preserved some verses

of the poet Lelius, in which he mentions the mistletoe as

one of the things necessary to make a magician. In the dark

ages a similar belief prevailed, and even to the present day

the peasants of Holstein, and some other countries, call the

mistletoe the “Spectre's Wand,” from a supposition that

holding a branch of mistletoe in the hand will not only

enable a man to see ghosts, but to force them to speak to

him! The mistletoe is peculiar to Christmas.

Rampant were those times, when crop-ear'd Jack Presbyter was as blythe as shepherd at a wake. * Down tumbled the Maypoles **—no more music

* “We'll break the windows which the whore Of Babylon hath

planted,

And when the Popish saints are down,

Then Burges shall be sainted;

We'll burn the fathers' learned books,

And make the schoolmen flee;

We'll down with all that smells of wit,

And hey, then, up go we!”

** The downfall of May-games, 4to. 1660. By Thomas Hall, the

canting parson of King's-Norton.—Hear the caitiff,

“There's not a knave in all the town,

Nor swearing courtier, nor base clown,

Nor dancing lob, nor mincing quean,

Nor popish clerk, be't priest or dean,

Nor Knight debauch'd nor gentleman,

That follows drab, or cup, or can,

That will give thee a friendly look,

If thou a May-pole canst not brook.”

On May 1, 1517, the unfortunate shaft, or May-pole, gave

rise to the insurrection of that turbulent body, the London

apprentices, and the plundering of the foreigners in the

city, whence it got the name of Evil May-day. From that time

the offending pole was hung on a range of hooks over the

doors of a long row of neighbouring houses. In the 3rd of

Edward VI. an over-zealous fanatic called Sir Stephen began

to preach against this May-pole, which inflamed his audience

so greatly, that the owner of every house over which it hung

sawed off as much as depended over his premises, and

committed piecemeal to the flames this terrible idol!

The “tall May-pole” that “onee o'erlooked the Strand,”

(about the year 1717,) Sir Isaac Newton begged of the

parish, and it was carried to Wanstead in Essex, where it

was erected in the park, and had the honour of raising the

greatest telescope then known. The New Church occupies its

site.

“But now (so Anne and piety ordain),

A church collects the saints of Drury Lane.”

and dancing! * For the disciples of Stubbes and Prynne having discovered by their sage oracles, that May-games were derived from the Floralian Feasts and interludes of the pagan Romans, which were solemnised on the first of May; and that dancing round a May-pole, adorned with garlands of flowers, ribbons, and other ornaments, was idolatry, after the fashion of Baal's worshippers, who capered about the altar in honour of their idol; resolved that the Goddess Flora should no longer receive the gratulations of Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and Robin Hood's merry men, on a fine May morning; a superstition derived from the Sibyl's books, horribly papistical and pagan.

* “Good fellowes must go learne to daunce

The brydeal is full near a:

There is a brail come out of Fraunce,

The fyrst ye harde this yeare a.

For I must leape, and thou must hoppe,

And we must turne all three a;

The fourth must bounce it like a toppe,

And so we shall agree a.

praye the mynstrell make no stoppe,

For we wyll merye be a.”

From an unique black letter ballad, printed in 1569,

“Intytuled, 'Good Fellowes must go learne to Daunce.'”

Nor was the “precise villain” less industrious in confiscation and sacrilege. * Painted windows—Lucifer's Missal drawings!—he took infinite pains to destroy; and with his long pike did the devil's work diligently. He could endure no cross ** but that on silver; hence the demolition of those beautiful edifices that once adorned Cheapside, and other remarkable sites in ancient times.

* Sir Robert Howard has drawn an excellent picture of a

Puritan family, in his comedy of “The Committee.” The

personages are Mr. Day, chairman to the committee of

sequestrations; Mrs. Day, “the committee-man's utensil,”

with “curled hair, white gloves, and Sabbath-day's cinnamon

waistcoat;” Abel, their booby son, a fellow “whose heart is

down in his breeches at every turn and Obadiah, chief clerk,

dull, drawling, and heinously given to strong waters. We are

admitted into the sanctum sanctorum, of pious fraud, where

are seated certain honourable members, whose names cannot

fail to enforce respect. Nehemiah Catch, Joseph Blemish,

Jonathan Headstrong, and Ezekiel Scrape! The work of plunder

goes bravely on. The robbing of widows and orphans is

“building up the new Zion.” A parcel of notched rascals

laying their heads together to cheat is “the cause of the

righteous prospering when brethren dwell together in unity

and when a canting brother gives up lying and the ghost, Mr.

Day remarks that “Zachariah went off full of exhortation!”

It was at the sacking of Basing House, the seat of the

venerable Marquis of Winchester, that Harrison, the regicide

and butcher's son, shot Major Robinson, exclaiming as he did

the deed, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord

negligently.” Hugh Peters, the buffooning priest, was of the

party.

** The erection of upright stone crosses is generally

supposed to have dated its origin from the custom which the

first Christians in this island adopted of inscribing the

Druid stones with a cross, that the worship of the converted

idolator might be transferred from the idol to the emblem of

his faith; and afterwards the Saxon kings frequently erected

crosses previously to a battle, at which public prayers were

offered up for victory. After the Norman conquest crosses

became common, and were erected in market-places, to induce

honesty by the sanction of religion: in churchyards, to

inspire devout and pious feelings; in streets, for the

deposit of a corpse when borne to its last home; and for

various other purposes. Here the beggar stationed himself,

and asked alms in the name of Him who suffered on the cross.

They were used for landmarks, that men might learn to

respect and hold sacred the boundaries of another's

property. Du Cange says that crosses were erected in the

14th Richard II. as landmarks to define the boundaries

between Kesteven and Holland. They were placed on public

roads as a check to thieves, and to regulate processions. At

the Reformation (?!! ) most of the crosses throughout the

kingdom were destroyed, when the sweeping injunction of

Bishop Horne was formally promulgated at his Visitation in

1571, that all images of the Trinity in glass windows, or

other places of the church, be put out and extinguished,

together with the stone cross in the churchyard! We devoutly

hope, as Dr. Johnson hoped of John Knox, that Bishop Horne

was buried in a cross-road.

The sleek rogue read his Bible * upside down, and hated his neighbour: his piety was pelf; his godliness gluttony.

* “They like none but sanctified and shuttle-headed weavers,

long-winded boxmakers, and thorough-stitching cobblers,

thumping felt-makers, jerking coachmen, and round-headed

button-makers, which spoyle Bibles while they thumb over the

leaves with their greasie fingers, and sit by the fireside

scumming their porridge-pot, while their zeal seethes over

in applications and interpretations of Scripture delivered

to their ignorant wives and handmaids, with the name and

title of deare brethren and especially beloved sisters.”—

The doleful Lamentation of Cheapside Crosse, or Old England

sick of the Staggers, 1641.

His grace * was as long as his face. The gnat, like Macbeth's “Amen,” stuck in his throat; but the camel slid down merrily. What a weary, working-day world would this have been under his unhospitable dominion! ** How unlovely and lachrymose! how sectarian and sinister! A bumper of bitters, to be swallowed with a rising gorge, and a wry face! All literature would have resolved itself into—

* One Lady D'Arcy, a well-jointured, puritanical widow,

having invited the next heir in the entail to dine with her,

asked him to say grace. The young gentleman, thinking that

her ladyship had lived quite long enough, expressed his

wishes thus graciously:—

“Good Lord of thy mercy,

Take my good Lady D'Arcy

Unto her heavenly throne;

That I, little Frank,

May sit in my rank,

And keep a good house of my own!”

** John Knox proclaimed the mild sentence, which was loudly

re-echoed by his disciples, that the idolator should die the

death, in plain English (or rather, God be thanked! in plain

Scotch) that every Catholic should be hanged. The bare

toleration of prelacy—of the Protestant prelacy!—was the

guilt of soul-murder. These were the merciful Christians!

the sainted martyrs! who conducted the inquisitorial tyranny

of the high commission, and imposed the test of that piece

of impious buffoonery, the “Holy League and Covenant!!” who

visited the west of Scotland with the free quarters of the

military, and triumphed so brutally over the unfortunate,

patriotic and gallant Montrose. The Scotch Presbyterians

enacted that each episcopalian was liable to transportation

who should baptize a child, or officiate as a clergyman to

more than Jour persons, besides the members of his own

family!

—“The plain Pathway to Penuriousness;” Peachwns “Worth of a Penny, or a caution to keep Money;” and the “Key to unknowne Knowledge, or a Shop of Five Windows”

“Which if you do open, to cheapen and copen,

You will be unwilling, for many a shilling,

To part with the profit that you shall have of it;”

and the drama, which, whether considered as a school of eloquence or a popular entertainment, is entitled to national regard, would have been proscribed, because—having neither soul for sentiment, eye for beauty, nor ear for poetry, it was his pleasure to be displeased. His humanity may be summed up in one short sentence, “I will take care, my dear brother, you shall not keep your bed in sickness, for I will take it from under you.” There are two reasons why we don't trust a man—one, because we don't know him, and the other because we do. Such a man would have shouted “Hosan-nah!” when the Saviour entered Jerusalem in triumph; and cried “Crucify him!” when he went up the mountain to die.

Seeing how little party spirit, religious controversy, and money-grubbing have contributed to the general stock of human happiness—that pre-eminence in knowledge is

“Only to know how little can be known,

To see all others' faults, and feel our own,”

we cry, with St. Patrick's dean, “Vive la bagatelle!” Democritus lived to an hundred. Death shook, not his dart, but his sides, at the laughing philosopher, and “delay'd to strike” till his lungs had crowed their second jubilee: while Heraclitus was Charon's passenger at threescore. But the night wanes apace; to-morrow we must rise with the lark. Fill we a cup to Mercury, à bon repos!

A bumper at parting! a bumper so bright,

Though the clock points to morning, by way of good

night!

Time, scandal, and cards, are for tea-drinking souls!

Let them play their rubbers, while we ply the bowls!

Oh who are so jocund, so happy as we?

Our skins full of wine, and our hearts full of glee!

Not buxom Dame Nature, a provident lass!

Abhors more a vacuum, than Bacchus's glass,

Where blue-devils drown, and where merry thoughts

swim—

As deep as a Quaker, as broad as his brim!

Like rosy fat friars, again and again

Our beads we have told, boys I—in sparkling champagne!

Our gravity's centre is good vin de grave,

Pour'd out to replenish the goblet concave;

And tell me what rubies so glisten and shine,

Like the deep blushing ruby of Burgundy wine?

His face in the glass Bibo smiles when he sees;

For Fancy takes flight on no wing like the bee's!

If truth in a well lie—ah! truth, well-a-day!—

I'll seek it in “Fmo,”—the pleasantest way!

Let temperance, twankay, teetotallers trump;

Your sad, sober swiggers at “Veritas” pump!

If water flow hither, so crystal and clear,

To mix with our wine—'tis humanity's tear.

When Venus is crusty, and Mars in a miff,

Their tipple is prime nectar-toddy and stiff—

And shall we not toast, like their godships above,

The lad we esteem, and the lady we love?

Be goblets as sparkling, and spirits as light,

Our next merry meeting! A bumper—good night!