Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 9
ОглавлениеBARDS AND MINSTRELS.
“I love such holy ramblers; still They know to charm a weary hill With song, romance, or lay; Some jovial tale, or glee, or jest, Some lying legend at the least, They bring to cheer the way.”—Scott.
Our pageant now reveals an ancient Greek banquet. You see the guests arriving, attendant slaves removing their sandals, washing their feet, and presenting water and towels for ablution of the hands. The guests greet their host, and seat themselves at little separate tables. A signal is given, and huge smoking joints of flesh are borne in and distributed to the feasting throng in generous measure. In three great bowls the juice of the grape is mingled with water, and, when libations have been offered to the gods, the ruddy sweet wine is ladled into goblets which are filled and emptied in quick succession.
A Reading from Homer. (From the picture by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A., O.M. By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company.) To List
The feasting is over, and a man steps forward bearing a lyre and carrying in his hand a branch of laurel as the sign of his profession. He is a rhapsodist, one of the bards and minstrels of ancient Greece, and without him no feast is complete. The Greeks love nothing better than to sit in silence, listening to his singing and recitation as they quaff their wine. He has an amazing store of poesy in his memory, and hour by hour he pours it forth. He recounts the mighty deeds of the ancient heroes; he invokes the gods on high Olympus; he sings of the vintage, the sheep-shearing, the rustic merry-making, the loves of man and maid.
He and his fellows wander from place to place, and are alike welcomed in the granges of prosperous farmers, the halls of chieftains, and the courts of princes. Hours of leisure and occasions of rejoicing are empty of delight when his voice is not heard. He commits to memory the old songs, composes new ones, learns the best of other men's productions, and excels in the art of combining voice and melody into strains that enrapture the ear and lift the spirit to ecstasy.
As yet the wondrous art of writing is unknown, and these bards and minstrels are the only books of the age. Many of their songs die with them, but the most popular of their compositions live on and are transmitted from memory to memory until the great day when a blind bard shall gather them from a thousand lips and weave them into a continuous whole, ready for the patient scribe to give them a life that ends only with the great globe itself. They will then be a possession for all time, more enduring than brass, more permanent than the infinite monuments which kings and princes have vainly reared in the hope of perpetuating their fleeting greatness. Far down the ages man will study and love these ancient Greek legends and lays, and will reverence the great name of the blind bard, Homer,
“who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed, with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.”
Between the days of the rhapsodist and those of primitive man beating out his rude verses in the shelter of his cave, countless ages have elapsed. Men gradually achieved lordship over their brute rivals, and in favoured regions, such as those surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, abandoned the perilous and precarious life of the hunter for that of the shepherd and herdsman. They caught and domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, and other useful animals, and thus ensured a ready supply of food at all seasons. Familiarity with wool led to the invention of the arts of spinning and weaving, and with the increase of possessions came the desire for more. Man had already emerged from the caves and holes in the rocks; the days of “hand-to-mouth” living had passed, and the first steps towards civilization had been taken.
The discovery that certain grains sown in the ground would sprout and produce seed after their kind, marked the beginnings of the next stage in man's upward progress. He became an agriculturist as well as a herdsman, and thus was fixed to the soil of a particular place. As food supplies increased, and flocks and herds multiplied, new needs arose: more permanent dwellings of wood or stone were required, better clothing was demanded, conveniences and comforts and ornaments were desired. No longer was it possible for a single individual to turn his hand to each and every task of the day; division of labour became necessary, and each tribe developed its builders, its potters, its weavers, its leather-workers, and so forth.
All these craftsmen would naturally establish themselves in some convenient spot where they could be readily found when their services were needed, and in this way villages and towns would grow up. To such centres farmers and herdsmen would bring the produce of field or flock to exchange for the commodities which they needed or the services which they desired, and so markets would be established and traders would be evolved.
Man cannot live by bread alone; he needs sustenance not only for his body, but for his mind and spirit. As wealth increased it became possible for communities to support those who showed themselves specially capable of ministering to these needs. Men were set apart to serve as priests and law-givers; others found their occupation in lifting men's minds from the cares and anxieties of daily life and gratifying their desire for things pleasing to the senses. The bard and the minstrel, the painter and the craftsman, then became specialized members of the community.
Very early in the history of all races we find bards and minstrels holding an important place in society. Men in all ages have loved to hear stories told, and in Eastern lands even to-day groups of men and women may be seen squatting in the dust, listening for hours together to the long-drawn-out fictions of professional story-tellers. In every Japanese town the booths of the story-tellers are set up, and people flock to them to hear the old legends retold and new inventions related. The children who cluster round a mother's knee and demand a story obey an instinct of mankind which has been dominant since the world began. The bards and minstrels gratified this instinct, but they also played a much more important part in the history of nations.
They were the only professional literary men of the long ages before writing; in their trained memories was stored up all the legendary lore of their race. They were thus the guardians and custodians of tribal history as enshrined in ancient song and story. Travelling to and fro and reciting these legends to all classes of the community, they served the political purpose of keeping a sense of national unity alive and vigorous. Men were constantly reminded that they not only dwelt in the same land and under the same ruler, but that they were united by their common descent from the gods and the heroes who had founded and ennobled their race. How powerfully these makers and preservers of song have swayed the minds of their fellow-countrymen and inspired them to resistance is seen as late as the days of Edward the First, who could not make his conquest of Wales complete until the bards were slain. The poet Gray pictures the last remaining bard lamenting as follows:—
“Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries.—
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
I see them sit, they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land;
With me in dreadful harmony they join
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.”
How true is the saying of Fletcher of Saltoun: “If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation!”
The bards and minstrels of the ancient world were all poets and reciters of poetry. Why they couched their legends in poetry rather than in prose is not difficult to understand. The measured beat of poetry always arrests and holds the attention of untutored minds better than prose, as may be seen in the case of children delighting in nursery rhymes. As the bards wished to move their audiences, they chose their words with great care, and as they sang their compositions to the music of the lyre or harp, it was necessary that they should have a rhythmic form. Then, again, poetry is easier to remember than prose, and memory-aids were very desirable in the days when no exterior prompting was possible.
In the next chapter we shall see how the art of writing arose. When men were able to set down their thoughts in writing and communicate them by simple transmission of manuscript to distant persons and distant ages, the bard fell from his high office and estate. Those who possessed books and could read needed him no longer; he therefore, by slow degrees, became a mere purveyor of amusement, to be classed with the mime, the juggler, the buffoon, the flute player, and the horde of those who “set on the groundlings to laugh.”
Still his reign amongst even civilized races was a long one, for only in quite modern times has the art of reading become general, and the book sufficiently cheap to find its way into every home. We meet the bard, “courted and caressed,” “a welcome guest,” in the halls of princes and chiefs far down in the history of our own land. Scott, in the well-known lines which open The Lay of the Last Minstrel, describes a survivor lingering in Scotland until wellnigh the close of the seventeenth century.
“The way was long, the wind was cold,
The Minstrel was infirm and old;
His withered cheek, and tresses gray,
Seemed to have known a better day;
The harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the Bards was he,
Who sung of Border chivalry;
For, welladay! their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead;
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them and at rest.
No more, on prancing palfrey borne,
[Pg 23]He carolled light as lark at morn;
No longer courted and caressed,
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He poured, to lord and lady gay,
The unpremeditated lay;
Old times were changed, old manners gone;
A stranger filled the Stuarts' throne;
The bigots of the iron time
Had called his harmless art a crime.
A wandering Harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door,
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp, a king had loved to hear.”
