Читать книгу A Book of Old Ballads — Complete - Various - Страница 12

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But if the generation to come will learn a great deal from the few

popular ballads which we are still creating in our music-halls, how much

more shall we learn of history from these ballads, which rang through

the whole country, and were impregnated with the spirit of a whole

people! These ballads are history, and as such they should be recognised.

It has always seemed to me that we teach history in the wrong way. We

give boys the impression that it is an affair only of kings and queens

and great statesmen, of generals and admirals, and such-like bores.

Thousands of boys could probably draw you a map of many pettifogging

little campaigns, with startling accuracy, but not one in a thousand

could tell you what the private soldier carried in his knapsack. You

could get sheaves of competent essays, from any school, dealing with

such things as the Elizabethan ecclesiastical settlement, but how many

boys could tell you, even vaguely, what an English home was like, what

they ate, what coins were used, how their rooms were lit, and what they

paid their servants?

In other words, how many history masters ever take the trouble to sketch

in the great background, the life of the common people? How many even

realize their existence, except on occasions of national disaster, such as the Black Plague?

A proper study of the ballads would go a long way towards remedying this

defect. Thomas Percy, whose Reliques must ever be the main source of our information on all questions connected with ballads, has pointed out that all the great events of the country have, sooner or later, found their way into the country's song-book. But it is not only the resounding names that are celebrated. In the ballads we hear the echoes of the street, the rude laughter and the pointed jests. Sometimes these ring so plainly that they need no explanation. At other times, we have to go to Percy or to some of his successors to realize the true significance of the song.

For example, the famous ballad "John Anderson my Jo" seems, at first

sight, to be innocent of any polemical intention. But it was written

during the Reformation when, as Percy dryly observes, "the Muses were

deeply engaged in religious controversy." The zeal of the Scottish

reformers was at its height, and this zeal found vent in many a pasquil

discharged at Popery. It caused them, indeed, in their frenzy, to

compose songs which were grossly licentious, and to sing these songs in

rasping voices to the tunes of some of the most popular hymns in the

Latin Service.

"John Anderson my Jo" was such a ballad composed for such an occasion.

And Percy, who was more qualified than any other man to read between the

lines, has pointed out that the first stanza contains a satirical

allusion to the luxury of the popish clergy, while the second, which

makes an apparently light reference to "seven bairns", is actually

concerned with the seven sacraments, five of which were the spurious

offspring of Mother Church.

Thus it was in a thousand cases. The ballads, even the lightest and most

blossoming of them, were deep-rooted in the soil of English history. How

different from anything that we possess to-day! Great causes do not lead

men to song, nowadays they lead them to write letters to the newspapers.

A national thanksgiving cannot call forth a single rhyme or a single bar

of music. Who can remember a solitary verse of thanksgiving, from any of

our poets, in commemoration of any of the victories of the Great War?

Who can recall even a fragment of verse in praise of the long-deferred

coming of Peace?

Very deeply significant is it that our only method of commemorating

Armistice Day was by a two minutes silence. No song. No music. Nothing.

The best thing we could do, we felt, was to keep quiet.