The Balladists Part 2

The refrain is a venerable and characteristic feature of the ballad and ballad melody. In its refrains, as in everything else, Scottish ballad poetry has been peculiarly happy. Some will have it that they are of much older date than the ballads themselves. It has been suggested that many of them--and these the refrains that have lost, if they ever possessed, any definite or intelligible meaning to the ear--may be relics not merely of ancient song, but of ancient rites and incantations, and of a forgotten speech. Attempts have been made to interpret, for instance, the familiar 'Down, down, derry down,' as a Celtic invocation to a.s.semble at the hill of sacrifice--a survival of pagan times when the altars smoked with human victims. It need only be said that these ingenious theorists have not yet proved their case; and that the origin of the refrain is a subject involved in still greater obscurity than that of the ballad itself.

Like the ballad verses and the ballad airs, also, these 'owerwords' are exceedingly variable, and are often interchangeable. Some of them are 'owerwords' literally; that is to say, they simply repeat or echo a word or phrase of the stanza to which they are attached. A specimen is the verse from _Johnie o' Braidislee_, quoted in the previous chapter.

Others, and these, as has been said, among the refrains of most ancient and honourable lineage, bear the appearance of words whose meaning has been forgotten. 'With rombelogh' has come rumbling down to us from the days of Bannockburn; and may even then have been of such eld that the key to its interpretation had already been lost. The 'Hey, nien-nanny'

of the Scottish ballad was, under slightly different forms, old and quaint in Shakespeare's time, and in Chaucer's. Still others have the effect upon us of the rhyming prattle invented by children at play. They are cries, nave or wild, from the age of innocence--cries extracted from the children of nature by the beauty of the world or the sharp and relentless stroke of fate. Of such are 'The broom, the bonnie, bonnie broom,' 'Hey wi' the rose and the lindie o',' 'Blaw, blaw, ye cauld winds blaw,' and their congeners. These sweet and idyllic notes are often interposed in some of the very grimmest of our ballads. They suggest a harping interlude between lines that, without this relief, would be weighted with an intolerable load of horror or sorrow. There are refrain lines--'Bonnie St. Johnston stands fair upon Tay' is an example--which seem to hint that they may have been borrowed from some old ballad that, except for this preluding or interjected note, has utterly 'sunk dumb.' But more noticeable are those haunting burdens which, in certain moods, seem somehow to have absorbed more of the story than the ballad lines they accompany--that appeal to an inner sense with a directness and poignancy beyond the power of words to which we attach a coherent meaning. How deeply the sense of dread, of approaching tragedy, as well as that of colour and locality, is stimulated by the iteration of the drear owerword, 'All alone and alonie,' or 'Binnorie, O Binnorie!' How the horror of a monstrous crime creeps nearer with each repet.i.tion of the cry, 'Mither, Mither!' in the wild dialogue between mother and son in _Edward_! Like Glenkindie's harping, every stroke 'stounds the heart within'--we scarce can tell how or why.

Like the early Christians, the old balladists seem to have believed in community of goods. They had a kind of joint-stock of ideas, epithets, images; and freely borrowed and exchanged among themselves not merely refrains and single lines, but whole verses, pa.s.sages, and situations.

Always frugal in the employment of ornament in his text, the balladist never troubled to invent when he found a descriptive phrase or figure made and lying ready to his hand. Plagiarism from his brother bards was a thing that troubled him no more than repeating himself. He lived and sang in times before the literary conscience had been awakened or the literary canon had been laid down--or at least in places and among company where the fear of these, and of the critic, had never penetrated; and he borrowed, copied, adapted, without any sense of shame or remorse, because without any sense of sin. He has his conventional manner of opening, and his established formula for closing his tale. In portraiture, in scenery, in costume, he is simplicity itself. The heroine of the ballad, and, for that matter, the hero also, as a rule, must have 'yellow hair.' If she is not a Lady Maisry, it is a wonder if she be not a May Margaret or a Fair Annie, although there is also a goodly sprinkling of Janets, and Helens, and Marjories, and Barbaras in the enchanted land of ballad poetry. Sweet William has always been the favourite choice of the balladist, among the Christian names of the knightly wooers. Destiny presides over their first meeting. The king's daughters

'Cast kevils them amang, To see who will to greenwood gang';

and the lot falls upon the youngest and fairest--the youngest is always the fairest and most beloved in the ballad. The note of a bugle horn, and the pair see each other, and are made blessed and undone. Like Celia and Oliver in the Forest of Arden they no sooner look than they sigh; they no sooner sigh than they ask the reason; and as soon as they know the reason they apply the remedy. Or, mounted on 'high horseback,' the lover comes suddenly upon the lady among her sisters or her bower-maidens 'playin' at the ba'.'

'There were three ladies played at the ba', Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O!

There cam' a knight and played o'er them a', Where the primrose blooms so sweetly.

The knight he looted to a' the three, Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O!

But to the youngest he bowed the knee Where the primrose blooms so sweetly.'

He sends messages that reach his true love's ear, through the guard of 'bauld barons' and 'proud porters,' by his little footpage, who,

'When he came to broken brig, He bent his bow and swam, And when he came to gra.s.s growin', Set down his feet and ran.

And when he came to the porter's yett, Stayed neither to chap or ca', But set his bent bow to his breast, And lightly lap the wa'.'

Or the knight comes himself to the bower door at witching and untimely hours--at 'the to-fa' o' the nicht,' or at the crowing of the 'red red c.o.c.k'--and 'tirles at the pin.' But always treachery, in the shape of envious step-dame, angry brother, or false squire, is watching and listening. Six perils may go past, but the seventh is sure to strike its mark. Even should the course of true love run smoothly almost to the church door, something is sure to happen. Love is hot and swift as flame in the ballads, although it does not waste itself in honeyed phrases. It is quick to take offence; and at a hasty word the lovers start apart,

'Lord Thomas spoke a word in jest, Fair Annet took it ill.'

But more often the bolt comes out of the blue from another and jealous hand. The bride sets out richly apparelled and caparisoned to the tryst with the bridegroom. Her girdle is of gold and her skirts of the cramoisie. Four-and-twenty comely knights ride at her side, and four-and-twenty fair maidens in her train. The very hoofs of her steed are 'shod in front with the yellow gold and wi' siller shod behind.' To every teat of his mane is hung a silver bell, and,

'At every tift o' the norland win'

They tinkle ane by ane.'

If the voyage is by sea,

'The masts are a' o' the beaten gold And the sails o' the taffetie.'

The old minstrel loved to linger over and repeat these details, and his audience, we may feel sure, never tired of hearing them. But they knew that calamity was coming, and would overtake bride and groom before they had gone, by sea or land,

'A league, a league, A league, but barely three.'

It might be in the shape of storm or flood. One ballad opens:

'Annan Water 's runnin' deep, And my love Annie 's wondrous bonnie,'

and afar off we see what is going to happen. But greater danger than from salt sea wave or 'frush saugh bush' is to be apprehended from the poisoned cup of the slighted rival or the dagger of the jealous brother.

The knight had perhaps forgotten when he came courting his love to 'spier at her brither John'; and when she stoops from horseback to kiss this sinister kinsman at parting, he thrusts his sword into her heart.

The rosy face of the bride is wan, and her white bodice is full of blood when the gay bridegroom greets her, and he is left 'tearing his yellow hair.' More often, death itself does not sunder these lovers dear:

'Lady Margaret was dead lang e'er midnicht, And Lord William lang e'er day.'

And when they are buried, there springs up from their graves, as has happened in all the ballad lore and _marchen_ of all the Aryan nations:

'Out of the one a bonnie rose bush, And out o' the other a brier,'

that 'met and pleat' in a true lovers' knot in emblem of the immortality of love, as love was in the olden time.

These are all hackneyed phrases and incidents of the old balladists, the merest counters, borrowed, worn, and pa.s.sed on through bards innumerable. But what fire and colour, what strength and pathos, continue to live in them! They smell of 'Flora and the fresh-delved earth'; they are redolent of the spring-time of human pa.s.sion and thought. For the most part they belong to all ballad poetry, and not to the Scottish ballads alone. But there are other touches that seem to be peculiar to the genius of our own land and our own ballad literature; and, as has been said, one can with no great difficulty note the characteristic marks of the song of a particular district and even of an individual singer. The romantic ballads of the North, for example, although in no way behind those of the Border in strength and in tenderness, are commonly of rougher texture. They lack often the grace which, in the versions sung in the South, the minstrel knew how to combine with the manly vigour of his song; they are content with a.s.sonance where the other must have rhyme; and in many long and popular ballads, such as _Tiftie's Annie and Geordie_, there is scarcely so much as a good sound rhyme from beginning to end. One sometimes fancies that these Aberdonian ballads bear signs of being 'nirled' and toughened by the stress of the East Wind; they are true products of a keen, sharp climate working upon a deep and rich, but somewhat dour and stiff, historic soil.

Whether they come from the north or the south side of Tay, whether they use up the traditional plots and phrases, or strike out an original line in the story and language, our ballads have all this precious quality, that they reflect transparently the manners and morals of their time, and human nature in all times. Their vast superiority, alike in truth and in beauty, over those imitations of them that were put forward last century as improvements upon the rude old lays, may best be seen, perhaps, by laying the old and the new 'set' of _Sir James the Rose_ side by side, or comparing verse by verse David Mallet's much vaunted _William and Margaret_, with the beautiful old ballad, _There came a ghost to Marg'ret's door_. There is indeed no comparison. The changes made are nearly all either tinsel ornaments or mutilations of the traditional text, which an eighteenth century poetaster had sought to dress up to please the modish taste of the period. Nothing can be more out of key with the simple, direct, and graphic style of the Scottish ballads, dealing with elemental emotions and the situations arising therefrom, than a style founded on that of Pope, unless it be the style of the modern poet and romancist of the a.n.a.lytical and introspective school.

If there ever be matter of offence in the traditional ballad, it resides in the theme and not in the handling and language. Whatever be its faults, it never has the taint of the vulgar; it avoids the suggestive with the same instinct with which it avoids the vapid adjective; it is the ant.i.thesis of the modern music-hall ditty. The balladist and his men and women speak straight to the point, and call a spade a spade.

'Ye lee, ye lee, ye leear loud, Sae loud 's I hear ye lee,'

and

'O wae betide you, ill woman, And an ill death may ye dee,'

are among the familiar courtesies of colloquy. In the telling of his tale, the minstrel puts off no time in preluding or introductory pa.s.sages. In a single verse or couplet he has dashed into the middle of his theme, and his characters are already in dramatic parley, exchanging words like sword-thrusts. Take the opening of the immortal _Dowie Dens of Yarrow_, where the place, time, circ.u.mstances, and actors in the fatal quarrel are put swiftly before us in four lines:

'Late at e'en, drinking the wine, And e'er they paid the lawin', They set a combat them between, To fight it e'er the dawin'.'

Or still better example, the not less famous:

'The king sits in Dunfermline tower, Drinking the blood-red wine.

Oh, where shall I find a skeely skipper To sail this s.h.i.+p o' mine.'

Or of _Sir James the Rose_:

'O, hae ye nae heard o' Sir James the Rose, The young laird o' Balleichan, How he has slain a gallant squire Whose friends are out to take him!'

Or in yet briefer s.p.a.ce the whole materials of tragedy are given to us, as in that widely-known and multiform legend of the _Twa Sisters_ which Tennyson took as the basis of his _We were two daughters of one race_:

'He courted the eldest wi' glove and wi' ring, Binnorie, O Binnorie!

But he loved the youngest aboon a' thing, By the bonnie mill dams o' Binnorie.'

Sometimes a brilliant or glowing picture is called up before our eyes by a stroke or two; as--

'The boy stared wild like a grey goshawk,'

or

'The mantle that fair Annie wore It skinkled in the sun';

or

'And in at her bower window The moon shone like a gleed';