CHAPTER XXIV
SINGING
“I will but teach them to sing, and restore them to the owner.”
Much Ado.
The ordinary work of school inspection is not exciting to an outside spectator. There is nothing in the Three R’s to quicken the pulse, or to raise the temperature. Grammar, geography, history only seem to produce profound thankfulness in the onlooker’s mind, that he is not on the rack; there may be absurd answers, but if he laughs, the effect on the children may be disastrous. For varied interest of a mild kind, I should recommend composition and natural history. Ladies like needlework. Some can stand with a sweet smile on their faces while the children sing. Here, then, are four subjects upon which something may be said.
The list of accomplishments that I do not possess would be lengthy. But on the credit side I may put music—up to Standard III. That is not an exalted boast, but it places me far ahead of many of my old colleagues. I could look over a music paper, if it was not Tonic Sol-fa, and when the children sang school songs with the view of getting the Government Grant of 6d. or 1s., I was able to make quite valuable remarks.
For an inspector, a knowledge of music is an useful, but not altogether an enviable possession. He ought to be able to decide whether singing is correct and tuneful, but the man who does not know suffers less. (This sounds like a quotation from the Ethics, but I believe Aristotle is free from blame.) At one conference of inspectors we discussed rules for awarding the grant for singing. The code laid down the principle that, if the children sang “by note,” the possible grant was 1s. per head; if “by ear,” it was only 6d.; to get the higher grant they had to do certain exercises—that was simple enough. There were ten of us present, and it happened that I was the only man who personally conducted the examinations; the others sent their assistants. I was appealed to, as an expert, to say when we should be justified in refusing even the lower grant, that for singing by ear. One valued colleague, who admitted that he detected no difference between one tune and another, remarked that his plan was to watch the face of the head teacher. If it showed disgust and loathing, disappointment and fear, he concluded that the necessary standard had not been reached, and he refused the grant. But this obviously led to hypocrisy. And the head teacher might be no judge, or too exacting. Finally I suggested, and it was carried unanimously, THAT if the singing was so far tolerable that you could stop in the room to the very end, the grant might be paid; BUT THAT if you had to rush into the playground, a stern refusal should follow.
It was a very incomplete test. I have known men who could smile at the Salvation Army band.
In the early days there was very little note-singing. There was no extra grant for voice cultivation or any other form of scientific training; merely 1s. for twelve songs. Then, I think in 1876, came the graduated scale of 6d. or 1s., and then, or later, the number of songs was reduced to eight. As most schools could not receive more than 15s. or 17s. 6d. a head, however much they might earn, there was not much inducement to pile up the losses. But the clergy encouraged note-singing for the sake of their choirs, and the teachers found it an agreeable change from the monotony of the ordinary routine. So the work grew, till it became rare to find a school that did not attempt Tonic Sol-fa at the least. Then the special grant was merged in the large principal grant.
Hymns were forbidden between 10 and 4.30 (or the equivalent times). A school manager once protested to me against this restriction. I suggested that if managers chose hymns containing “doctrine distinctive of any denomination” there would be ructions. He said triumphantly that his selection would satisfy all parties: it was Moody and Sankey. The pachyderm has many advantages.
But it was not always easy to draw the line, if one wanted to draw it; and it was rumoured that a pedantic inspector objected to the National Anthem, as having a religious tendency. It was probably the same man who corrected a similar error in history. The question was, Who was the wisest man that ever lived? A child, who knew more than I do, answered “Solomon,” and the teacher said “Yes”; but H.M.I. said, “No: not after 10: say ‘Solon.’”
Some schools sang beautifully in two- or three-part harmony. They were not always the most successful in other branches of study, and I am inclined to doubt Shakespeare’s theory of the evil disposition of the unmusical man. We did our best to encourage harmony, beginning with simple rounds of two or three parts. And the story is told by an Inspector of established credibility, that in a certain school he had advised this rudimentary method, and was asked by an uncultured master, “What is a round?” H.M.I. explained, taking “Three blind mice” as an example: “The first class will sing the first line; then the second class will take it up, while the first class go on to the second line; and then the third class chime in.” The master listened deferentially, and promised to do his best. Next year, as the Inspector approached the school for his annual visit after formal notice, he heard from afar sounds so agonizing that he hurried on to see what had gone wrong. He found the whole school shrieking as though they were possessed by the fiends in Berlioz’ Faust. Naturally he asked for an explanation.
“This,” said the master, “is the round you recommended. They are singing ‘The Last Rose of Summer’; the first class sing the first line, the second class the second line, and so on, as you suggested. We found it hard at first, but I think we have mastered it now.”
Of course, in many schools, the head teacher is not a musician. But most of them could “hum a bit,” and they generally were awarded the grant for singing by ear. Their choice of songs was marvellous. Never shall I forget the fury of an eminent Celtic scholar, who at one time adorned the office of Inspector, when he found that a master had taught the children to sing the “pence-table” to the hallowed strains of “Llwyn On” (The Ash Grove):
“Twenty pence are one and eightpence;
Twenty-four pence two shillings;
Thirty-pence are two and sixpence;
Thirty-six pence three shillings.”
I suggested “Three Bob” as more suitable to the metre, which requires a monosyllable at the end of the fourth line; but the amendment was lost; like the well-meant suggestion of Fitz James, it “added but fuel to his hate”; I was told (in effect) that “Llwyn On” should be sung dolce, cantabile, con molta tenerezza; and the children sang it staccato, alla marcia, giocoso. I fear that school got a poor report.
This unhallowed wedding of trivial verse to immortal melody often disturbed even my placid temper. I remember in one school, after listening for some time to some moral sentiments sung to a tune that haunted me with memories of my youth, I recovered the “Lost Chord,” and enquired of the Lady of the Manor, who (suspendens omnia naso) was keeping an eye on my movements, whether she recognized the air. She failed to do so, and I had the pleasure of informing her that it was “Villikins and Dinah,” a tune which, about the time of the Crimean War, divided popularity with “Partant pour la Syrie,” and preceded “The Ratcatcher’s Daughter.” How did it go fifty years since?
“As Villikins was a vallikin in his garden around,
He saw his fair Dinah lay dead on the ground;
A cup of cold poison lay close by her side,
And a billet-dow wot said as how ’twas of poison she died.”
Little did I think to meet Dinah again in a Public Elementary School. The Lady of the Manor sniffed scornfully: probably the mistress heard of it next day. I am sorry I did not ask for a copy of the amended words.
In another school I was cheered by the sound of “Nelly Bly,” a nigger song (shall we say negro melody?) of the Early Carolina period, say 1858-9. There I did ask for a copy of the words, and here they are:
“In Asia and in Africa
The elephant is found:
He larger is than any beast
That walks upon the ground:
When tame he is gentle and mild,
And does what he’s desired,
But if he’s mocked or treated ill,
With anger he is fired.”
I forget the rest, but this is genuine. There should have been a chorus of Hi Jumbo, Ho Jumbo; but it was before the days of the popular beast.
In an old Blue Book, more than thirty years ago, I read a lamentation of an Inspector in this district that he had heard “A Southerly Wind” to an extent that would have sickened a Cheshire fox-hunter, and “The Neat Little Clock” till he could wish that time were no more. The latter was a drivelling piece of morality sung to the beautiful old tune of “The Woodpecker”: it lasted well into my epoch, but it seems to be extinct now.
At times one attempted to guide the popular taste. In a fishing village, where there was a lighthouse, I persuaded the master to teach Kingsley’s “Three Fishers”: and in an Irish school I urged Moore’s Melodies. But in neither case was the result encouraging, and the attempt was not repeated. Then it occurred to me one day, as it did with a more satisfactory result to Juvenal, “am I always to be only a hearer?” or as to Fletcher of Saltoun’s “very wise man,” if a man were permitted to make all the school songs, he need not care who should make the Code. And I wrote for a friendly infant school a parody of Gilbert’s Minstrel’s Song, in the “Yeomen of the Guard”: it was arranged antiphonally for boys and girls, and the second verse ran thus:
Boys: I have a song to sing, oh.
Girls: Sing me that song, oh.
Boys: It’s the song of the pie, and the greedy boy
Who sat in his lonely corner;
It’s the song of a boy with a greedy thumb,
Which he put in the pie to pull out a plum;
The little dog laughed when he saw such sport,
For he always laughed when he didn’t ought,
He never was at school, and never was taught,
A naughty boy, Jack Horner.
All: Heigh dey, heigh dey,
Heigh diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
The little dog laughed when he saw the sport
Of the naughty boy, Jack Horner.
I think the teachers were a little doubtful about the grammar of “didn’t ought,” and candour compels me to admit that the song was not a success. Two schools sang it “to oblige the Inspector,” but on him, at least, it had the effect of a penitential psalm. I wrote no more.
Strange that there should be any difficulty in finding words of songs: “the world was all before them where to choose.” England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales contribute folk-songs of sufficient merit and variety, though, at times, of dialectic English. Germany is always at hand. But I admit that if you deduct in each case songs in praise of Bacchus, Diana, and Venus, there is a large gap.