Title: Merrie England in the Olden Time, Vol. 1
Author: George Daniel
Illustrator: Robert Cruikshank
Thomas Gilks
John Leech
Release date: July 19, 2014 [eBook #46331]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive
“Merrie England in the Olden Time” having found favour with the Public in “Bentley's Miscellany,” puts forth new attractions in the present volumes. It has received numerous and important corrections and additions; the story has been illustrated by those eminent artists Messrs. Leech and Robert Cruikshank; and fac-similes, faithfully executed by that “cunninge” limner Mr. Thomas Gilks, of rare and unique portraits of celebrated Players, Jesters, Conjurers, and Mountebanks, (preserved only in the cabinets of the curious,) exhibit “lively sculptures” of once popular drolls and wizards that shook the sides and “astonished the nerves” of our jovial-hearted and wondering ancestors.
To supply the antiquarian portion of Merrie England, a library and a collection of prints and drawings of a highly curious and recherche character have been resorted to; and, though the task of concentrating and reducing into moderate compass such ample materials has not been an easy one,
“The labour we delight in physics pain.”
This, and a large share of public approval, have made it a “labour of love.”
In that part which is purely fiction the characters can best speak for themselves.
Canonbury,
Oct. 1841.
CONTENTS
MERRIE ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME.
Youth is the season of ingenuousness and enjoyment, when we desire to please, and blush not to own ourselves pleased. At that happy period there is no affectation of wisdom; we look only to the bright and beautiful: we inquire not whether it be an illusion; it is sufficient that fairy land, with its flowers of every hue, is the path on which we tread. To youth succeeds manhood, with its worldly prudence: then we are taught to take nothing, not even happiness, upon trust; to investigate until we are lost in the intricacies of detail; and to credit our judgment for what is due only to our coldness and apathy. We lose all sympathy for the past; the future is the subject of our anxious speculation; caution and re serve are our guardian angels; and if the heart still throb with a fond emotion, we stifle it with what speed we may, as detrimental to our interests, and unworthy our new-born intelligence and philosophy. A short acquaintance with the world will convince the most sanguine that this stage is not the happiest; that ambition and mercenary cares make up the tumultuous scene; and though necessity compel a temporary submission, it is good to escape from the toils, and breathe a purer air. This brings us to another period, when reflection has taught us self-knowledge, and we are no longer overwise in our own esteem. Then returns something of the simplicity that characterised our early days. We welcome old friends; have recourse to old amusements, and the fictions that enchained our youthful fancy resume their wonted spell.
We remember the time when just emerging from boyhood, we affected a disdain for the past. We had put on the man, and no urchin that put on for the first time his holiday suit, felt more inexpressible self-complacency. We had roared at pantomime, and gaped with delight at the mysteries of melodrame—but now becoming too sober to be amused, “puerile!”
“ridiculous!” were the critical anathemas that fulminated from our newly-imbibed absolute wisdom! It might be presumption to say that we have since grown wiser; certain it is, we are become less pleased with ourselves, and consequently more willing to be pleased.
Gentle Reader, we are old enough to have enjoyed, and young enough to remember many of the amusements, wakes, and popular drolleries of Merrie England that have long since submitted to “the tooth of time and razure of oblivion.” Like Parson Adams, we have also been a great traveller—in our books! Reversing the well-known epigram,
“Give me the thing that's pretty, smart, and new:
All ugly, old, odd things, I leave to you,”
we have all our life been a hunter after oddities. We have studied attentively the past. For the future we have been moderately solicitous; there being so many busy economists to take the unthankful task off our hands. We have lost our friend rather than our joke, when the joke has been the better of the two; and have been free of discourse where it has been courteously received, preferring (in the cant of pompous ignorance, which is dear at any price!) to make ourselves “cheap” rather than be set down as exclusive and unkind. Disappointments we have had, and sorrows, with ample experience of the world's ingratitude. But life is too short to harbour enmities; and to be resentful is to be unhappy. This may have cast a transient shade over our lucubrations, which let thy happier humour shine upon and dispel! Wilt thou accept us for thy Cicerone through a journey of strange sights? the curiosities of nature, and the whimsicalities of art. We promise thee faster speed than steam-boat and railroad: for thou shalt traverse the ground of two centuries in two hours! With pleasant companions by the way, free from the perils of fire and flood,
“Fancy, like the finger of a clock,
Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.”
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.”
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.
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, ***
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.
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. ***
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.
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
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.
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.
The sleek rogue read his Bible * upside down, and hated his neighbour: his piety was pelf; his godliness gluttony.
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—
—“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!
“The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.”
'Tis Flora's holiday, and in ancient times the goddess kept it with joyous festivity. Ah! those ancient times, they are food for melancholy. Yet may melancholy be made to “discourse most eloquent music,”—
“O why was England 'merrie' called, I pray you tell
me why?—
Because Old England merry was in merry times gone by!
She knew no dearth of honest mirth to cheer both son
and sire,
But kept it up o'er wassail cup around the Christmas
fire.
When fields were dight with blossoms white, and leaves
of lively green,
The May-pole rear'd its flow'ry head, and dancing round
were seen
A youthful band, join'd hand in hand, with shoon and
kirtle trim,
And softly rose the melody of Flora's morning hymn.
Her garlands, too, of varied hue the merry milkmaid
wove,
And Jack the Piper caprioled within his dancing grove;
Will, Friar Tuck, and Little John, with Robin Hood
their king,
Bold foresters! blythe choristers! made vale and moun
tain ring.
On every spray blooms lovely May, and balmy zephyrs
breathe—
Ethereal splendour all above! and beauty all beneath!
The cuckoo's song the woods among sounds sweetly as of
old;
As bright and warm the sunbeams shine,—and why
should hearts grow cold?” *