666. Bücher, p. 68.
667. Wallaschek, pp. 41, 47. See, too, p. 166: “Mr. Reade observed that his people”—Africans—“always began to sing when he compelled them to overcome their natural laziness and to continue rowing.”
668. Chappell, Pop. Music Olden Time, pp. 482, 783; Skelton, Bowge of Court.
669. “Cantilenam his verbis Anglice composuit;” see Historia Eliensis, II. 27, in Gale, Hist. Script., I. 505; it gives the account here quoted, then the verses, adding “et caetera, quae sequuntur, quae usque hodie in choris publice cantantur.” ...
670. Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, III. x f.; Nordboernes Aandsliv, II. 408.
671. Refrains of rowing are found in many Danish ballads, mostly irrelevant, as these refrains so often are, but unmistakable. See Steenstrup, Vore Folkeviser, p. 77, for several examples.
672. In Wright-Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, I. 240: it belongs to the fourteenth century. Some rimes for St. Clement’s day are printed by G. F. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes, 1892, mostly begging verses (pp. 222 ff.): although there is a ceremony at Woolwich connected with blacksmiths, song, however, yielding to formal speech.
673. 23 November. See Hampson, Medii Aevi Kalendarium, I. 61; and Brand-Ellis, Antiquities, same date. The Germanic year has been recently studied by Dr. A. Tille, Yule and Christmas, London, 1899; he corrects in some particulars the current ideas set forth by Weinhold, according to which the seasons were regulated by natural signs,—solstice and the like. Dr. Tille contends that this was rather done by economic conditions. Before the German had a settled agricultural life, Michaelmas superseded Martinmas, the oldest Germanic festival. Actual harvest festivals are comparatively late. While Dr. Tille’s idea of borrowing and of Christian influence goes entirely too far, his emphasis on economic conditions must be noted and approved.
674. Great Expectations, Chap. XII.
675. Or rather Mr. J. Cocke; see note to Works, ed. Rimbault, p. 288, and p. 89. See also the tinker as “master of music” and chief singer of catches, in Chappell, pp. 187. 353.
676. Among the Romans, too; see Tibullus, Eleg. II. 1:—
677. See letter in Evening Post, quoted above, p. 168; Böckel, work quoted; and the preface written by “Carmen Sylva” for the Countess Martinengo’s Bard of the Dimbovitzka, London, 1892.
678. It is almost superfluous to mention Gretchen and the recurrent echo of her wheel in the stanza Meine Ruh’ ist hin. But this, of course, is art.
679. A version of “The Cruel Brother” (Child, I. 147), from Forfarshire, has along with the common refrain two lines at the end of the stanza which partly echo the refrain of labour:—
680. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes, p. 322. See the interesting notes from Southey’s Doctor, xxiv, about Betty Yewdale and the song she and her sister had to sing while learning to knit socks. The song kept time with the work, and had to bring in the names of all the folk in the dale. See on cumulative song above, p. 200.
681. Dyer, British Popular Customs, p. 42.
682. Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs, London, 1857, pp. 187 f. Greenside is near Manchester.
683. Voceri, pp. 244 f., with a specimen song taken from Viale.
684. E. H. Meyer, Volkskunde, p. 236.
685. Poes. Pop. Gasc., II. 224 ff. See his references for this interesting subject.
686. Coussemaker in his section of songs for the dance, work quoted, pp. 338 f., gives a “ronde” sung during the fête at Bailleul:—
then plucked, washed, dried, and so on. The list of these songs could be extended indefinitely; the fact that this of the salad is sung at a quite alien festivity simply proves the vogue of the thing. One must refer, however, to the dances of Catalonian peasants and children, the songs for which are little more than repetition and refrain descriptive of country toil, as quoted by Wolf, pp. 34 f., of his Proben Portugiesischer und Catalanischer Volksromanzen, Wien, 1856.
687. Ed. 1825, IX. 41. The phrase “to town” at which our editor boggles, ignorant of its real meaning, is a further proof of the traditional character of this song.
688. “Is your throat clear for hooky hooky?” asks Harvest; and the reapers sing the refrain again. Later he speaks of weeping out “a lamentable hooky hooky.” Drake connected hooky with hockey, the hock or harvest cart sung by Herrick. But perhaps “hooky” is to be kept without any such change. Leyden, see Complaynte of Scotland, p. xciii, speaking of ring dances at the kirn or feast of cutting down the grain, says that reapers who first finished the work danced on an eminence, in view of other reapers, and began the dance “with three loud shouts of triumph, and thrice tossing up their hooks in the air.” Cf. the Oxford Dict., s.v. hook, the common word for reaping scythe or sickle from Anglo-Saxon down.
689. In his Neydhardt mit dem Feyhel, 1562. See Uhland, Volkslieder, I. 58, and notes, Schriften, III. 24. Böhme follows the song back to the fourteenth century. In the play it is sung by the duchess and repeated by the chorus, as in popular dances of the day.
690. In his edition of the play for Macmillan’s English Comedies.
691. The reapers now appear “with women in their hands.”
692. Described to the writer by a Japanese gentleman.
693. Bücher, p. 49.
694. Twelve centuries before Christ, Chinese women gathered plantain with a song that is particularly rich in repetition and refrain; Bücher quotes the translation of Strauss, of which a stanza runs thus:—
The whole song minutely follows the process of picking.
695. Grimm, Mythologies,⁴ pp. 1036 f. He notes the frequency of this shouting, leaping, and singing at the planting of crops. It all goes back, of course, to communal rites.
696. E. H. Meyer, Volkskunde, p. 225.
697. Grein-Wülker, Bibliothek, I. 312 ff. To describe the whole ceremony in this case as original, is highly absurd.
698. Zell, Ferienschriften, II. 118, 212; see Plin. Nat. Hist., XXVIII. 2: “qui fruges excantasset.” Standard works for the investigation of these relics of ancient cult are Mannhardt, Wald-und Feldkulte, 2 vols., 1875-1877; the same author’s Mythologische Forschungen, already quoted; Pfannenschmid, Germanische Erntefeste, Hannover, 1878; and, pioneer of them all, Tylor’s admirable work on Primitive Culture. For children’s games, as last refuge of many of these rites, see F. M. Böhme, Deutsches Kinderlied u. Kinderspiel, Leipzig, 1897, which could be enlarged by a judicious use of Firmenich, Germaniens Völkerstimmen, in four volumes. Böhme says the Ringelreihen of these games are “uralte Reste chorischer Aufführungen bei den Jahres-und Gottesfesten unserer heidnischen Vorfahren,” and gives cases which support his statement. Processional songs of the old cult survive in the Ansingelieder, Umzugslieder, and so forth, of the children, now mainly begging-rimes like the wren-song in Ireland and England, parallel to the swallow-song in Rhodes. Again, children have games which imitate sounds and movements of labour; Böhme gives a few. See also G. F. Northall, English Folk-Rhymes, pp. 360 ff. Halliwell, of course, includes some of these in his nursery-rimes. See also W. W. Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, N. Y., 1883. These songs of the children would lead us too far a-field, and we shall cling to the scanty survivals of the songs and refrains of labour itself.
699. Grein-Wülker, I. 323 f., especially version C.
700. Cattle.
701. Halliwell, Nursery-Rhymes, p. 129.
702. Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch., pp. 228 ff., J. Grimm, Kl. Schr., VII. 229, in a paper on the “Nothhalm,” with account of harvest rites.
703. This child of destiny, asleep on a sheaf of grain, is wafted to the kingless land in a boat,—the Lohengrin parallel. For all the enticing material see Grimm, Mythologie,⁴ III. 399 ff.; Müllenhoff, in Zeitschr. f. deutsch. Alth., VII. 410 ff., and in his Beowulf, pp. 5 ff., with strongly established probability that the myth celebrates the beginnings of agriculture among Germans by the North and Baltic seas.]
704. Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch., pp. 15 ff. That the Greeks sang at reaping, as at planting (Smythe, Melic Poets, p. 498, girls sing a sowers’ song), is beyond question. See Mannhardt’s note and references, as above, p. 2. He remarks that the Lityerses song in Theocritus (Id. X.) is an imitation of a real Greek folksong of labour, not, however, of the original Lityerses. Mr. Lang notes the resemblance of this situation to the famous scene in Molière’s Misanthrope.
705. Work quoted, p. 17. See his Wald-u. Feldkulte, p. 262.
706. That the Romans had these refrains of harvest and vintage, as well as their Fescennine flytings and improvised satire, is beyond dispute (Zell, II. 122 ff.), but nothing of it all has come down to us. Fortune has been kinder with regard to the songs and refrains sung in processions about the Roman field.
707. Chappell, II. 580. See his quotation from Tusser. Even here, in the Eastern states of America, middle-aged men have watched the passing of the “wealthy farmer,” who now exists only in newspapers, and even there is kept at long range,—“of Indiana,” “of Texas.” Yet we knew him in our boyhood. The communal farmer occurs in old English novels, and in some new ones; but he is passing rapidly into tradition. See a paper on “England’s Peasantry,” by the Rev. Dr. Jessopp, in the Nineteenth Century and After, January, 1901; he tells of the communal conditions which once prevailed, of the change to the present, and is “inclined to doubt seriously whether before another century has ended there will be any such thing as an agricultural labourer to know.”
708. On the modern corruption of old refrains, see Pfannenschmid, pp. 207 ff., 468 ff.
709. Compare the song sung on this occasion in Bavaria as the peasants dance about the fire and leap over it for good luck (Firmenich, II. 703):—
710. Mannhardt, M. F., pp. 32 fl., 51.
711. Quoted by Reifferscheid, Westf. Volksl., Nos. 49, 50, 51. See the note, p. 188, and variants. The habit is widespread through Westphalia and the Rhinelands. A refrain printed by Firmenich, German. Völkerstimmen, III. 175, keeps time with the work (near Iserlohn):—
712. Aubrey, Remains of Gentilisme. Folk-Lore Soc., IV. (1881), pp. 81 f., under “Rymers.” On p. 169 he says, “when I was a boy, every gentleman almost kept a harper; and some of them could versifie.”
713. Wallaschek, p. 179.
714. He too heard a girl “singing an Erse song,” as she span; and he had his jest, “I warrant you, one of the songs of Ossian.” Hill’s Boswell, V. 133 f.
715. Before this he had been in a boat and heard one Malcolm sing “an Erse song, the chorus of which was ‘Hatyin foam foam eri,’ with words of his own.... The boatmen and Mr. M’Queen chorused, and all went well.” Ibid., V. 185.
716. A Journey to the Western Islands, Dublin, 1775, p. 97.
717. The doctor complaining that he never could get an Erse song explained, was told “the chorus was generally unmeaning,” which, of course, would point to a predominance of the refrain; Johnson himself slyly quoted an unintelligible refrain from an old English ballad. Hill’s Boswell, V. 274.
718. V. 203; Lockhart’s Life of Scott, IV. 307. Pennant tells the same story in his Tour in Scotland.
719. See above, p. 281, quotation from Leyden. See also for Scottish custom, Chambers, Book of Days, II. 376 ff.
720. Note to Passus, IX. 104, ed. of Piers Plowman, version C.
722. E. H. Meyer, p. 133.
723. Kurschat, Litth. Gram., p. 445, quoted by Böckel, p. cxx.
724. Pfannenschmid, p. 392. The song, “Die Ernt’ ist da, es winkt der Halm,” is clearly an outgrowth of the older refrain. See also p. 92. An actual refrain at the work is printed by Firmenich, III. 631:—
725. Étude, pp. 24 f.
726. In this dying of communal song, its heart, the refrain, beats strong to the end, despite the other failing powers. See Beaurepaire’s valuable testimony to this fact, Étude, pp. 39 ff., 48 f. “Deux lignes au plus composent le couplet. Le refrain est vraiment la partie importante, il supplie à la pauvreté ou à l’absence de la rime.... Au reste, il ne faudrait pas s’y tromper, la longueur du refrain, et son retour continuel, que nous serions tenté de considerer comme un défaut, forme précisement un des plus sûrs moyens du succès de la Chanson de Filasse. Elle exige, en effet, peu d’efforts de mémoire, elle permet à tous les laboureurs de prendre part fréquemment au chant; et avec son allure monotone, elle s’adapte merveilleusement à la marche lente et reguliere de travaux de la campagne. Aussi croyons-nous que c’est en partie à la predominance du refrain, que la chanson cuellissoire doit sa vogue et sa popularité.” He gives another song with a refrain of planting.
727. Pfannenschmid (on the cries and songs) pp. 404 ff.; Mannhardt, M. F., pp. 167 ff., for the religious significance; J. Grimm, Kl. Schr., VII. 225 f.; Book of Days, II. 377 f. Other instances are presently to be recounted.
728. Firmenich, IV. (Anhang), 687. A longer version on p. 693. Keriole = Kyrie eleison,—substituted for an older heathen cry.
729. See Mannhardt’s chapter on “Demeter,” work quoted; also pp. 20 ff.
730. For all this English material, see Brand-Ellis, “Harvest Home,” in the Antiquities.
731. Chappell, I. 120.
732. Ibid., II. 745, one version. See for variants, and similar songs, J. H. Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, e.g. pp. 175 ff., London, Percy Soc., 1846; Broadwood and Maitland, English Country Songs, pp. 150 ff., London, 1893.
733. In the fifth act of Dryden’s opera, King Arthur, is a harvest-song with this chorus:—
and the directions are that the actors shall sing this as they dance, a good communal trait. The words of this song grew popular, were varied, and became a ballad; it is in order for some one to show that harvest-home songs, like other popular verse, come from operas, plays, concerts, and the like.
734. Perhaps “we end,” as Brand suggests; but perhaps and probably not. At another place in Devonshire they cry “the knack,” and a rime is repeated:—
735. Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, Eng. Dial. Soc., 1878, p. 126, under August. Hentzner noted the shouting of the people in the cart. See Furnivall’s Harrison, Descrip. Eng., p. lxxxiv. A curious custom of the largess-shilling in Suffolk is described by Major Moor, note to Tusser, p. 294. The reapers answer their leader’s “Holla Lar! Holla Lar! Holla Lar!—jees,” with “o-o-o-o-,” head inclined, and then, throwing the head up, vociferate “a-a-a-ah.” This is thrice done by harvesters for a shilling.
736. Brand-Ellis, “Twelfth Day.”
737. See Uhland, Kl. Schr., III. 389 f., and note, with references, 467 f., for the “bornfart,” “bronnefart,” with “dantzen, rennen, springen, jagen,” closely connected with the May feasts. On the whole subject of processions, see Pfannenschmid’s second chapter along with his notes, pp. 342 ff.
738. Georg., I. 343 ff.
739. Translation of J. Rhoades. The last line—‘det motus incompositos et carmina dicat’—is suggestive: “spontaneous gestures and steps, with song,” emphasize a purely communal dance as compared with the ritual of the Brothers. Tibullus, by the way, has the Lares, not Ceres, in mind for the dance and song of his rustics: Eleg., I. 1, 23 f.
740. A “queen,” accompanied by a guard of brothers and young folk generally, goes on Whitsuntide in Servia from farm to farm; at each she stops and her companions form a circle (kolo) and sing their songs. Each line is thrice repeated, and then follows the refrain Leljo! Then the dancers hold one another by the belt and dance in a half-circle, led by an exarch. Between the songs any ready young man cries out a lusty phrase or two, or makes a verse, after the fashion of the German schnaderhüpfl. See A. W. Grube, Deutsche Volkslieder, Iserlohn, 1866, pp. 132 f.
741. Germania, xl.
742. The procession of the Phrygian goddess, the magna deum mater materque ferarum et nostri genetrix, described by Lucretius in often-quoted lines, Rer. Nat., II. 598 ff., with its Dionysian features, cannot be discussed here; Germanic and modern examples must suffice.
743. It is a commonplace in sociology that agricultural communities worship female deities as representatives of fertility, while the god like Tiw or Woden springs from warlike and nomadic conditions.
744. For example, the rain-song in Servia, an interesting ceremony, full of cries and with a refrain sung by dancing maidens. The dodola, a girl otherwise naked, but entirely covered with grass, weeds, and flowers, goes with a retinue of maidens from house to house; before each house the girls form a dancing ring with the dodola in the middle. The woman of the house pours water over the dodola, while she dances and turns about; the other maidens now sing the song for rain, each line ending with the refrain, oj dodo oj dodo le! See Grimm, Mythologie⁴, p. 494. Similar customs prevail in Greece; the song is here full of repetitions. See Grimm, Kl. Schr., II. 447. In the Athenæum, No. 2857 (1882), G. L. Gomme has some interesting notes on a survival of these processional rites.
745. E. H. Meyer, p. 223.
746. Grimm, Mythol.,⁴ I. 52.
747. References ibid., I. 214 ff., with similar cases. See also III. 86 f.
748. William of Malmesbury tells a story to show that the church could do better than condemn. In 1012 fifteen young men and women were dancing and singing in a churchyard and disturbed Robert the priest. He prayed at them, and for a whole year they had to dance and sing without ceasing until they sank to the middle in the earth.
749. Gregor. M. Dial., III. 28, quoted by W. Müller, Geschichte und System der altdeutschen Religion, Göttingen, 1844, pp. 74 f. The first book of this excellent treatise is even now the best summary of old Germanic rites,—clear, compact, and with all necessary references. For the boar’s head and the famous Latin song, at Oxford, see Grimm, Mythol.⁴, p. 178; for the vows, Grimm, Rechtsalterthümer, pp. 900 f.
750. From Du Cange, s.v. Kalendae. See too Hampson, Med. Æv. Kal., I. 140 ff.
751. Broadwood and Maitland, p. 30. Survivals of procession song (Ansingelieder) are printed by Böhme, Kinderlied, 331 ff. The refrain has some body in a song “’t Godsdeel of den Rommelpot,” printed by Coussemaker, Chants Pop. des Flamands, p. 95, and also found in different parts of Germany. The begging songs for Martinmas Eve, found in Flanders, are widespread in Germany; Firmenich, work quoted, prints a good dozen and more from different places. The steps of dance and march are best heard in his version from Oldenburg, I. 231.
752. Firmenich, I. 281.
753. Reuzelied, pp. 139 ff.:—
That is, “When the big bell sounds, Reuze (giant?) comes out. Turn back, Reuze, Reuze, turn back, good Reuze.” The text is corrupt, and Reuze is not easy to explain; but one need not appeal with Coussemaker to the Scandinavians to establish the antiquity of this procession and this refrain.
754. Hampson, I. 61.
755. For a good description of wakes, see Brand-Ellis, and Song 27 of Drayton’s Polyolbion, where such cheering is recorded of the villages—
756. Besides T. Wright’s Songs and Carols, Percy Soc., 1847, see W. Sandy’s Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern, London, 1833, with a long introduction, and the same editor’s Festive Songs, Percy Soc., 1848. Sandys (Carols) gives the cries or refrains of many Christmas songs:—
à moult granz cris, the familiar refrain in France.
757. Remaines Gentil., pp. 9, 21, 23, 26, 31, 36, 40, 161, 180. “Little children,” he says here, “have a custome when it raines to sing or charme away the Raine; thus they all joine in a Chorus, and sing thus, viz.:—
I have a conceit that this childish custome is of great antiquity.”
758. See the Helstone Furry-Day Song, Bell, Ancient Poems, pp. 167 f., with a refrain of some value.
759. Also cross-week and grass-week. See Dyer, British Popular Customs, pp. 204 ff., for a sympathetic account of the customs still lingering in England.
760. The standard description of English May-games, of course hostile, is that of Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses, ed. New Shaks. Soc., p. 149. See also the diatribe in John Northbrooke’s Treatise wherein Dicing, Dancing ... are Reprooved. London, 1579. He leans to Chrysostom’s view (that is, Age takes this side against Youth, in the dialogue) that dancing “came firste from the Diuell”, and p. 68ᵇ (only one page of the leaf is numbered) he describes the May.
761. Compare the chorus of the Maypole song in Actæon and Diana, in Chappell, I. 126:—
“Trip and go” was “one of the favourite Morris-dances,” and the words seem to have become a proverbial expression. See Chappell, I. 126, 302. It was on the basis of some refrain of this sort that the first part-song in English, the famous Cuckoo Song, was built up. Ten Brink is surely right in giving it a communal origin, though not communal making.
762. “We have brought the summer home,” is the spirit of all the May refrains, as the young folk come back with flowers and boughs. See Brand, “Maypoles.”
763. Still in vogue in some parts of Germany. See E. H. Meyer, p. 256.
764. Volkslieder, I. 23. For the whole subject, see Uhland’s Abhandlung über die deutschen Volkslieder, pp. 17 ff. Suspicion has been expressed that these flytings are a late echo of the Vergilian eclogue through such a transmitting element as the mediæval Conflictus Veris et Hiemis and the song to the cuckoo:—
Comparison of the fragments, however, shows this suspicion to be groundless, and it is thoroughly discredited by Uhland, Kl. Schr., III. 24. See also Ebert, Christ. Lat. Lit., II. 69.
765. Love’s Labour’s Lost, V. 2.