After poor Conrad’s time, the art of minnesinging declined, but as people must have music, a new activity sprang up among the people or “folk” instead of among the gentry and knights. The folk who took part in this were called the Meistersingers or mastersingers and their story is very thrilling and picturesque.
This was the day of the Robber Baron, when Germany was broken up into little kingdoms and principalities. Any rich and powerful noble could start a war to steal away the rights of another ruler, and become ruler himself. This was no pleasant state of affairs for the people, for they were in constant terror of death, of the destruction of their crops, or new taxes. Life became so perilous that people left the farms and went to the cities for protection. The feudal system began to fail, for the people would no longer be slaves, and gradually took up trades and formed themselves into guilds. The warring nobles had neglected music for conquest, so these workers and artisans, hungry for it, formed music guilds as well as trade guilds, drew up rules for making music and poetry, and held prize competitions. In these music guilds there were six grades of membership: first, member; second, scholar or apprentice; then, friends of the school; singer, poet, and finally mastersinger or Meistersinger. You can get a real picture of their day in the greatest comic opera ever written, Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, and you can make the acquaintance of Hans Sachs, the most famous Meistersinger (1494–1576).
Heinrich von Meissen, known as Frauenlob (Praise of Women), is said to have founded the Meistersinger movement over a hundred years before Hans Sachs’ time.
Til Eulenspiegel, whose merry pranks have been delightfully told in music by Richard Strauss, a present day composer, was also a Meistersinger.
The origin of the name “Meistersinger” is disputed. One historian tells us that it was given to every minnesinger who was not a noble,—in other words, a burgher-minstrel. The other historian claims that the title Meister or master was given to any one who excelled in any act or trade, and afterwards came to mean all the guild members.
From the 14th century to the 16th, hardly a town in Germany was without music guilds and Meistersingers. Although they lost power then, the last guilds did not disappear until 1830, and the last member died in 1876. They must have passed the long winter evenings pleasantly for they met, and read or sang poems of the minnesingers or new ones composed by the members themselves. These guilds must have been great fun, for they had badges and initiation ceremonies and the kind of celebrations one loves in a club.
They had complicated, narrow-minded rules called Tablatur which today seem quite ridiculous, so much has music matured and thrown off the chains which once bound it!
When the guilds grew too large to be held in the different homes, the churches became the meeting places for practise and for the contests.
The highest praise we can give the Meistersingers is that they carried the love of music and song into every German home and made it a pastime of domestic life. Their influence spread not only through Germany, but throughout all lands. The composers who followed were glad to have their songs from which to draw inspiration for the popular religious songs at the time of the Protestant Reformation. Even though they did not make up any very great words or music, they spread a love for it and made people feel that the following of music as a career was worthy and dignified.
It is interesting to know before we close this chapter, that the English, well into the 16th century, after the passing of the troubadours, trouvères, minnesingers and mastersingers, still celebrated the exploits of the day in ballads called the Percy Reliques.
If you had lived in the Middle Ages you would have seen the strolling players traveling around with a queer looking instrument known by many different names,—vielle, organistrum, Bauernleier (peasant lyre), Bettlerleier (beggar’s lyre) or hurdy-gurdy. This was a country instrument, not often seen in cities, and was shaped like the body of a lute without a long neck. It had wire strings, sometimes gut, and a set of keys; the sound was made by turning a little crank at the bottom. The vielle or hurdy-gurdy is a cross between the bowed and the keyed instruments. In the 12th century it was called the organistrum, a large instrument which took two men to play. It flourished in the 18th century throughout Europe.
And so, now on to folk songs, although we would like to linger in this romantic period of wandering minstrels.
We have watched the human race grow out of its state of primitive yells and grunts, or babyhood, telling its stories and expressing its feelings in crude music. We have seen it sing and dance its way through the ages during which its men were semi-barbarians, like the Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Saxons, Celts, and Angles into the period when these same tribes became the French, German, Belgian and English nations.
Music was not a thing of learning as it is today, it was merely a way of talking, of enjoying life, and of passing on to others deeds and doings of the time. Early people said in poetry and song what was in their hearts. They knew nothing of musical rules and regulations and passed their songs along from father to son through the long years when the world was young, and their best songs have in them the seed of musical art! A modern Greek folk singer said: “As I don’t know how to read, I have made this story into a song, so as not to forget it.”
This music of the people, by the people and for the people is Folk Music and we shall see how these simple, tuneful bits have influenced the world of music because, as H. E. Krehbiel said, “they are the heartbeats of the ... folk and in them are preserved feelings, beliefs and habits of vast antiquity.” Don’t you believe that studying history through folk tunes would be fascinating? People today have found out much about the different races and tribal events through them.
It is impossible to find out who wrote the five thousand folk songs of England and the more than five thousand of Russia and of Ireland and all the others, for it was not until the 19th century that folk songs and dances became a serious study. The fact is, that a true folk song doesn’t want to find its composer for it loses its rank as a folk song if its maker should turn up! Isn’t that curious? But it is not quite fair, for surely we should accept as folk songs those which have sprung up among them, or have become a part of their lives through expressing their thoughts and feelings, even though the composer’s name has not been lost. We divide folk songs into two classes,—Class A, the composerless songs, and Class B, those tagged with a name.
Isn’t it exciting to think that folk songs and dances of the ancient Greeks, the Aztecs of Peru, the Chinese, the Irish and Russian peasants and our American negroes have things in common? It seems as if they might have had a world congress in primitive times and agreed on certain kinds of songs, for every nation has
So it comes to pass, that many a time when nations, due to wars and wanderings and vast passings of time, have forgotten their origins, the singing of a song will bring back the fact of some far distant relationship.
One day a party of Bretons, in 1758 (long after the Welsh and Bretons had forgotten they were of the same race), were marching to give battle to some Welsh troops that had descended upon the French coast. As the Welsh soldiers marched forward, the Bretons were amazed to hear their enemies singing one of their own national songs! They were so surprised and so overcome with sympathy that the Bretons joined in and sang with the Welsh. Both commanders, speaking the same language, gave the order “Fire!” But neither side would or could fire. Instead, the soldiers dropped their weapons, broke ranks and in wild enthusiasm greeted each other as long lost friends. The song they sang is probably seven hundred years old or older.
From the day of the obelisk to the day of the radio, every baby that has ever been born has been put to sleep to the soothing sound of the mother’s song. The Greek mother sang to her baby,
Many early lullabies were sung in honor of the infant Jesus, which really gives them a very blesséd beginning. It is related by a Sicilian poet “When the Madunazza (mother) was mending St. Joseph’s clothes, the Bambineddu (Bambino—the Infant Jesus) cried in his cradle, because no one was attending to Him. So the Archangel Raphael came and rocked Him and said these sweet little words to Him, ‘Lullaby, Jesus, Son of Mary.’”
The Indians, too, sang lullabies, for you know the squaw is a gentle soul and takes beautiful care of her papoose. The Chippewas think of sleep as a big insect and they have named him Weeng. Weeng comes down from the top of a tree where he is busy making a buzzing noise with his wings and puts you to sleep by sending many little fairies to you who beat your head with tiny clubs!
We all know our own Bye, Baby Bunting, Father’s Gone a Hunting, etc., and Rockabye Baby on the Tree Top.
The Germans, whose children songs and lullabies are so lovely, have the familiar Schlaf, Kindlein, Schlaf! It is a sweet name the Italians give their lullaby, the ninne-nanne! And the mothers in Lyons, France, call sleep souin-souin and have a charming little song:
We all have sung The Farmer in the Dell, London Bridge is Falling Down, Ring Around the Rosy and many other game-songs. We have told you of the Indian moccasin game, and we know that in all the other nations the children have had their game-songs.
Spring is so full of the beginnings of life, and people can see the flowers begin to bloom and take on color and glory. Even as you and I, they have never been able to see them without rejoicing and every one’s rejoicing sooner or later is a cause for music. In many countries this renewal of life is celebrated by rites and ceremonies that have been the source of much folk-lore and music.
The Greeks, as early as the 6th Century B.C., celebrated the coming of the spring with a religious festival named after the god Dionysus. Many songs and dances accompanied these festivals. On the evening before the festival, which lasted five days, there was an impressive procession by torch-light in which an image of the god Dionysus was carried to the theatre where the festival was held, accompanied by many handsome youths and a very splendid bull which was sacrificed.
In the excavations of Crete this ancient hymn has been found,—a spring song and a young man-song in one:
Ho! Kouros (young man), most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daemones. To Dickte for the year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song.
In Germany, it was thought that on Walpurgis-nacht (May night) witches rode on the tails of magpies and danced away the winter snows on the Brocken, one of the highest peaks of the Hartz Mountains. In Germany too, it was the custom for children to set May-flies (Maikäfer) free and to sing this song:
or
Don’t you think it is like our rhyme?
And here is the French:
or:
The first comic opera, a pastourale six hundred years old, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion by Adam de la Hale, is full of May songs.
The King and Queen of the May and May Pole dancers and the English Jack-in-the-Green, the Thuringian Little Leaf Man and the Russian tree dressed up are only a few of the many examples of the rites of spring. And we have seen how the Druids and the Aztecs celebrated spring.
One of the most modern composers, Igor Stravinsky, has written a ballet called Le Sacre du Printemps (Rites of Spring) in which he has used the ancient Russian pagan rites of celebrating the spring. The music is wild and the rhythms primitive.
From legends, we know that songs and dances of the Polish people accompanied their religious ceremonies before Christianity. When they exchanged their pagan gods for the teachings of the early Christian fathers, many of these songs were lost, but some of them were handed down merely by changing the pagan name to the Christian. These songs have been traced by the fact that many of them are based on the old pentatonic scale. The Slavs, the Lithuanians and the Germanic races have kept this scale in Eastern and Middle Europe, and the Greeks, the ancient Italians and the Celts brought it into Western and Southern Europe. These scales are supposed to have come from Indo-China, for it must not be forgotten that the Polish along with all Slavs migrated from Asia, the cradle of the human race.
Two festivals,—St. John’s Eve and Christmas, came down from the pagan era in Poland and the manner of celebration has changed little throughout the centuries.
The Polish Christmas Carol was also handed down from the days before Christ. The word “carol” comes from the old French carole which was a dance, and gave its name to the song by which it was accompanied. In the pagan time there were summer carols, winter carols, Easter carols and carols that celebrated a religious winter festival. As the winter festival occurred about the same time of the year as the Nativity or birthday of the Saviour, it was celebrated in the Christian Church as Christmas. In England, the old Yule-tide of the Druids has influenced the present celebration of Christmas with its fun, festivities and Christmas trees!
Throughout Germany, Christmas Carols are still sung early every Christmas morning, and many of the old hymns have thus been preserved.
The Christmas Carol in France is called Noël and the old English word was Nowell.
It is safe to say that there are more love songs than any other kind of folk music, and among them is some of the most beautiful music in the world. You will find charming folk love songs of every nationality on earth.
Different countries have different marriage customs which give an intimate picture of the life in different periods, of countries and tribes far apart. Again we can trace forgotten relationships in like customs of bygone days. Singing and dancing are very important in all marriage celebrations, and some wedding music is of great age.
In Russia, for example, the marriage customs and wedding music are very beautiful and impressive. At the same time no folk dancing is wilder or gayer than that celebrating a peasant marriage.
Before going to a wedding ceremony, the Polish bride sings one particular song built on the pentatonic scale, that has probably been sung for more than two thousand years! There are other wedding ceremony songs that can be traced back almost as far.
In Brittany, during the 11th and 12th centuries, the priest demanded a “nuptial song” from the newly-weds on the Sunday following the wedding, as a wedding tax!
In another place the feudal lord demanded that every new bride should dance and sing before him and in return he decorated her with a bonnet of flowers.
You haven’t forgotten the Indian and his love music played on the flute, have you?
In the recent World War, we had examples of how folk songs were made. There were popular songs like Over There (George Cohan), The Long, Long Trail (by Zo Elliot), Tipperary, Madelon, that were sung by millions. They were songs of the people, by the people and for the people, and no one cared who wrote them.
Most of the national hymns and patriotic songs were born in a time of storm and stress. Words inspired by some special happening were written on the spur of the moment, and often set to some familiar tune. America was first sung to the tune of God Save the King on July 4, 1832. The words of Star Spangled Banner were written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 as he watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Chesapeake Bay, and was set to an English drinking song, Anacreon in Heaven. Yankee Doodle, a song first sung to make fun of the young colonists, became the patriotic hymn of the Revolution! Where the tune came from is a mystery, but it shows a family likeness to a little Dutch nursery song, a German street song, an old English country dance, a folk tune from the Pyrenees and one from Hungary! But we love our old Yankee Doodle anyhow! Hail Columbia was adapted to a tune, The President’s March, which had accompanied Washington when he was inaugurated, in New York, as our first president.
England’s God Save the King was composed, words and music, by Henry Carey, and it was used first in 1743 during the Jacobite uprising. It has since served America, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. Auld Lang Syne of Scotland was written by “Bobby” Burns and set to an old Scotch tune. St. Patrick’s Day was originally a jig, and The Wearing of the Green was a street ballad of the Irish rebellion of 1798 mourning the fact that the Irish were forbidden to wear their national emblem, the shamrock. The Welsh song Men of Harlech, a stirring tune, dates from 1468.
The French have several thrilling national songs. If you heard Malbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre (Malbrouk to war is going) you would say, “Why! that’s For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” So it is, and it has had a long and chequered career. It is supposed to have been brought into Europe by one of the Crusaders, and was lost for five centuries; it cropped up again in 1781 when Marie Antoinette sang it to put the little Dauphin (the French prince) to sleep. Paris picked up the tune and it was heard in every café and on every street corner. Napoleon who had no ear for music hummed it. It crossed the English channel. Even the Arabs sing a popular song like it which they call Mabrooka. Beethoven used the air in a Battle Symphony (1813).
The stirring hymn of France, is the Marseillaise written by Rouget de l’Isle (1792) on the eve of the Revolution. It became the marching song of the French Army and was sung during the attack on the Tuileries (Paris), the king’s palace. It has always been the Republican song of France.
In almost every book you read about the French Revolution, La Carmagnole and Ça Ira are mentioned. They accompanied thousands of victims to the guillotine. Ça Ira (It will go!) was a popular dance which Marie Antoinette played on her clavecin. Little did she know that the same tune would be shouted by the infuriated mobs as she was driven through the streets of Paris in the tumbril to the guillotine!
The Italians show their natural love for opera by the fact that their national hymn is adopted from Bellini’s opera Somnambula.
The Rakoczy March of which you will hear later in the chapter is the Hungarian national hymn.
We could write an entire book on this subject, but this is only to give you a suggestion of how these songs grew and where they came from.
We have shown you the American Indians singing their songs as they fish and pound the corn; the boatmen rowing to the rhythm of their songs; and we have tried to show you that everybody loved songs as much when they worked as when they danced. Haven’t you, too, hummed or sung while working? People who accompany dish cloths and dusters with songs work better!
American negroes have used song to ease their work in the hot sunny fields. They not only sang, but men were hired to sing and act as song leaders in the slave days, to set the pace for workers, for more work was done when the slaves moved to the rhythm of music. In modern factories today, music is used to relieve the drudgery.
In Southern States the stevedores sing as they unload and load ships. And haven’t you often heard a rhythmic sound uttered by men hauling ropes on ships or buildings?
The world over, sailors have their songs and dances, farmers their reaping and planting songs, spinners and weavers their songs, boatmen songs like those on the Nile and the Volga boat song.
While few Greek folk songs have come down to our time, we know that they had songs for reaping the harvest, for grinding the barley, for threshing the wheat, for pressing the grapes, for spinning wool, and for weaving. They also had the songs of the shoemaker, the dyer, of the bath-master, the water carrier, of the shepherd, etc.
There are innumerable spinning songs of all nationalities, and shepherds’ songs,—you probably know the French Il etait une Bergère.
In Africa, we hear that the workers when cleaning rice were led by singers, who clapped their hands and stamped their feet to accompany the song. One man reports that he heard the negro women singing a national song in chorus, while pounding wheat always in time with the music.
Charles Peabody tells of a leader in a band of slaves in America who was besought by his companions not to sing a certain song because it made them work too hard!
The difference between the negro songs and the labor songs of other peoples and places is, that the negroes had no special labor songs but sang their religious songs, which they adapted to all purposes and occasions, while the true labor song was composed to fit the occasion.
In old England we hear of the “Labor-lilts” which were all work songs of spinners, milk-maids and shepherds. And we must not neglect the old night-watchman whom we meet in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. Neither can we let go by unnoticed the “town-crier” who told the news, good and bad. The street calls and cries of the Middle Ages were labor songs, later, in England and in France made into real compositions.
We, in America, have the old Cow-boy songs, the Mining songs of California, and the Lumberjack songs of Maine. These are not exactly labor songs but are first cousins to them.
The stage coach postillons with their fascinating horn calls are really music of trades or occupations, too. Isn’t it too bad that the inartistic jangle of the tram-car and the “honk-honk” of the automobile tear our ears instead of the tuneful hunting horns and postillon horns which are still occasionally heard in European forests!
The world’s workers sing to make work slip along easily, so you see song is a great lubricant.
In the great dining halls of the Middle Ages, when hunting parties gathered, and guests were received from near and far, or at Christmas time, when in old Britain the Wassail-bowl flowed freely, drinking songs were an important part of the banquet. At the splendid feasts in Rome, drinking songs were popular. In fact, all over the world there are thousands of this kind of folk song.
The name Wassail dates back to the day when Vortigern, King of the Britons, visited Hengist, the Saxon. Rowena, Hengist’s daughter greeted him with, “Was hail hla, ond cyning!” which mean in plain English, “Be of health, Lord King!” to which the king replied, “Drink heil” (Drink health).
In the second half of the 15th century, two men named Basselin and Jean de Houx wrote many drinking songs. As they lived in the little valleys (in French called vaux) near Vire in Normandy, drinking songs came to be called vaux-de-vire. At the same time, songs that were sung in the streets, in fact, any folk songs with gay melodies and light words, were called voix-de-ville, (or voices of the city). So, in some way, these two terms became mixed, and the familiar word, vaudeville is the result!
In the folk dance, man shows the feelings and dispositions of his race. From this dance of the people, all music gradually took a measured form, a rhythmic thing that is lacking in the song of primitive people. In primitive times, all dances were sung, particularly was this the case with the Slav race. As instruments were perfected, they took the place of primitive drums and singing as accompaniment to the dance.
The plain chant, and in fact all music of the church, lacked the element we call rhythm. It followed a metre or measure needed by the words, but this was much more like talking than like singing. Even the ornamented chant of the soloists in the churches had no definiteness of time or of phrase.
Rhythm as we feel it today, occurs in two ways,—through the singing of verses and through dancing. We must not forget that early peoples were much like children, and took pleasure in jingles, and in moving their feet and bodies in repeated motions which became dances.
It is most fascinating to see that the people who have the saddest songs, have the gayest and wildest dances! Maybe it is because the sadder the nation the more need it has for some gay way of forgetting its woes. The Russians, the Poles, the Norwegians and the people of all north countries where the songs are minor and tragic, have the wildest dances. The clothes, too, of the folk in these countries are decked in colored embroideries, and the decorations of the houses giddy and jolly. When the Russians get together they forget their sorrows in wild and almost frenzied dances, and directly after they will sing songs of deepest gloom.
The Poles have several folk dances that are easily recognized by their rhythm and style. The great Polish composer Chopin used these folk dances in some of the loveliest piano music ever written. For more than six centuries they have been used by Polish composers, yet there are people who say that folk song has no influence on musical art.
The Polonaise, in ¾ time, a stately dance of the aristocracy and nobles rather than of the people, began as a folk dance, and is supposed to have come from the Christmas Carol. The rhythm of the Polonaise ♩, is easily recognized and followed. In the early times, these polonaises had no composer’s tag, but were often named for some Polish hero, and thus show the date in which they were born.
One Polish writer dates the “courtly” polonaise from 1573. The year following the election of Henry III of Anjou, a great reception took place at Cracow, in which all the ladies of high rank marched in procession past the throne to the sound of a stately dance. This was the beginning of the stately polonaise, in which old and young took part, marching all through the great drawing rooms and gardens.
The Mazurka, another very popular Polish dance, is also in ¾ time, but faster than the polonaise, and slower than the waltz. It is performed by a few couples at a time, two to eight but rarely more. The accent of the measure falls on the third beat, which distinguishes it from a waltz.
Other well known Polish dances are the Krakowiak in ²⁄₄ time, the Kujawiak in ¾ time, the Obertass in ¾ time, the dance of the mountaineers, called the Kolomyjka in ²⁄₄ time, and the Kosah in ²⁄₄ time. All these dances are fast, and all of them come directly from folk songs.
It is very hard to tell which of the Spanish folk pieces are dances and which at first were songs, because the favorite songs of Spain are nearly all sung as accompaniments to dancing. Spain had almost as rich troubadour music as France, because the influence of the troubadours and of the jongleurs was very strong, Provence being Spain’s neighbor. In Catalonia the Provençal language has been used since the 9th century, and the folk music differs from that of other parts of Spain.
The songs of Spain divide themselves into four groups. The Basque, the music of Biscay and Navarre, unlike any music of which we have told you, is irregular in rhythm, melody, and scale, and the jota is one of its characteristic dances. Galicia and Castile have gay, bright, strong marked dance rhythms as may be seen from their characteristic boleros and seguidillas. Andalusian music and that of Southern Spain is perhaps the most beautiful of all, for here we find the influence of the Oriental music to a marked degree, in the use of the scale, in florid ornament, and in the richness of the rhythm; the dances fandangos, rondeñas and malagueñas are thought to be finer than the songs. The guitar is the king of instruments in Andalusia and how Spanish it is! The fourth group of songs is from Catalonia of French influence and less Spanish than the others.
In the English language we have the word ballad, which means a long poem in which a story is told. We also use the French word ballet, for a dance on the stage. These two words come from the same root, and show that at one time ballads and dance tunes were practically the same thing.
The English dance song, the “round” or the same dance in France called the ronde, was a popular dance for many centuries, some of which are most amusing and curious. One dance tune from the 12th century has Latin words; there is also a well known tune, Sellenger’s Round, from the collection called the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Another famous ballad (dance) was Trenchmore, a good sample of English folk dance at the end of the 16th century:
Trenchmore
An English writer (how childlike was his fun!) in 1621 says of Trenchmore, “Who can withstand it? be we young or old, though our teeth shake in our heads like virginal jacks (see page 310), or stand parallel asunder like the arches of a bridge, there is no remedy; we must dance Trenchmore over tables, chairs, and stools!”
The English Morris Dance is a sort of pageant accompanied by dancing. It may have come from the Morisco, a Moorish dance popular in Spain and France, or perhaps from the Matassins, also called Buffoons, who did a dance in armor, which may have come from the Arabs. This dance of the Buffoons, popular in France during the 16th and 17th centuries, was performed by four men with swords, and bells attached to their costumes, used also in the Morris Dance. It may have come into England at the end of the 14th century, but in the 15th it was flourishing. First it was given as a part of the May festival and the characters who took part in it were a Lady of the May, a Fool, a Piper, and two or more dancers. The dance then became a part of the Robin Hood pageant, and the dancers were called after the characters of the Robin Hood ballad: Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, and Maid Marian. Later, a hobby-horse, a dragon, four marshals, and other characters were added. The Puritans stopped the Morris Dance as they thought it too frivolous, and it was never so popular again.
In the Story of Minstrelsy is quoted a description of the Cushion Dance from The Dancing Master (1686):
“This dance is begun by a single person (either a man or woman), who, taking a cushion in hand, dances about the room, and at the end of the tune stops and sings, ‘This dance it will no further go.’ The musician answers, ‘I pray you, good sir, why say you so?’ Man: ‘Because Joan Sanderson will not come too.’ Musician: ‘She must come too, and she shall come too, and she must come whether she will or no.’ Then he lays down the cushion before the woman, on which she kneels, and he kisses her, singing, ‘Welcome, Joan Sanderson, welcome, welcome.’ Then she rises, takes up the cushion, and both dance, singing, ‘Prinkum-prankum is a fine dance!’” Why not try it?
Thomas Morley (1597) wrote of a kind of dance-part-song called vilanelle or ballete. “These and all other kinds of light musick, saving the madrigal, are by a general name called aires. There be also another kind of ballets commonly called Fa-la’s....”
When printing was invented these ballads (or ballets) appeared in such quantities, that they became a nuisance. Any subject or event was made into a ballad. They were usually printed on single sheets so that an instrument like the viol could play the air, and were carried around in baskets and sold for a trifle. Ballad-singing in the streets took the place of the older minstrels, but the newer fashion never reached the dignity of the bards. These ballads were used as dances.
Both Henry VIII and Queen Mary issued edicts forbidding the printing of books, ballads, and rhymes, probably because many were political ballads uncomplimentary to them. In Elizabeth’s reign the edict was removed, and many of these dance-songs are found in the plays of Shakespeare and are sung today in concerts as examples of English folk music.
Many of the better ones have been preserved for us in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, which is often wrongly called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, and in Playford’s English Dancing Master in which there are ninety-five songs used for dancing; they are also to be heard in the Beggar’s Opera which contains sixty-nine airs, among which may be mentioned Sally in our Alley, Bonny Dundee, Green Sleeves, Lilliburlero, Over the Hills and Far Away, etc. John Gay gathered these folk songs and dances into The Beggar’s Opera in 1727, and it was recently (1920) revived with great success in London and New York.
Tiersot (an authority on French folk music) has shown that Adam de la Hale probably wrote the play of Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion and then strung together a number of popular tunes, many of far older date, to suit his words. So this pastoral-comedy may be the oldest collection of French folk tunes in existence.
In France, when a dance-air became popular, the rhymers made up words to fit the music; this was called parodying it. Our use of the word “parody” means to make fun of something, but at that time, the word meant to adapt words to a melody. One of the early French writers translated the Psalms for use in the Church, and these very Psalms which were dedicated to François I, the King, were “parodied,” so that the people sang them to their favorite dance tunes,—courantes, sarabandes and bourrées. This happened at a time when church music was being popularized, and one hears queer tales of the use of popular songs in the masses and motets of the 14th and 15th centuries. It sounds sacrilegious to us, doesn’t it?
In spite of all the mixing-up of tunes and words, the French folk dances besides being very charming and winning were the parents of a most important kind of musical composition. Just to keep you from being too curious, the name of this important musical composition is the Suite—but wait!
All people from the savage state to the most civilized have had their funeral songs and songs for mourning which have been characteristic of the day and age to which they belonged and revealed many tribal and racial beliefs, superstitions and customs.
We shall not tarry long on this subject for it has been covered in the chapter on Troubadours and Minnesingers.
All primitive races used this means of teaching and preserving their tribal history, legends, etc., of telling the news of the day and of praising their over-lords. Many hundreds of volumes of ballads of all countries are to be found and are most useful as well as entertaining in the story of mankind.
Among the most famous narratives known to us are: the Sagas and Eddas and Runes of the Northlands; the Kalevala of Finland; the Percy Reliques of Britain; the Odyssey and Iliad of ancient Greece; the Song of Roland of France, Beowulf of the Anglo-Saxons, and others, many of which have been translated and simplified for young readers.