Songs of the West. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

      INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      Dorothy Osborne, in a letter to Sir William Temple, in 1653, thus describes her daily home life. "The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep or cows, and sit in the shade singing ballads. I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but trust me these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings to their heels." ("Letters of Dorothy Osborne," London, 1888, p. 103.)

      Before that Sir Thomas Overbury, in his "Character of a Milkmaid," had written: "She dares go alone and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones."

      During the reign of Queen Mary, the Princess Elizabeth was kept under close guard and restraint, but was suffered to walk in the palace grounds. "In this situation," says Holinshed, "no marvel if she, hearing upon a time, out of her garden at Woodstock, a certain milkmaid singing pleasantlie, wished herself to be a milkmaid as she was; saying that her case was better, and life merrier." So Viola, in Fletcher's play, "The Coxcombe," 1647:

      "Would to God, my father

       Had lived like one of these, and bred me up

       To milk, and do as they do! Methinks 'tis

       A life that I would chuse, if I were now

       To tell my time again, above a prince's."

      The milkmaid, and the girls guarding sheep and cows are things of the past, and with them have largely departed their old ballads and songs. Tusser, in his "Points on Huswifry," in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select her maids from those who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best.

      "Such servants are oftenest painsfull and good,

       That sing at their labours, like birds in a wood."

      Nowadays, domestic servants sing nothing but hymns, and the use of ballads and folksongs has died out among farm girls, and these are to be recovered only where there are village industries as basket weaving, glove sewing, and the like.

      But the old men sing their ancient ditties, or did so till within the last fifty years. Now they are no longer called on for them, but they remember them, and with a little persuasion can be induced to render them up. When I was a boy, I was wont to ride over and about Dartmoor, and to put up at little village taverns. There I was sure in the evening to hear one or two men sing, and should it be a pay day, sing hour after hour, one song following another with little intermission.

      There was an institution at mines and quarries called a fetching. It occurred every fortnight. The men left work early, and went to the changing room; stone jars of ale were brought thither from the nearest public house. Each man filled his mug, and each in turn, before emptying it, was required to sing. On such occasions many a fine old ballad was to be picked up. There was also the farm-supper after harvest, at which the workmen sang. Now the suppers have been discontinued. Ringer's feasts, happily, still remain, and at them a good old ditty may be heard. But most of the old singers with their traditional ballads set to ancient modal melodies have passed away.

      In "Poems, etc.," by Henry Incledon Johns, published by subscription, Devonport, 1832, is the following interesting passage. He is describing a night spent in an inn on the borders of Dartmoor; he met farmers and labourers. "One of the party I observed never took any share in the conversation, but appeared to have been invited there for the sole purpose of singing to them. He sang a great number of ballads, making up in loudness for what he lacked in melody. I thought it betrayed rather a want of courtesy that his auditors continued to talk while he sang, and no less remarkable, that they never expressed either applause or disapprobation of his strains. Now and then, one or two of them would join in a line of chorus, but it seemed to be done in a sort of parenthesis, and the thread of the conversation was immediately resumed as vehemently as ever. … I gleaned the following scraps of the border minstrelsy of Dartmoor:

      'There was an old man as blind as blind could be,

       He swore he saw the fox go up a great tree.'

      'There was one among them all

       That's slender, fair and tall,

       With a black and rolling eye,

       And a skin of lily dye.'

      'A bonny lass I courted full many a long day,

       And dearly I loved to be in her sweet company.'

      (The lover then describes the progress of his suit, which proves unsuccessful, and concludes thus:—)

      'Go, dig me a pit, that is long, large, and deep,

       And I'll lay myself down, and take a long sleep.

       And that's the way to forget her.'

      "The air to the latter was rather plaintive, and from the lips of some siren might have been entitled to an encore, but the voice which now gave it utterance only added another to many previous proofs that the English are not a musical people. The minstrel was in appearance one of the most athletic men I have ever seen, and although seventy-five years of age, would still, as I subsequently learnt, perform a day's work better than most of the young men of the parish. He was a pauper, but in great respect among the neighbouring rustics for his vocal powers. His auditory were moor-farmers with countenances as rugged and weather-beaten as the rocks among which they live."

      It is not a little interesting to know that some seventy years after this recorded evening we were able to recover two of the songs which Mr. Johns gives somewhat inaccurately; and both are included in this collection. The first is "The Three Jovial Welshmen," No. 75; and the last is "The False Bride," No. 97.

      One of my old singers, James Olver, was the son of very