England, in those days, was avid of pleasure. It is little to be wondered at.
We speak of the people, not of the nobles, whose wealth enabled them to combat the ordinary existing conditions.
Their day depended, in a very special sense, on the sun, in a manner surprising to those of us living in the twentieth century. It began with the rising, and ended with the setting.
Artificial light, except of the most primitive description, was a luxury entirely out of their reach.
If we, in modern times, remembering its fickle climate, wonder at the popularity of the month of May, and the adulation it received at the hands of the early poets, a little consideration will soon supply the cause. The long, weary months of winter, with its darkness and cold, had been endured; the bitter winds of March and April were over, and the long days and tempered breezes came to the people with a relief, the intensity of which is difficult to realise, with all the means of comfort that modern civilisation has placed at our disposal.
The ballad, as distinguished from the song, is peculiarly typical of the Northern races, and was, up to the time of Queen Elizabeth, a favourite feature of English music. As its name implies,6 it was danced as well as sang; later on the dance was dispensed with.
Its antiquity is unquestionable, but it is, as is so often the case, impossible to assign any definite date to it.
The early part of the eleventh century certainly knew it in England, as the following stanza proves.7 It tells of a visit paid to the city by King Canute: —
"Mery sungen the muneches binnen Ely.
Tha Cnut ching reu therby:
Roweth, cnites, noer the land,
An here we thes muneches saeng."
This may be translated for the modern reader as follows: —
"Merry sang the monks of Ely,
As King Canute rowed by.
Row knights, near the land
And hear we these monks sing."
The music is, unfortunately, lost.
In Roman times a popular feature of the processions organised in honour of some newly-arrived conquering soldier was a band of dancers who, while gyrating in graceful movement, sang poems, reciting his heroic deeds.
The praise of heroes was, from the earliest, the dominant feature of the ballad, and, although far removed, as it must be from anything resembling even mediæval methods, the Greek and Roman form of it is most probably the real source from which it is derived.
There are many kinds of ballad known to England, but they are narrative, as a rule, such as "Chevy Chase," and many others of a similar style. Some are sad, some are gay; none are sentimental. One that can be seen in the Sloane Collection in the British Museum, "Joly Yankyn," is probably not much later than the one previously quoted. The name will recall Friar Tuck to the readers of Scott's "Ivanhoe."
A ballad that is believed to be of Eastern origin is the following: —
There were three ra-vens sat on a tree,
Downe-hay, downe-hay, downe-hay-downe.
They were as black as they might be,
With a downe, downe-hay, downe-hay-downe.
Then one of them said to his mate,
"Where shall we our break-fast take?"
With a downe, downe-hay, downe-hay-downe.
We are on safer ground, however, when we come to such a one as "To-morrow the Fox will come to Town," with the refrain, "I must desire you neighbours all, to hallo the fox out of the hall." This is altogether more English in character, and is filled with the spirit of open air life.
Other examples that seem inevitable of quotation, are those that Shakespeare has made immortal, by putting them into the mouth of Ophelia, in the tragic scene from Hamlet.
The music that we quote here is that which, there is every reason to believe, was sung at the original production.
The style accords with Shakespeare's time.
Unfortunately when Drury Lane Theatre was burnt down in 1812, the music library was destroyed. Happily, however, Mrs. Jordan, the celebrated actress with whose fame the part of Ophelia is for ever associated, was alive, and was able to sing to Dr. Arnold, a famous musician of the time, the melodies, as they had been rendered in the theatre in her time, and probably for centuries past.
And how should I your true love know
From ma-ny an-o-ther one?
O by his coc-kle hat and staff,8
And by his san-dal shoon.
Twang, lang, dil-do, dee.
And will he not come a-gain?..
And will he not come a-gain?
No, he is dead;
Gone to his death-bed,
And he nev-er will come a-gain…
Good mor-row, 'tis St. Val-en-tine's Day,
All in the morn-ing be-time;…
And I a maid at your win-dow,
To be your val-en-tine…
In "Parthenia," a collection of pieces for the virginals (an instrument that may be described as the ancestor of the piano), which was published in 1611, it is shewn to what a high point of development the composition of dance music had arrived.
The music was composed by the three most celebrated English musicians then living, William Byrd, John Bull, and Orlando Gibbons – Tallis had been dead over twenty years.
The pieces are of the most stately kind, in general, and would scarcely realise the modern conception of dance music, but they are beautiful specimens of the art of those days, and cannot but command our admiration.
Of the more lively and frivolous dances the one known as Trenchmore was the most popular.
"Be we young or old … we must dance Trenchmore over table, chairs and stools."10
Selden, in his "Table Talk," "Then all the company dances, lord and groom, lady and kitchen maid, no distinction."
The more one comes to learn of life in the England of those days, the more one becomes convinced that, taken as a whole, life was both happy and joyous. No less an authority than Professor Thorold Rogers, after profound research into the social conditions of the Middle Ages, says they show that a state of happiness and content prevailed.11
Dancing was advised, too, as "a goodly regimen against the fever pestilence."
The fact that there is comparatively little of old-time music extant is due to the late invention of music printing and the slow progress of musical notation. "Parthenia" was, as the title page tells,