COUNTY SONGS.

TOR those to whom literature is a reality and not merely a certain amount of printed matter, the songs of country- people have a charm which nothing can surpass. Shakespeare has let us see plainly how dearly he loved the snatches of verse that "the spinners and the knitters in the sun" croon to themselves over their work,—songs that "dally with the innocence of love like the old age." Nor was Shakespeare alone. "All the better brothers" of poetry, during and since his time, have shown their appreciation of those songs which, "as the French book sayeth," "rise with the larks from the furrows." We have a fair number of the older songs of the people already garnered—for example, the collection of " Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England," edited by Robert Bell and published by George Bell some years ago; and Mr. Baring-Gould's "Songs of the West"—but hitherto there have been comparatively few attempts to get at what the country-people are singing at this very moment, to obtain, that is, the authentic airs and words which might have been heard any day this summer, "when Tom came home from labour, and Cies from milking rose." In a book .entitled " English County Songs," just published by the Leadenhall Press, and edited by Miss Lucy Broadwood and Mr. Fuller- Maitland, a real effort has, however, been made not merely to disinter the survivals of another age, but to print and pub- lish what the country-people still sing when they are among themselves and are not showing-off to " gentlemen from London." Instead of "plodding with antiquaries" in search of this or that fragment of an old ballad, and rejecting every- thing that seems modern and up to date, the editors have given us the songs of the people just as they found them. The interest of their book, in a word, consists in the fact that they have caught " the songs which seem to have, sprung up, no one knows how, within the last century or century-and-a-half." That this was not an easy task will be realised by any one who has ever been a searcher after any form of country-lore. Your countryman has a deep-seated. suspicion that the inquirer is trying to get information in order to " score off " him as a be- nighted old el:law-bacon, and he is, as it were, perpetually cautioning himself after the manner of the police : " Remem- ber that any statement you may now make may be used against you on some future occasion." That is the exact attitude of the people when asked point-blank to sing or repeat any old songs they may happen to know. As one of the editor's friends wrote : "No sooner do they see my paper and pencil than they become dumb ; in fact, not only dumb but sulky." One of the most interesting examples of the modern country songs included in the collection of Miss Broadwood and Mr. Fuller-Maitland was communicated to them by Mr. Henry Strachey. The tune is exceedingly attractive, and the words, though superficially poor and even commonplace, have, as it were, behind them a real literary flavour. They go home to the heart of the country-people- of that there can be no doubt. Here is the first verse and chorus :- "I'm a man that's in trouble and sorrow, That once was light-hearted and gay ; Not a coin in this world can I borrow, Since my own I have squandered away. I once wronged my father and mother, Till they turned me out from their door, To beg, starve, or die, in the gutter to lie, And no'er enter their dwellings no more.

Cho, I'm a man that's done wrong to my parents, And daily I wander about, To earn a small mite for my lodging at night, God help me, for now I'm cast out."

There is something very English about the whole song. In the next verse we are told how the father ordered his son off the premises, but how the mother secretly met him, " for to give me a crown, with her head hanging down." The third verse recounts how the outcast's sister has married a squire, and "rides in her carriage so free; " and in the fourth there is the inevitable "take a warning," and the resolve of the hero of the tale to do better, "and prove to my friends I'm a man." Mr. Henry Strachey is stated to have taken down the words from a collier in Bishop Sutton, Somerset, but the song is in no way restricted to the West. The present writer found that a parlour-maid living in a London fiat, but hailing from Essex, had got the words " copied down in her book." Mr. Strachey tantalises us by a further statement that there exists another song to the same tune which begins, " Come down, then, and open the door, love!" but that he has found it im- possible to recover any more of the words. That is a real misfortune, for the beginning of this serenade of the lane is most promising. Another delightful song, though not one of which it can be said that " the story's heart still beats against its side," is " The Jolly Ploughboy," The first verse has a splendid swing :— " There were two loving brothers. two brethren were born, Two brethren whose trades we still keep ; The one was a ploughman, a planter of corn, The other a tender of sheep."

That is a good reminder that the need of " corn for our bellies and wool for our backs " is still the prime fact of material existence. "The Seasons of the Year," a song out of Sussex, " sung by Mr. John Burberry, gamekeeper," has a delightful couplet:— "When spring it come on, the maid to her cow,

The boy to his whip, and the man to his plough."

No one who, when the frost has got out of the ground, has watched the curtain rise on the great drama of the farm, will fail to feel the charm of this simple distich. The words are a real home-thrust for those who know and love the country. "The Prickly Bush" is a very curious song,. In its grimness and suppression it approaches certain of the old ballads, and yet there is a modern ring in it. Au excellent roystering song, probably dating from the time of the Restoration, begins :- "Oliver Cromwell, lay buried and dead (Hee ! haw ! buried and dead),

There grew an old apple-tree over his head (Hee I haw ! over his head) ;"

—and ends with the intimation that "the saddle and bridle they lie on the shelf,"—an intimation that the wearisome reign of the saints and the Major-Generals, with their eternal ridings up and down the country to enforce godliness and sobriety, are over and done with for good and all. We have no room to do more than mention a very fascinating nonsense-song contained in this truly delightful collection. It begins,— "There was a pig

Went out to dig On Christmas day in the morning,"

—and goes on in this style through all the animals,—recounting how the sparrow went out to harrow, and the cow to plough. " It doesn't sound much told like this," as the man said when he tried to give his friends a sketch of the plot of _Romeo and Juliet, "but its capital reading in the book."

The "Love-Songs of Connacht" (Fisher Unwin, London), collected and translated by Mr. Douglas Hyde, does for the wildest of the Irish provinces what "English County Songs " does for England. But what a change it is from one book to the other, Far wider seas than those of St. George's Channel dash between the two sets of poems. The whole way of looking at life and beauty and love and man and the charities of hearth and home are so utterly different. The Celtic atmosphere of Mr. Hyde's book is absolutely complete. The introductory notes to the songs, for example, were apparently originally written in Irish, and have since been translated thence into a very Irish, though by no means unpleasant, kind of English. The first thing necessary to say about the book is that it is a very charming one. Though it sounds presumptuous for any one who "has not a word of Irish" to say so, the love-songs in Mr. Hyde's translation keep their true character. And very wonderful that character is They are not, no doubt, great poetry ; but there is something in them which kindles the imagination and haunts the memory. No one can read such songs as these and not be strangely and inexplicably moved,—moved, that is, beyond the apparent worth of the words and of the emotions they excite. Even Bos- well felt it. A shadow of awe and enchantment falls across his page as he recounts how Dr. Johnson for the first time heard a woman " singing a song in the Erse language " as she sat at her spinning-wheel. Wordsworth made the haunting power of this mysterious spell immortal :— " Will no one tell me what she sings P

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old unhappy far-off things, And battles long ago."

One of the best songs in Mr. Hyde's book—and, mind, it is a modern song; there is no more "plodding with antiquaries" here than in the former book—is a girl's lament that she cannot marry her lover :- " I am sitting up Since the moon rose last night, And putting down a fire,

And ever kindling it diligently ; The people of the house Are lying down, and I by myself. The cocks are crowing, And the land is asleep, but me."

In another song we find a delightful pastoral note ; and yet how different would have been the English way of expressing the same feeling :— " You promised me—and told me a falsehood— That you would be with me at the pen of the sheep. I lot a whistle and a thousand shouts for you,

And I found nothing in it, but the lambs a-bleating."

The peculiar melancholy note common to all purely Celtic poetry is everywhere apparent in these songs. Take, for example, the following piece of prose translation from one of them :—" Let us go to the mountain, Listening to the raven, In the black, sorrowful valleys, Where the deer speaks ; By this book in my hand, 0 lovely cool of the fair tresses, I would remain with you in solitude Until the day would waken." The full effect of these songs cannot, however, be given by " snippets " of quotation.

They must be read at large if the extreme characteristic impression " which they are capable of producing is to be obtained. Then only does one get the true Irish atmosphere, that air which is at once limpid and mysterious, clear and yet misty—the description would not be true to Ireland if it were not a " bull "—an air which blends the sad and the absurd in equal proportions. All we can do here is to put up a finger- post to a very fascinating little volume. No doubt some readers will say of the songs it contains, as Dr. Johnson said of Ossian,—i.e., that any man could write them " who would abandon his mind to it," but others better advised will find in them a true source of delight.