V Changes That Occur in Folk-Music
That all traditional lore is subject to change is of course a well-recognised fact, and this change is so uncertain in its effects, and so erratic in its selection that no law appears to govern it. In ballads or prose narratives that exist only by verbal transmission we may expect the dropping of obsolete words and phrases, and this usually occurs; though sometimes corruptions of such remain and are meaningless to those who repeat them.
For instance, in a certain singing-game, children of a particular district were accustomed to say—
“She knocked at the door and picked up a pin.” It is quite obvious that the original stood—
“She knocked at the door and tirled at the pin.” The “tirling pin” having completely gone out of usage, and even out of popular remembrance, in the limited area where it formerly served the purpose of attracting the attention of the householder, the phrase would have no meaning to the modern child; hence the change into something more comprehensible.
There is considerable analogy in the above to the change that takes place in folk-music. But as musical phrases do not, at any rate in folk-music, become so obsolete as words, the variation is less considerable and is probably due to different causes. These are chiefly wilful alteration for particular reasons, and unconscious change due to lapse of memory, or imperfect hearing. We may usefully consider two or three examples of these kinds of alterations. The tune “Greensleeves” is a very characteristic instance. The first record of the song is at the date 1580, when the ballad was entered at Stationers’ Hall. It is evident that both words and tune became immediately popular, and from that time to our own day it has always retained considerable favour, for it was one of those stock tunes used for ephemeral political ditties, and for the scraps of verse that were employed in the early ballad operas. It is easy to trace, from the eighteenth century printed copies, how the tendency has been to eliminate complex passages, and generally to simplify, while retaining the essential features of the tune. Probably this is its pure sixteenth century form—
GREENSLEEVES
(Earliest form) 16th Century
It is rather a shock to find that the beautiful air has by careless transmission or wilful change got so degraded as finally to appear in a manuscript book of fiddle airs dated 1838, thus,—
GREENSLEEVES
From a Manuscript Book, dated 1838
Other copies which have deplorably lost much of the purity of the original are to be seen in D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth, The Beggar’s Opera and other early eighteenth century publications. This is from an edition of The Dancing Master, dated 1716:
GREENSLEEVES AND YELLOW LACE
Printed 1716
We may trace a curious corruption in the tune as found in traditional usage in Ireland nearly eighty years ago. Thomas Moore employed this traditional version for his song, “Oh, could we do with this world of ours,” and published it united to his verses in his Irish Melodies, the tenth number dated 1834. He gives the tune the name of “The Basket of Oysters.” The real tune which went by this title, otherwise known as “Paddy the Weaver,” is to be seen in Aird’s Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. iii., Glasgow [1788], and elsewhere. It will be noticed that Moore’s tune is “Greensleeves,” to which is joined a part of “Paddy the Weaver.” It is a notable example of the manner in which traditional tunes suffer change from imperfect remembrances or other causes.
THE BASKET OF OYSTERS
Greensleeves, Irish Version, 1834
A BASKET OF OYSTERS, OR
PADDY THE WEAVER
From Aird’s “Selection,” 1788
Although “Greensleeves” is probably not a folk-tune, yet in some cases folk-tunes are apt to suffer a like degradation in character, although it must be clearly stated that tradition frequently holds them together in a wonderfully perfect manner.
In this latter case we may rank “Joan’s placket is torn,” which survives in the modern “Cock o’ the North,” with “Greensleeves,” and their histories are well worth recalling.
We may pass over the tradition that “Joan’s placket” was played at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. The structure of the tune shows it to have been originally a trumpet tune, and strangely enough throughout the whole course of its existence it seems to have been used in defiance or ridicule. Mr Pepys tells us that when the English sailors left the deserted “Royal Charles” in the Medway in 1667, a Dutch trumpeter sounded the tune from the deck of the captured ship. After this period political lampoons were adapted to the melody. It is difficult to find out when the tune was first named “The Cock o’ the North,” or when, under that title, it was adopted as a British army tune, but there is a striking instance of its use during the siege of Lucknow in the Mutiny of 1857. It was the practice to signal by flag and bugle call from the City to the Residency, both in a state of siege. On one occasion a drummer boy, named Ross, after the signalling was over again climbed to the high dome from which it was conducted, and in spite of the Sepoy rifles sounded “The Cock o’ the North” as a defiance. We all know the story of the wounded piper, shot in the ankle during the rush at Dargai, crouching behind a rock and still sounding the pipe tune the “Cock o’ the North” that had inspired the onslaught. How little the traditional “Cock o’ the North” differs from “Joan’s Placket” the reader will be able to see from the following copies:—
JOAN’S PLACKET IS TORN
17th Century
THE COCK O’ THE NORTH
20th Century
Many other examples of traditional cohesion as regards folk-tunes might be cited did space permit.
The tune “A sailor loved a farmer’s daughter,” given in Edward Bunting’s Ancient Music of Ireland, 1840, has recently been noted from a farm labourer by Mrs Stanton of Armscott, Warwickshire, in a form practically identical with the printed version, though it is quite evident that the tune noted in Warwickshire has had a source independent of Bunting’s. Every collector could point to such instances from his own experience.
Another fact forces itself into notice. A tune may develop by traditional passage, or by wilful alteration, into several forms, and thus we get airs having points of similarity but also points of difference. In some cases the likeness may be so close that the different tunes are classed as “variants.”
It must be realised that a folk-song singer is under no bond to sing an air strictly as he has received it. Fortunately, in many cases, as shown above, he does, and religiously adheres to the melody as far as his memory, or skill, will permit. There are, however, difficult tunes to remember as well as easy ones, and this fact has considerable bearing on the question.
The reason why we find well-known folk-songs adapted to different airs is somewhat obvious, and the following explanation may be I think accepted. Where a singer reads a folk-song from a ballad sheet and does not know its particular tune, it is easy to believe that he uses one with which he is already familiar, or adapts one, or even composes an air from the stock musical phrases that he knows in other melodies. Thus we find folk-songs sung to many different airs, and this is not evolution.
It may be noticed that in the lesser marked tunes, or rather less original airs, stock musical phrases are in use just as the stock phrases of the ballad-maker are employed by him over and over again. The folk-song singer looks for and welcomes these passages. They are conventional and are the most acceptable. Just as a child gives a better welcome to a story beginning “Once upon a time” than to a less hackneyed manner of opening, and as the folk-singer demands that every girl shall be “a fair damsel,” that the incident of the song shall happen “As I was a-walking one morning in May,” and that his mode of address shall be “I stepped up boldly to her,” or the like, so there are certain inevitable musical phrases in folk-music that one meets with in a particular type of melody.
Waggish musicians are sometimes guilty of inventing “a folk-melody” for the purpose of deceiving and laughing at collectors. The collector, recognising the phrases he knows so well, may accept the tune as genuine. He is not wrong or ignorant in this; the musician has got possession of the material and spirit of folk-music, and then deception is easy. A man may have a Johnsonian method of diction without having the wit or learning of the great lexicographer, and might even pass off a short speech as a genuine one of the Doctor’s.
These stock phrases are of course freely used in folk-music, and it is quite easy for a singer of folk-song legitimately to make an air for a ballad whose proper tune he may not know. This is another way in which variation of tunes occurs, and such results are frequently very puzzling to the expert. The singer may have remembered a passage of a melody and to this he has fitted other phrases that he is also familiar with. He is probably not conscious of the composite tune he is making,—he may even think that he is singing the correct tune.