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_ Hard by the edge of the sand-hills, and close beside the high road on the last rise before it dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of our ancient camps ('castles' we call them in Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within the enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for two entrances cut through the bank and facing one another. You are standing in a perfectly level area a hundred and thirty feet in diameter; the surrounding rampart rises to a height of eight or nine feet, narrowing towards the top, where it is seven feet wide; and around its inner side you may trace seven or eight rows of seats cut in the turf, but now almost obliterated by the grass.
This Round (as we call it) was once an open-air theatre or planguary (_plain-an-guare_, place of the play). It has possibly a still older history, and may have been used by the old Cornish for their councils and rustic sports; but we know that it was used as a theatre, perhaps as early as the fourteenth century, certainly as late as the late sixteenth: and, what is more, we have preserved for us some of the plays performed in it.
They are sacred or miracle plays, of course. If you draw a line from entrance to entrance, then at right angles to it there runs from the circumference towards the centre of the area a straight shallow trench, terminating in a spoon-shaped pit. The trench is now a mere depression not more than a foot deep, the pit three feet: but doubtless time has levelled them up, and there is every reason to suppose that the pit served to represent Hell (or, in the drama of The Resurrection, the Grave), and the trench allowed the performers, after being thrust down into perdition, to regain the green-room unobserved--either actually unobserved, the trench being covered, or by a polite fiction, the audience pretending not to see. My private belief is that, the stage being erected above and along the trench, they were actually hidden while they made their exit. Where the trench meets the rampart a semi-circular hollow, about ten feet in diameter, makes a breach in the rows of seats. Here, no doubt, stood the green-room.
The first notice of the performance of these plays occurs in Carew's _Survey of Cornwall_, published in 1602:--
"Pastimes to delight the mind, the Cornishmen have guary miracles and three-men's songs: and for exercise of the body hunting, hawking, shooting, wrestling, hurling, and such other games.
"The guary miracle, in English a miracle play, is a kind of Interlude compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history with that grossness which accompanied the Romans' _vetus comedia_. For representing it they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the diameter of this inclosed plain some forty or fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides, many miles off, to hear and see it; for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well the eye as the ear; the players con not their parts without book, but are prompted by one called the Ordinary, who followeth at their back with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud."
Our Round, you observe, greatly exceeds the dimensions given by Carew. But there were several in the west: one for instance, traceable fifty years ago, at the northern end of the town of Redruth, which still keeps the name of Planguary; and another magnificent one, of stone, near the church-town of St. Just by the Land's End. Carew may have seen only the smaller specimens.
As for the plays--well, they are by no means masterpieces of literature, yet they reveal here and there perceptions of beauty such as go with sincerity even though it be artless. Beautiful for instance is the idea, if primitive the writing, of a scene in one, _Origo Mundi_, where Adam, bowed with years, sends his son Seth to the gate of Paradise to beg his release from the weariness of living (I quote from Norris's translation):--
"O dear God, I am weary,
Gladly would I see once
The time to depart.
Strong are the roots of the briars,
That my arms are broken
Tearing up many of them.
"Seth my son I will send
To the gate of Paradise forthwith,
To the Cherub, the guardian.
Ask him if there will be for me
Oil of mercy at the last
From the Father, the God of Grace."
Seth answers that he does not know the road to Paradise. "Follow," says Adam--
"Follow the prints of my feet, burnt;
No grass or flower in the world grows
In that same road where I went--
I and thy Mother surely also--
Thou wilt see the tokens."
Fine too is the story, in the _Passio Domini Nostri_, of the blind soldier Longius, who is led forward and given a lance, to pierce Christ's body on the Cross. He thrusts and the holy blood heals him of his blindness. Local colour is sparingly imported. One of the executioners, as he bores the Cross, says boastfully:--
"I will bore a hole for the one hand,
There is not a fellow west of Hayle
Who can bore better."
--And in the _Resurrectio_ Pilate rewards the gaoler for his trustiness with the Cornish manors of 'Fekenal, Carvenow and Merthyn,' and promises the soldiers by the Sepulchre 'the plain of Dansotha and Barrow Heath.' A simplicity scarcely less refreshing is exhibited in _The Life of St. Meriasec_ (a play recently recovered) by a scholar whom a pompous pedagogue is showing off. He says:--
"God help A, B, and C!
The end of the song is D:
No more is known to me,"
But promises to learn more after dinner.
Enthusiasts beg us to make the experiment of 'reviving' these old plays in their old surroundings. But here I pause, while admitting the temptation. One would like to give life again, if only for a day, to the picture which Mr. Norris conjures up:--
"The bare granite plain of St. Just, in view of Cape Cornwall and of the transparent sea which beats against that magnificent headland. . . . The mighty gathering of people from many miles around hardly showing like a crowd in that extended region, where nothing ever grows to limit the view on any side, with their booths and tents, absolutely necessary where so many people had to remain three days on the spot, would give a character to the assembly probably more like what we hear of the so-called religious revivals in America than of anything witnessed in more sober Europe."
But alas! I foresee the terrible unreality which would infect the whole business. Very pretty, no doubt, and suggestive would be the picture of the audience arrayed around the turf benches--
"In gradibus sedit populus de cespite factis--"
But one does not want an audience to be acting; and this audience would be making-believe even more heroically than the actors--that is, if it took the trouble to be in earnest at all. For the success of the experiment would depend on our reconstructing the whole scene--the ring of entranced spectators as well as the primitive show; and the country-people would probably, and not entirely without reason, regard the business as 'a stupid old May game.' The only spectators properly impressed would be a handful of visitors and solemn antiquarians. I can see those visitors. If it has ever been your lot to witness the performance of a 'literary' play in London and cast an eye over the audience it attracts, you too will know them and their stigmata--their ineffable attire, their strange hirsuteness, their air of combining instruction with amusement, their soft felt hats indented along the crown. No! We may, perhaps, produce new religious dramas in these ancient Rounds: decidedly we cannot revive the old ones.
While I ponder these things, standing in the deserted Round, there comes to me--across the sky where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry sunshine--the sound of men's voices carolling at an unseen farm. They are singing _The First Nowell_; but the fourth Nowell--the fourth of the refrain--is the _clou_ of that most common, most excellent carol, and gloriously the tenors and basses rise to it. No, we cannot revive the old Miracle Plays: but here in the Christmas Carols we have something as artlessly beautiful which we can still preserve, for with them we have not to revive, but merely to preserve, the conditions.
In a preface to a little book of carols chosen (and with good judgment) some years ago by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and well edited in the matter of music by Sir John Stainer, I read that--
"The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus celebrating the Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with some change of form, to be steadily and rapidly gaining ground. Instead of the itinerant ballad-singer, or the little bands of wandering children, the practice of singing carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at some fixed meeting, is becoming prevalent."
Since Mr. Bramley wrote these words the practice has grown more prevalent, and the shepherds of Bethlehem are in process of becoming thoroughly sophisticated and self-conscious. For that is what it means. You may (as harassed bishops will admit) do a number of irrelevant things in church, but you cannot sing the best carols there. You cannot toll in your congregation, seat your organist at the organ, array your full choir in surplices, and tune up to sing, for example--
"Rise up, rise up, brother Dives,
And come along with me;
There's a place in Hell prepared for you
To sit on the serpent's knee."
Or this--
"In a manger laid and wrapped I was--
So very poor, this was my chance--
Between an ox and a silly poor ass,
To call my true love to the dance."
Or this--
"Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing,
And all the bells on earth did ring
On Christmas Day in the morning."
These are verses from carols, and from excellent carols: but I protest that with 'choirs and places where they sing' they will be found incongruous. Indeed, Mr. Bramley admits it. Of his collection "some," he says, "from their legendary, festive or otherwise less serious character, are unfit for use within the church."
Now since, as we know, these old carols were written to be sung in the open air, or in the halls and kitchens of private houses, I prefer to put Mr. Bramley's proposition conversely, and say that the church is an unsuitable place for carol singing. If the clergy persist in so confining it, they will no doubt in process of time evolve a number of new compositions which differ from ordinary hymns sufficiently to be called carols, but from which the peculiar charm of the carol has evaporated. This charm (let me add) by no means consists in mere primitiveness or mere archaism. Genuine carols (if we could only get rid of affectation and be honest authors in our own century without straining to age ourselves back into the fifteenth) might be written to-day as appropriately as ever. 'Joseph did whistle,' &c., was no less unsuited at the date of its composition to performance by a full choir in a chancel than it is to-day. But whatever the precise nature of the charm may be, you can prove by a very simple experiment that such a performance tends to impair it. Assemble a number of carollers about your doorstep or within your hall, and listen to their rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is sick of improper feeding.
No, no: such a carol as 'God rest you, merry gentlemen,' has a note which neither is suited by, nor can be suited to, what people call 'the sacred edifice': while 'Joseph was an old man,' 'I saw three ships' and 'The first good joy' are plainly impossible. Associate them with organ and surpliced choir, and you are mixing up things that differ. Omit them, at the same time banning the house-to-house caroller, and you tyrannically limit men's devotional impulses. I am told that the clergy frown upon house-to-house carolling, because they believe it encourages drunkenness. Why then, let them take the business in hand and see that too much drink is neither taken nor offered. This ought not to be very difficult. But, as with the old plays, so with carol-singing, it is easier and more consonant with the Puritan temper to abolish a practice than to elevate it and clear away abuses: and the half-instructed mind is taught with fatal facility to condemn use and abuse in a lump, to believe carol-singing a wile of the Evil One because Bill once went around carol-singing and came home drunk.
In parishes where a more tolerant spirit prevails I am glad to note that the old custom, and even a taste for the finer ditties, seem to be reviving. Certainly the carollers visit us in greater numbers and sing with more evidence of careful practice than they did eight or ten years ago: and friends in various parts of England have a like story to tell. In this corner the rigour of winter does not usually begin before January, and it is no unusual thing to be able to sit out of doors in sunshine for an hour or so in the afternoon of Christmas Day. The vessels in sight fly their flags and carry bunches of holly at their topmast-heads: and I confess the day is made cheerfuller for us if they are answered by the voices of carollers on the waterside, or if, walking inland, I hear the note of the clarionet in some 'town-place' or meet a singing-party tramping between farm and farm.
That the fresh bloom of the carol was evanescent and all too easily destroyed I always knew; but never realised its extreme fugacity until, some five years ago, it fell to me to prepare an anthology, which, under the title of _The Oxford Book of English Verse_, has since achieved some popularity. I believed that previous English anthologists had unjustly, even unaccountably, neglected our English carols, and promised myself to redress the balance. I hunted through many collections, and brought together a score or so of pieces which, considered merely as carols, were gems of the first water. But no sooner did I set them among our finer lyrics than, to my dismay, their colours vanished; the juxtaposition became an opposition which killed them, and all but half a dozen had to be withdrawn. There are few gems more beautiful than the amethyst: but an amethyst will not live in the company of rubies. A few held their own-- the exquisite 'I sing of a Maiden' for instance--
"I sing of a Maiden
That is makeles;[1]
King of all kings
To her son she ches.[2]
"He came al so still
There his mother was,
As dew in April
That falleth on the grass.
"He came al so still
To his mother's bour,
As dew in April
That falleth on the flour.
"He came al so still
There his mother lay
As dew in April
That falleth on the spray.
"Mother and maiden
Was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
Goddes mother be."
[1] Without a mate.
[2] Chose.
Or 'Lestenyt, lordings,' or 'Of one that is so fair and bright;' and my favourite, 'The Seven Virgins,' set among the ballads lost none of its lovely candour. But on the whole, and sorely against my will, it had to be allowed that our most typical carols will not bear an ordeal through which many of the rudest ballads pass safely enough. So it will be found, I suspect, with the carols of other nations. I take a typical English one, exhumed not long ago by Professor Flugel from a sixteenth century MS. at Balliol College, Oxford, and pounced upon as a gem by two such excellent judges of poetry as Mr. Alfred W. Pollard and Mr. F. Sidgwick:--
"_Can I not sing but Hoy!
The jolly shepherd made so much joy!_
The shepherd upon a hill he sat,
He had on him his tabard[1] and his hat,
His tar-box, his pipe and his flagat;[2]
And his name was called jolly, jolly Wat,
For he was a good herd's-boy,
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy."
"The shepherd upon a hill was laid
His dog to his girdle was tayd,
He had not slept but a little braid
But _Gloria in excelsis_ was to him said
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy.
"The shepherd on a hill he stood,
Round about him his sheep they yode,[3]
He put his hand under his hood,
He saw a star as red as blood.
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy."
The shepherd of course follows the star, and it guides him to the inn and the Holy Family, whom he worships:--
"'Now farewell, mine own herdsman Wat!'
'Yea, 'fore God, Lady, even so I hat:[4]
Lull well Jesu in thy lap,
And farewell Joseph, with thy round cap!'
Ut hoy!
For in his pipe he made so much joy."
[1] Short coat.
[2] Flagon.
[3] Went.
[4] Am hight, called.
Set beside this the following Burgundian carol (of which, by the way, you will find a charming translation in Lady Lindsay's _A Christmas Posy_):--
"Giullo, pran ton tamborin;
Toi, pran tai fleute, Robin.
Au son de ces instruman--
Turelurelu, patapatapan--
Au son de ces instruman
Je diron Noel gaiman.
"C'eto lai mode autrefoi
De loue le Roi de Roi;
Au son de ces instruman--
Turelurelu, patapatapan--
Au son de ces instruman
Ai nos an fau faire autan.
"Ce jor le Diale at ai cu,
Randons an graice ai Jesu;
Au son de ces instruman--
Turelurelu, patapatapar--
Au son de ces instruman
Fezon lai nique ai Satan.
"L'homme et Dei son pu d'aicor
Que lai fleute et le tambor.
Au son de ces instruman--
Turelurelu, patapatapan--
Au son de ces instruman
Chanton, danson, santons-an!"
To set either of these delightful ditties alongside of the richly-jewelled lyrics of Keats or of Swinburne, of Victor Hugo or of Gautier would be to sin against congruity, even as to sing them in church would be to sin against congruity.
There was one carol, however, which I was fain to set alongside of 'The Seven Virgins,' and omitted only through a scruple in tampering with two or three stanzas, necessary to the sense, but in all discoverable versions so barbarously uncouth as to be quite inadmissible. And yet 'The Holy Well' is one of the loveliest carols in the language, and I cannot give up hope of including it some day: for the peccant verses as they stand are quite evidently corrupt, and if their originals could be found I have no doubt that the result would be flawless beauty. Can any of my readers help to restore them?
'The Holy Well,' according to Mr. Bramley, is traditional in Derbyshire. 'Joshua Sylvester,' in _A Garland of Christmas Carols_, published in 1861, took his version from an eighteenth-century broadsheet printed at Gravesend, and in broadsheet form it seems to have been fairly common. I choose the version given by Mr. A. H. Bullen in his _Carols and Poems_, published by Nimmo in 1886:--
"As it fell out one May morning,
And upon one bright holiday,
Sweet Jesus asked of His dear mother
If He might go to play.
"To play, to play, sweet Jesus shall go,
And to play pray get you gone;
And let me hear of no complaint
At night when you come home.
"Sweet Jesus went down to yonder town,
As far as the Holy Well,
And there did see as fine children,
As any tongue can tell.
"He said, God bless you every one,
And your bodies Christ save and see:
Little children shall I play with you,
And you shall play with Me?"
So far we have plain sailing; but now, with the children's answer, comes the trouble:--
"But they made answer to Him, No:
They were lords' and ladies sons;
And He, the meanest of them all,
Was but a maiden's child, born in an ox's stall.
"Sweet Jesus turn'd Him around,
And He neither laughed nor smiled,
But the tears came trickling from His eyes
Like water from the skies."
A glance, as I contend, shows these lines to be corrupt: they were not written, that is to say, in the above form, which violates metre and rhyme-arrangement, and is both uncouth and redundant. The carol now picks up its pace again and proceeds--
"Sweet Jesus turned Him round about,
To His mother's dear home went He,
And said, I have been in yonder town
As far as you can see."
Some versions give 'As after you can see.' Jesus repeats the story precisely as it has been told, with His request to the children and their rude answer. Whereupon Mary says:--
"Though You are but a maiden's child,
Born in an ox's stall,
Though art the Christ, the King of Heaven,
And the Saviour of them all.
"Sweet Jesus, go down to yonder town
As far as the Holy Well,
And take away those sinful souls
And dip them deep in Hell.
"Nay, nay, sweet Jesus said,
Nay, nay, that may not be;
There are too many sinful souls
Crying out for the help of Me."
On this exquisite close the carol might well end, as Mr. Bullen with his usual fine judgment makes it end. But the old copies give an additional stanza, and a very silly one:--
"O then spoke the angel Gabriel,
Upon one good St. Stephen,
Although you're but a maiden's child,
You are the King of Heaven."
'One good St. Stephen' is obviously an ignorant misprint for 'one good set steven,' _i.e._ 'appointed time,' and so it appears in Mr. Bramley's book, and in Mr. W. H. Husk's _Songs of the Nativity_. But the stanza is foolish, and may be dismissed. To amend the text of the children's answer is less legitimate. Yet one feels sorely tempted; and I cannot help suggesting that the original ran something like this:--
"But they made answer to Him, No:
They were lords and ladies all;
And He was but a maiden's child,
Born in an ox's stall.
"Sweet Jesus turned Him round about,
And He neither laughed nor smiled,
But the tears came trickling from His eyes
To be but a maiden's child. . . ."
I plead for this suggestion: (1) that it adds nothing to the text and changes but one word; (2) that it removes nothing but the weak and unrhyming 'Like water from the skies'; and (3) that it leads directly to Mary's answer:--
"Though you are but a maiden's child,
Born in an ox's stall," &c.
But it were better to hunt out the original than to accept any emendation; and I hope you will agree that the original of this little poem, so childlike and delicately true, is worth hunting for. "The carol," says Mr. Husk, "has a widely-spread popularity. On a broadside copy printed at Gravesend,"--presumably the one from which 'Joshua Sylvester' took his version--"there is placed immediately under the title a woodcut purporting to be a representation of the site of the Holy Well, Palestine; but the admiration excited thereby for the excellent good taste of the printer is too soon alas! dispelled, for between the second and third stanzas we see another woodcut representing a feather-clad-and-crowned negro seated on a barrel, smoking--a veritable ornament of a tobacconists' paper."
One of the finest carols written of late years is Miss Louise Imogen Guiney's _Tryste Noel_. It is deliberately archaic, and (for reasons hinted at above) I take deliberate archaism to be about the worst fault a modern carol-writer can commit. Also it lacks the fine simplicity of Christina Rossetti's _In the bleak midwinter_. I ought to dislike it, too, for its sophisticated close. Yet its curious rhythm and curious words haunt me in spite of all prejudice:--
"The Ox he openeth wide the Doore
And from the Snowe he calls her inne;
And he hath seen her smile therefore,
Our Ladye without sinne.
Now soone from Sleepe
A Starre shall leap,
And soone arrive both King and Hinde:
_Amen, Amen_;
But O the Place cou'd I but finde!
"The Ox hath husht his Voyce and bent
Trewe eye of Pity ore the Mow;
And on his lovelie Neck, forspent,
The Blessed lays her Browe.
Around her feet
Full Warme and Sweete
His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell;
_Amen, Amen_;
But sore am I with vaine Travel!
"The Ox is Host in Juda's stall,
And Host of more than onely one,
For close she gathereth withal
Our Lorde, her little Sonne.
Glad Hinde and King
Their Gyfte may bring,
But wou'd to-night my Teares were there;
_Amen, Amen_;
Between her Bosom and His hayre!"
The days are short. I return from this Christmas ramble and find it high time to light the lamp and pull the curtains over my Cornish Window.
"The days are sad--it is the Holy tide:
The Winter morn is short, the Night is long;
So let the lifeless Hours be glorified
With deathless thoughts and echo'd in sweet song:
And through the sunset of this purple cup
They will resume the roses of their prime,
And the old Dead will hear us and wake up,
Pass with dim smiles and make our hearts sublime!"
Friends dead and friends afar--I remember you at this season, here with the log on the hearth, the holly around the picture frames and the wine at my elbow. One glass in especial to you, my old friend in the far north!--
CHRISTMAS EVE
"Friend, old friend in the manse by the fireside sitting,
Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log.
You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog--
"Silent here in the south sit I, and, leaning,
One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand,
Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
Rather I read in the shadows and understand.
"Dear, kind, she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:
Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
Lit up a name in the leathern dusk of the shelves.
"Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
Yet there is one gives back to the winter grate
Gold of a sunset flooding a college building,
Gold of an hour I waited--as now I wait--
"For a light step on the stair, a girl's low laughter,
Rustle of silks, shy knuckles tapping the oak,
Dinner and mirth upsetting my rooms, and, after,
Music, waltz upon waltz, till the June day broke.
"Where is her laughter now? Old tarnished covers--
You that reflect her with fresh young face unchanged--
Tell that we met, that we parted, not as lovers:
Time, chance, brought us together, and these estranged.
"Loyal we were to the mood of the moment granted,
Bruised not its bloom, but danced on the wave of its joy;
Passion, wisdom, fell back like a wall enchanted
Ringing a floor for us both--Heaven for the boy!
"Where is she now? Regretted not, though departed,
Blessings attend and follow her all her days!
--Look to your hound: he dreams of the hares he started,
Whines, and awakes, and stretches his limbs to the blaze.
"Far old friend in the manse, by the grey ash peeling
Flake by flake from the heat in the Yule log's core,
Look past the woman you love--On wall and ceiling
Climbs not a trellis of roses--and ghosts--o' yore?
"Thoughts, thoughts! Whistle them back like hounds returning--
Mark how her needles pause at a sound upstairs.
Time for bed, and to leave the log's heart burning!
Give ye good-night, but first thank God in your prayers!"
[THE END]
Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch's Essays: From a Cornish Window
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