Why follow the church-path, why steal you this way? |
When I began collecting West Country ballads and their tunes, I found that some of the most exquisite melodies were coupled to either foul or silly words. I made no scruple in such a case to write fresh words to the traditional tune, so as to save the latter from extinction. It may be remembered how that Lady Anne Barnard by this means rescued the tune of "Auld Robin Gray" from being lost for ever, because it was, as she heard it, knitted to filthy words. Mrs. Alison Cockburn wrote the words of "Flowers of the Forest" at the request of an old man who played to her the air of a forgotten ballad of the name.[1] Robert Burns was also the means of rescuing some of the finest Scottish melodies from extinction, which, but for him would have been dragged down to forgetfulness, as being coupled to words too foul for Christian ears to hear and Christian lips to utter.
There was an incredible amount of superstition among the people in the days when I was a child, and I heard such stories of ghosts, spectral flames, pixies and goblins, that it took me a good many years to clear my head of them. It is really wonderful how that all this superstition has been dissipated in recent years. I am not, however, quite sure that it is wholly gone; only not mentioned.
I am going to fill up this chapter with reminiscences of odds and ends, as they occur to my memory. Like Philto in the Trinummus I can say:
"Multa ego possum docta dicta et quamvis facunde loqui:
Historiam veterem atque antiquam haec mea senectus sustinat."
Act II, scene 2.
- ↑ He probably pretended that the verses were forgotten, as unfit for recitation to a lady.
