style="font-size:15px;"> With regard to the approximate dates of the airs we give, all that we can say is that such as are in the ancient modes are not later than the reign of James I. How much more ancient they may be, it is impossible to determine. The melodies of the Handel and Arne, and then those of the Hooke and Dibden periods can be at once detected. Some few of the melodies we have taken down were certainly originally in one or other of the ancient modes, but in process of time have been subjected to alteration, to accommodate them to the modern ear.
Although some seventy per cent. of the airs noted from the very old singers are modal, we have not given too many of these, as the popular taste is not sufficiently educated to relish them. But such as can not perceive the beauty of the tunes that go, for instance, to "The Trees they are so high," in the rarely used Phrygian mode, "Flora, the Flower of the West," in F, "Henry Martyn," "On a May morning so early," etc., are indeed to be pitied. We have not been able to give those lengthy ballads, such as, "The Outlandish Knight," "The Brown Girl," "By the Banks of Green Willow," "The Baffled Knight," "William and the Shepherd's Daughter," "Captain Ward," "The Golden Glove," "The Maid and the Box," "The Death of Queen Jane," etc., which are too long to be sung and listened to with patience now-a-days.
In some instances we have set other words to a ballad tune, as XXXVI. One of my old singers said to me concerning this ballad, "When my little sister, now dead, these twenty years, was a child, and went up from Exeter to London with me in a carrier's van, Lor bless'y, afore railways was invented, I mind that she sang this here ballet in the waggon all the way up. We was three days about it. She was then about six years old." The ballet, by the way, is not particularly choice and suitable for a child or a grown-up girl to sing, according to our ideas.
In giving these songs to the public, we have been scrupulous to publish the airs precisely as noted down, choosing among the variants those which commended themselves to us as the soundest. But we have not been so careful with regard to the words. These are sometimes in a fragmentary condition, or are coarse, contain double entendres, or else are mere doggerel. Accordingly, we have re-written the songs wherever it was not possible to present them in their original form. This was done by the Scotch. Many an old ballad is gross, and many a broadside is common-place. Songs that were thought witty in the Caroline and early Georgian epochs, are no longer sufferable; and broadside ballads are in many cases vulgarised versions of earlier ballads that have been lost in their original forms.
What a change has taken place in public feeling with regard to decency may be judged by the way in which Addison speaks of D'Urfey in "The Guardian," 1713, No. 29. "A judicious author, some years since, published a collection of sonnets, which he very successfully called "Laugh and be Fat; or, Pills to purge Melancholy." I can not sufficiently admire the facetious title of these volumes, and must censure the world of ingratitude, while they are so negligent in rewarding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. D'Urfey, who was so large a contributor to this treatise, and to whose numerous productions so many rural squires in the remotest parts of the island are obliged for the dignity and state which corpulency gives them." And again, in No. 67, "I must heartily recommend to all young ladies, my disciples, the case of my old friend, who has often made their grand-mothers merry, and whose sonnets have perhaps lulled to sleep many a present toast, when she lay in her cradle." Why—D'Urfey's Pills must now-a-days be kept under lock and key. The fun so commended by the pious and grave Addison is filth of the most revolting description. And yet the grand-mothers of the ladies of his day, according to him, were wont to sing them over the cradles of their grand-children!
So when a "Collection of Old Ballads" was published 1723–5, the Editor, after giving a series of historical and serious pieces, in a later volume apologises to the ladies for their gravity, and for their special delectation furnishes an appendix of songs that are simply dirty.
A good many of the ditties in favour with our rural song-men, are, it must be admitted, of the D'Urfey type; and what is more some of the very worst are sung to the daintiest early melodies. Two courses lay open to us. One that adopted Dr. Barrett and Mr. Kidson to print the words exactly as given on the broadsides, with asterisks for the undesirable stanzas. But this would simply have killed the songs. No one would care to warble what was fragmentary. On the other hand, there is that adopted by the Scotch and Irish collectors, which consists in re-writing or modifying where objectionable or common-place. This has been the course we have pursued. It seemed a pity to consign the lovely old melodies to the antiquary's library, by publishing them with words which were fatal to the success of the songs in the drawing room or the concert hall. We resolved where the old words were good, or tolerable, to retain them. Where bad, to re-write, adhering as closely as possible to the original. Where the songs were mere broadside ballads, we have had no scruple in doing this, for we give reference to the press-mark in the British Museum, where the original text may be found. But the broadside itself is often a debased form of a fine early ballad. The broadside publishers were wont to pay a shilling to any ballad mongers who could furnish them with a new ditty. These men were destitute of the poetic faculty and illiterate, and they contented themselves with taking old ballads and recomposing them, so as to give to them a semblance of novelty, sufficient to qualify their authors to claim the usual fee. Here are some lines by one of the fraternity:
"I'm Billy Nuts wot always cuts
A dash through all the town, sir,
With lit'rary men, my clever pen
In grammar gains renown, sir,
In song, and catch, and ditty.
And then to each, with dying speech
I do excite their pity.
So all agree to welcome me,
With drum and fife and whiols, (sic for viols) A cause my name stands fast in fame, The Bard of Seven Dials." (B.M., 11,621, K. 4)
Our object was not to furnish a volume for consultation by the musical antiquary alone, but to resuscitate, and to popularise the traditional music of the English people. As, however, to the antiquary everything is important, exactly as obtained, uncleansed from rust and unpolished, I have deposited a copy of the songs and ballads with their music exactly as taken down, for reference, in the Municipal Free Library, Plymouth.
The Rev. H.F. Sheppard, who worked with me for twelve years in rescuing these old songs, and in bringing them before the public, is now no more. A new edition has been called for, and in this some exclusions and some additions have been made. We do not think that the pieces we have removed are not good, but that we are able to supply their places with others that are better. Mr. Sheppard entertained a very strong objection to arranging any song he had not himself "pricked down" from the lips of the singers, and as Mr. Bussell had noted down hundreds as well, these, for the most part, had to be laid on one side. Mr. Sheppard was, doubtless, right in his assertion, that unless he had himself heard the song sung, he could not catch its special character, and so render it justly.
Acting on the advice of Mr. Cecil Sharp, of the Conservatoire, Hampstead, who has kindly undertaken the musical editorship of this edition, I have introduced several interesting ballads and songs that, for the reason above given, were excluded from the first. Mr. F. Kidson has kindly afforded us information relative to such songs as he has come across in Yorkshire.
In conclusion I give a few particulars relative to the Rev. H.F. Sheppard, my fellow-worker, and Mr. D. Radford, the instigator of the collection, both of whom have passed away.
Henry Fleetwood Sheppard was a graduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and had been appointed Travelling Batchelor to the University. Through the whole of his clerical career he was closely associated with sacred music, especially with Plain-song, of which he was an enthusiastic admirer. As precentor of the Doncaster Choral Union from 1864 to 1884, he became the pioneer of improved church music in that part of Yorkshire. In the year 1868 he was presented
