is a lost art for a very simple reason. Which is, that weare all, nowadays, too sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought to
receive emotions directly, without self-consciousness. If we are
wounded, we are no longer able to sing a song about a clean sword, and a
great cause, and a black enemy, and a waving flag. No--we must needs go
into long descriptions of our pain, and abstruse calculations about its
effect upon our souls.
It is not "we" who have changed. It is life that has changed. "We" are
still men, with the same legs, arms and eyes as our ancestors. But life
has so twisted things that there are no longer any clean swords nor
great causes, nor black enemies. And the flags do not know which way to
flutter, so contrary are the winds of the modern world. All is doubt.
And doubt's colour is grey.
Grey is no colour for a ballad. Ballads are woven from stuff of
primitive hue … the red blood gushing, the gold sun shining, the green
grass growing, the white snow falling. Never will you find grey in a
ballad. You will find the black of the night and the raven's wing,
and the silver of a thousand stars. You will find the blue of many
summer skies. But you will not find grey.
III
That is why ballad-making is a lost art. Or almost a lost art. For even
in this odd and musty world of phantoms which we call the twentieth
century, there are times when a man finds himself in a certain place at
a certain hour and something happens to him which takes him out of
himself. And a song is born, simply and sweetly, a song which other
men can sing, for all time, and forget themselves.
Such a song was once written by a master at my old school, Marlborough.
He was a Scot. But he loved Marlborough with the sort of love which the
old ballad-mongers must have had-the sort of love which takes a man on
wings, far from his foolish little body.
He wrote a song called "The Scotch Marlburian".
Here it is:--
Oh Marlborough, she's a toun o' touns
We will say that and mair,
We that ha' walked alang her douns
And snuffed her Wiltshire air.
A weary way ye'll hae to tramp
Afore ye match the green
O' Savernake and Barbery Camp
And a' that lies atween!
The infinite beauty of that phrase … "and a' that lies atween"! The
infinite beauty as it is roared by seven hundred young throats in
unison! For in that phrase there drifts a whole pageant of boyhood--the
sound of cheers as a race is run on a stormy day in March, the tolling
of the Chapel bell, the crack of ball against bat, the sighs of sleep
in a long white dormitory.
But you may say "What is all this to me? I wasn't at Maryborough. I
don't like schoolboys … they strike me as dirty, noisy, and usually
foul-minded. Why should I go into raptures about such a song, which
seems only to express a highly debatable approval of a certain method of
education?"
If you are asking yourself that sort of question, you are obviously in
very grave need of the tonic properties of this book. For after you have
read it, you will wonder why you ever asked it.
IV
I go back and back to the same point, at the risk of boring you to
distraction. For it is a point which has much more "to" it than the
average modern will care to admit, unless he is forced to do so.
You remember the generalization about the eyes … how they used to look
out, but now look in? Well, listen to this. …
I'm feeling blue, I don't know what to do, 'Cos I love you And you don't love me.
The above masterpiece is, as far as I am aware, imaginary. But it
represents a sort of reductio ad absurdum of thousands of lyrics which have been echoing over the post-war world. Nearly all these lyrics are melancholy, with the profound and primitive melancholy of the negro swamp, and they are all violently egotistical.
Now this, in the long run, is an influence of far greater evil than one
would be inclined at first to admit. If countless young men, every
night, are to clasp countless young women to their bosoms, and rotate
over countless dancing-floors, muttering "I'm feeling blue … I don't know what to do", it is not unreasonable to suppose that they will subconsciously apply some of the lyric's mournful egotism to themselves.
Anybody who has even a nodding acquaintance with modern psychological
science will be aware of the significance of "conditioning", as applied
to the human temperament. The late M. Coué "conditioned" people into
happiness by making them repeat, over and over again, the phrase "Every
day in every way I grow better and better and better."
The
