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XXVII.—English Songs on the Night Visit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Traces of the aube in English and Scottish literature are to be found in a few titles and a few fragments or adaptations of the type. But the aube, which deals with the parting of lovers at dawn, seems to me to represent only one group in a large body of songs that picture the various phases of a lover's secret visit to his lady at night. No such number of these related songs, either medieval or modern, is to be found in England as on the Continent, but enough material survives in one form or another to suggest their main conventions.
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References
1 See Crawley, The Mystic Rose, pp. 215-16, 219, 328, 332; Macculloch, The Childhood of Fiction, 335-36, and references given there.
2 See Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 131-32; 11 Notes and Queries, i, 66, 176-77.
3 See Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, p. 116, for the relation of a man to the clan of his wife until a child is born, and p. 135, n. 1, for the husband's secret visit to his wife for a year among the Circassians.
4 See Antiquary, v, 41-50; Potter, pp. 131-32; Gomme, Traditional Games, i, 292-93; Studies in Philology, xvii, 38; Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, i, 109-10 (in the Vosges).
5 See Antiquary, v, 142; Bolte, Alemannia, xiv, 189-93 (a sixteenth century song of a group of German maidens demanding that a girl forsake her husband or return the bride-ball to the group). Compare related customs in Folk-Lore, xxvii, 270-274, and Potter, pp. 131-32.
6 Miss Broadwood refers to Ernst Buss, “Volksjustiz der Nachtbuben in Kanton Bern,” Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, x, 162-66. See Alemannia, iv, 1-12, for an account of the modern kiltgang by Rochholz, who prints the songs, and also for an eighteenth century account.
7 See Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 134-35; for analogous customs among Asiatic people, see pp. 135-36.
8 Ibid., pp. 133, 136-37; Moore, Marriage Customs and Ceremonies (1814), p. 35; Stiles, Bundling; its Origin, Progress and Decline in America.
9 Only a single English fragment so far as I know suggests the custom of a visit from a girl to her lover on Valentine night—the song of the mad Ophelia in Hamlet, iv, 5:
Tomorrow is S. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,
And I a Maid at your Window, to be your Valentine.
See, however, Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen âge, pp. 146, 150, n., for the girl as the visitant in Italian songs.
10 LI. 2640-80; Roman de la Rose, ll. 2516-54.
11 Société des anciens testes français, No. xxx.
12 See Herd's version, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, ii, 208, and a North Carolina version collected by Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, pp. 128-29. For foreign examples see Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, pp. 149-50; Victor Smith, Romania, vii, 56-58; Erk and Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort, Vol. ii, No. 813.
13 See Hand-lists of Printers, 1501-1556, Bibliographical Society, p. 25.
14 Arber's Transcript, ii, 209.
15 Roxburghe Ballads, Ballad Society, vi, 202-3. See Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 504-6, for the vogue of the air.
16 Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 209-11.
17 English Ballads, 1651-5, British Museum, C 20 f. 14. See Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 66; ix, 678.
18 Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 213.
19 i, 324-25. See Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 609-11, for the vogue of this song. It also occurs in Vocal Miscellany (1738), i, 287-88.
20 Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 207.
21 Pp. 363-64.
22 A similar dialogue occurs twice in “Glasgerion” (No. 67), where the assignation is followed by an account of how the lady is visited by the lover's servant as well as by the lover himself. In “The Lass of Roch Royal” (No. 76) the lady, seeking admittance at the lover's castle, uses the same phraseology, in most versions with emphasis on the rain and cold. See also No. 249.
23 See Dick, Songs of Burns, pp. 128-29, 399.
24 See Hecht, Songs from Herd's Manuscripts, pp. 149-52, 300; and Herd, Scottish Songs, ii, 167 ff.
25 See Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i, 18; vi, 19.
26 I have made no systematic search for foreign versions. What I offer is merely illustrative.
27 See Tiersot, Chansons populaires recueilliés dans les Alpes françaises, pp. 246-247. In Romania, vii, 53-54, “Vieilles chansons rec. en Velay et en Forez,” Victor Smith gives a variant of this song and refers to F. Mihel, Le Pays basque, p. 313; Caselli, Chants pop. de l'Italie, p. 199; and Ferraro, Canti Monferrni, p. 84.
28 Tiersot, pp. 272-73. See Victor Smith, Romania, vii, 54, for a variant.
29 See Scheffler, Französische Volksdichtung und Sage, i, 164, 170-71, 179-183, 191, 193, and the authorities cited by Scheffler.
30 Französische Volksdichtung und Sage, i, 170,-71.
31 Folk-Lore Record, iii, 261-66.
32 See Erk and Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort, Nos. 469, 797-830; Buss, “Volksjustiz der Nachtbuben in Kanton Bern,” Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, x, 162-66; Rochholz, Alemannia, iv, 1-10; etc.
33 Erk and Böhme, No. 469; compare “Undo your dore” printed by Wynken de Worde.
34 See Erk and Böhme, Nos. 813, 816, 817, 820, 821, 822.
35 See Nos. 818, 819, 820, 824, 830.
36 Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, iii, 219.
37 Arber's Transcript, ii, 226.
38 Shirburn Ballads, ed. Clark, No. lxi; Arber's Transcript, iii, 3.
39 Chappell, Old English Popular Music (ed. Wooldridge, 1893), i, 146-147.
40 Edited by Mitchell, Scottish Text Society, pp. 132-36.
41 Arber's Transcript, ii, 485. See 2 N. and Q., xii, 22, for a reference to “Be wise; come away from thy lady so gay.”
42 See Chappell, Old English Popular Music (1893), i, 146-47, for the references.
43 A variant of three lines of this stanza appears in The Woman's Prize, i, 3.
44 A stanza from a moralization preserved in Brit. Mus. ms. 17. B. xlii of King's Library (quoted in Ritson's Ancient Songs and Ballads, 1877, p. lxviii) may reflect the “calling back” stanza of this or more probably of some kindred song:
Com home agayne,
Com home agayne,
Mi nowne swet hart, com home agayne;
Ye are gone astray
Out of your way,
There[for, swet hart,] come home agayne.
45 Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 205-6.
46 Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 207.
47 Journal of the Folk-Song Society, iii, 79-80. On pp. 78-79 Hammond gives a fragmentary version with a kindred first stanza but with a shift to the motive of the deception of the parents.
48 Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i, 269.
49 Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs of Scotland, i, 224-26. A very similar dialogue of four stanzas hut with phraseology differing throughout is found in Vocal Miscellany (1738), ii, 141, beginning,
Awake, thou fairest thing in Nature,
How can you sleep when Day does break?
This dialogue also contains lines similar to lines just cited in a Sussex song:
Go, tell your Passion to some other,
Or whisper softly in my Ear.
See Vocal Miscellany, ii, 3-4, for a broad burlesque of songs of the type.
50 iv, 285.
51 One Hundred English Folksongs, pp. 106-7.
52 See Erk and Böhme, Deutscher Liederhort, No, 814a, second form.
53 Ibid., No. 820.
54 See Chansons des Alpes françaises, pp. 238-39.
55 The conventions of the song on the night visit would very naturally be carried on by the serenade. See, for example, Tiersot, pp. 241-2, 249, 251, 252.
56 Strange Survivals (1894), pp. 203-6.
57 Two correspondents in Notes and Queries (First Series, vi, 75, 153) recall fragments of this song, but with the opening “O go from the window.” In 1852 a correspondent recorded the story much as it was given to Baring-Gould (ibid., p. 227).
58 First Series, xii, 498.
59 Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland, ii, 221; 6 N. and Q., xii, 224.
60 “See Bolte, Die Singspiele der eng. Komödianten, p. 45, note. Bolte refers to Erk and Irmer, Die deutschen Volkslieder, l, 6, Nos. 49 and 50, and Berggreen, Folksange og Melodier, 5, No. 73, for the German; Berggreen, 11, 166, No. 28, for the Danish; ibid., 2, No. 27 a-c, for the Norwegian; and Arwidsson, Svenska Fornsånger, 3, 155, No. 62, for the Swedish. He cites also ”eine übereinstimmende Prosaerzählung“ in Ruckard, Die lachende Schule, 1725 and 1736, No. 126.
61 Die deutschen Volkslieder, Leipzig, 1843.
62 Recueil de motets, ii, 106, from ms. 12786 of Bibl. Nat. Fran. See Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, p. 143, for a fragment of a Greek poem from Athenaeua in which, a woman wakes her lover at dawn and begs him to leave before the husband's return; and pp. 148-49, for a pure dialogue in Italian—from a fourteenth century manuscript—beginning “Lèvati dalla porta” and containing a warning against the husband, who is asleep.
63 Französische Volksdichtung und Sage, i, 181-83. Scheffler gives the song from Beaurepaire. See also p. 180.
64 For the aube and its conventions see Schlaeger, Studien über das Tagelied; de Gruyter, Das deutsche Tagelied; Fränkel, Shakespeare und das Tagelied; Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, pp. 61-101, 141-45; Gaston Paris, Journal des Savants, 1892, pp. 161-67; Bédier, Revue des deux Mondes, 1906, xxxi, 419-24; etc.
65 See Weber, Metrical Romances, i, 122 (ll. 2901-6). This reference was given to me by Miss Emma F. Pope.
66 Book iii, ll. 1415-1533 and 1695-1712. Pointed out by Padelford, Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., ii, 444.
67 See Bartsch, Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen, No. 38.
68 Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland, i, 193.
69 See Flügel, Neuenglisches Lesebuch, pp. 159-60, 444; from Brit. Mus. Add. ms. 5465.
70 Ed. Mitchell, Scottish Text Society, pp. 192-95.
71 Poems of Montgomerie, ed. Cranstoun, Scottish Text Society, pp. 193-94, 371-72.
72 There may be an allusion to the song in the sixteenth century “Tayis Bank!” (Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland, i, 171):
73 Ancient Songs and Ballads, ed. Hazlitt, p. lxvii. Ritson does not indicate his source, but Chappell, Old English Popular Music (1893), i, 87, refers this version to the New Academy of Complements, 1649, and Merry Drollery Complete, 1661.
74 See Chappell, i, 86-89, for these and other references to hunt's-up. Padelford, Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., ii, 444, connects with the aube tradition the little song from Harleian ms. 2252 beginning “Mornyng, mornyng.” Coverdale's “Wake up, wake up, ye Christen men” is apparently based on a German moralization of the aube of the watcher type (Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany, p. 15). A moral ballad “a Ryse and wake,” which was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1557, is preserved in Ashmole ms. 48, ed. Wright, Songs and Ballads (Roxburghe Club), No. 52 (cf. Rollins, Mod. Lang. Notes, xxxiv, 346). Similar are Nos. 30 and 33 in the same collection—“Awak, all fethfull harttes, awake” and “Awak, rych men, for shame, and here.” Other early entries on the Register are “Awake awake o thow man mortall,” Sept. 4, 1564, and “awake out of your slumbre,” 1568-9 (Transcript, i, 74, 262, 382). See Wyt and Science (Shakespeare Society), pp. 89-92, and Collier, Stationers' Register (Shakespeare Society), i, 186-87, for a song of the type. In Shirowrn Ballads, ed. Clark, No. xliv, there is a ballad entitled “Rise up, my darling,” intended for the bridal morn, which introduces dawn, the crowing of the cock, and the singing of birds. It is sung to the tune of “The Bride's Goodmorrow,” found in Roxbwrghe Ballads, i, 62-64. The morning serenade is represented also in a moralized ballad (Shirburn Ballads, No. xliii.) sung to the tune “Awake, awake, O England.”
75 Journal des Savants, 1892, p. 163. Several writers had already called attention to the aube features of Romeo and Juliet. Victor Smith, Romania, vii, 57, says that Shakspere's passage “avait un précédent dans une vieille chanson français où l'amant nocturne dit à son amie que vient de frapper le chant de l'alouette,
Il n'est mie jours,
Saverouze au cors gent:
Si ment, amours,
L'alowette nos ment. “
76 To see how closely Shakspere's conventions correspond to those of the French aube, it is necessary only to read Gaston Paris's analysis of the aube, loc. cit., pp. 162-63. See also Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, pp. 68-69; and Raynaud, Recueil de Motets, ii, 4-5, for the refrains “Est it jors?” and “L'abe c'apeirt au jor.” De Gruyter, Das deutsche Tagelied, pp. 28-29, calls attention to the use of allusions to dawn in the minnesingers; see pp. 67-59 and 101-2 for later songs. Fränkel in Shakespeare und das Tagelied tries to trace Shakspere's details to German songs.
77 Jeanroy (p. 69, n. 2) cites the motive from so remote a quarter as an ancient Chinese source. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, ii, 34, gives a traveler's account (about 1830) of a wedding in Ireland at which a marriage song was sung by a chorus—literally translated:
It is not day, nor yet day,
It is not day, nor yet morning;
It is not day, nor yet day,
For the moon is shining brightly.
78 See Furnivall, Laneham's Letter, pp. cxxviii, cxxxi (and also Anglia, xii, 262-65) for two songs from Royal MS. Appendix 58, “The lytyll prety nyghtyne gale” and “By a bancke as I lay.” Both are mentioned by Moros of The Longer thou Livest in his medley of popular songs. “By a bancke as I lay” is included in Laneham's list of Captain Cox's popular songs, and is said to have been a favorite earlier with Henry VIII (Furnivall, cxxxi-cxxxii).
Among the popular times to which the Bishop of Ossory adapted religious songs in the middle of the fourteenth century (see 1 N. and Q., ii, 385) one which was used twice is
Do. Do. nightyngale syng ful myrie
Shal y nevre for zyn love lengre karie.
(See also in the same list “Hey how ze chevaldoures woke al nyght.”) See Marsh, “The Flower and the Leaf,” Modern Philology, iv, 40-43, for the prevalence of the nightingale in love poetry.
79 Muses Library, i, 22. In 1612 the lyric appeared in Gibbons' First Set of Madrigals and in Dowland's Pilgrim's Solace, in the last with an additional stanza. It was used as the opening of some versions of Donne's related lyric, “‘Tis true ‘tis day. What though it be?” See Fellowes, English Madrigal Verse, pp. 99, 263, 395, 443, 616-17. A parting song without the conventional features of the aube except in the refrain “For now the morning draweth near” or “now day is near,” is found in the opening song of Attey's First Book of Airs, 1622. “Open the door, who's there within” in Peerson's Private Music, 1620, is a song of the lover's plea for entrance, sophisticated like Donne's lyric, but with the conventional phrase of the opening repeated in “I dare not ope the door,” and with a closing line “Therefore depart, you shall not kiss me.” Campion's treatment of the motive, “Shall I come, sweet love, to thee, When the evening beams are set?” closes with a reference to the lover's freezing without but has even lese of the conventional phraseology. See Fellowes, op. cit., pp. 158, 305, 357.
80 In one of Meleager's “Epigrams” of the aube type the cock is the watcher and wakes the lovers too soon (Fränkel, Shakespeare und das Tagelied, p. 44, n. 4). See de Gruyter, Das deutsche Tagelied, p. 143 and note, for a Slavic poem in which the lover gives the cock wheat that it may not crow too soon, and for a reference to a similar Hungarian folk song.
81 Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland, i, 193.
82 Herd's. See Child, No. 248.
83 I N. and Q., xii, 227.
84 Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, p. 128.
85 See Anglia, xii, 596, n. 3.
86 First Series, vi, 227. See also Sixth Series, xii, 224.
87 See Child, No. 248. Child discusses English variants of the song and refers to related foreign songs. I have had to quote the stanzas on the authority of Child and from the second form of Herd as given by Child. Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, p. 731, gives a variant of Herd's early form in five stanzas from the second edition of Vocal Music or the Songster's Companion, ii, 36 (first edition in 1770, second in 1772), and refers to various contemporaneous appearances of the words and the air in London. Unaware of the 1769 edition of Herd, Chappell considered the tune and words English. The air was published in Edinburgh in Stewart's Collection of Scots Songs, 1772 (Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, pp. 54-65). Child, quoting Chappell in part, does not take up the problem of the relation of the various versions and airs in the earliest collections. Possibly the song appeared in some printed form earlier than any so far noted, but the other versions cited here make it clear that it was an old traditional song not greatly modified.
88 English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, pp. 128-29.
89 All on one summer's evening when the fever were a-dawning I heard a fair maid make a mourn.
Such an opening was used by old singers with almost any theme of song or ballad, but that a long standing tradition is represented in its use with “The Grey Cock” is indicated by the fact that “Willie's Fatal Visit” (Child, No. 255) opens with stanzas from a form of “The Grey Cock” which begins,
'Twas on an evening fair I went to take the air,
I heard a maid making her moan.
There is at least no possibility of borrowing in this case.
90 Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909), p. 219.
91 See also No. 77 A, stanza 14; F, 7; G, 3. The first and last mention two cocks of different colors. See Cromek, Nithsdale and Galloway Songs, p. 94, for a refrain “O dinna leave me, lad, till our twa cocks craw” introduced into “The Bridal Sark.”
92 Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, pp. 66-70. See also Gaston Paris, Journal des Savants, 1892, pp. 161-64, and for German songs using birds incidentally, de Gruyter, Das deutsche Tagelied, pp. 29, 30, 102-3. Jeanroy and Gaston Paris (pp. 165-167) see a natural development from the watcher independent of the lovers, who simply wakes them when in the pursuit of his duty he sounds his “reveille,” to one who is their accomplice, and finally to a faithful companion of the lover who takes the rôle of watcher. It is a question, I think, whether this faithful companion may not belong to an older and more primitive tradition than the watcher on the walls of the feudal castle, and represent the lover's friend and accomplice in the folk custom of the night visit.
93 Ed. Herrtage, E. E. T. S., pp. 174-77.
94 ii, 50-61.
95 Child, No. 96. See Child's remarks on birds as posts in ballads, and Napier, “Old Ballad Folk-Lore,” Folk-Lore Record, ii, 107-9, for other instances.
96 Sloane 2593. See Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., ii, 444-45. Padelford conjectures from its form that this song is of considerable antiquity.
97 “Nonne Preestes Tale,” ll. 39-44.
98 A volume could be written on the cock in religion and especially in connection with the household. The ancient comos dressed at times as cocks (Flickinger, The Greek Theater and its Drama, p. 38). Cock dances are represented on Greek vases (Dieterich, Pulcinella, pp. 237 ff.), and traces of similar customs are found in modern mummers' plays (Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, xi, 33) and children's games (Gomme, Traditional Games, i, 72-74). The cock was indispensable at Shrovetide and figured in other festivals (Studies in Philology, xvii, 39; Folk-Lore, xiv, 186; 4 N. and Q., xii, 464-65). He represented the corn spirit (Frazer, Spirits of Corn, ii, 276-78). In both ancient and modern times he was sacrificed for health (4 N. and Q., ii, 505-6; Folk-Lore, xiii, 56) and omens were taken from him (4 N. and Q., iii, 130-31, 432. See index to The Golden Bough). In general his function was protective (1 N. and Q., iii, 404; Folk-Lore, x, 262-63; 10 N and Q., ix, 486). He was significant in marriage (Blakeborough, Yorkshire Wit, p. 93; Romania, ix, 554). Apparently he was the guardian of the home and at a later period of its morality (3 N. and Q., xiii, 478; Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, trans. Stallybrass, pp. 670-71, 1485). To extend these references see Folk-Lore or Revue des traditions populaires, passim.
99 See Wright, History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments, pp. 261-62, 273-75, for passages from medieval romances and fabliaux which show that men had access to the bed-chambers of ladies, where they conducted themselves with easy familiarity.