POPULAR SONGS

By THE RT. HON. WALTER ELLIOT, M.P.

ALITTLE while ago I commented on the tradition of war song in America. War song does not exist in England ; it is difficult to say why, because the English genius for lyric poetry and song of every kind is one of the permanent marvels and splendours of world literature. It may be that only war on a country's own soil gives that combination of reality with imagination which is the seed of popular song, and that this withers, in a very few generations, after actual fighting has ceased. This suggestion gains strength from the fact that, in Scotland, where actual war is a much more recent memory, popular war songs and war poetry have lasted much longer. There is no better ballad, either for words or music, than

"Cope sent a challenge frae Dunbar Saying, Charlie, meet me gin ye daur, And I'll learn you the art o' war, If ye'll meet me in the morning."

With its rousing chorus, the riposte of the victors

"Hey, 7ohnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet ? Or are your drums a-beatin' yet ? If you were waukin' I wad wait To gang to the coals in the morning."

You will search the song-books in vain, however, before you come on any English war-song later than "The British Grenadiers," and even that, fine as it is, is now a regimental march first and foremost, and would no more be sung, say, in the middle of a smoking concert, than would the National Anthem.

No—if you wish to find the English popular songs you must look in other fields. There you will certainly find them ; powerful, expres- sive, vital, innumerable, sometimes with a kicle like the kick of a horse, sometimes with the rhythm and subtlety which are the master-marks of the English, either in action or in words. You will find the common Englishman singing full-throated, above all, on or about the sea ; and to a lesser extent, but still very beautifully, about the land ; nor does power entirely desert him when he wishes to sing

about factories and streets, even the streets of our modern civilisation. The songs of the music-halls, the songs of the message-boys, these are the fields from which the crop of English poetry has grown, year after year, century after century.

Is there any sea-literature in the world to compare with that which has at its fountainhead the ballad of "The Golden Vanity," with such an opening sea-line as "There once was a man stood boasting on a quay"?

You may say that this is sarnewhat above the level of the message- boys. Not much—not above the level of the sea-men at any rate— and as for message-boys, it is about a message-boy—or a cabin- boy. Furthermore, the level at which sea-songs start is a long way below the level of message-boys, as the roots of any sea-song will, show. " In Amsterdam There Lived a Maid," for example, or any you please. The flood of English sea-song runs on in full spate throughout the centuries. The high, the low, and the middle, can use it. Printable or unprintable, it pours out ; and remember, the unprintable is the indispensable foundation of the printable ; without a proper mulching of manure the roses do not blossom. Popular song is the basis of great song ; and popular song begins far down.

So suong is the English sea-tradition that even other peoples can use it Campbell, the Scotsman, can write, "Ye Mariners of England," and find all the proper chords running duly to his hand.

"As we sweep through the deep While the stormy winds do blow . .

And the battle rages loud and long, And the battle rages loud and long, And the stormy winds do blow, And the stormy winds do blow."

The essence of a fine line or a fine sentiment in popular art is, as in Homer, that you can say it again and again, drag it in, repeat it endlessly, and never weary. Campbell had learnt how to write these lines apart from, and even against, his own tradition, that of Scot- land ; which is fearful of the sea, apprehensive of the sea ; whose characteristic sea-ballad is the tragedy of Sir Patrick Spens, beginning "The King sits in Dunfermline .toun, Drinking the blude-red wine:

0 where will I get a skeelly skipper To sail this new ship of mine ?"

of which one can only say that you could not write such lines about a voyage from England ; the words would mot carry the meaning.

In our own times, the only good song--one might almost say the only good thing—even Kipling was able to write about the last war was the sea-ditty of the minesweepers: "Mines reported in the fairway, Warn all traffic and detain.

Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock and Golden Gain."

Nobody doubts that this flood is running still. Somewhere, some- how, some anonymous seafarer is fitting word to word in a chanty, or some landsman, looking out to sea, is finding his heart fill and brim over. There is no hour of the twenty-four when people are not thinking about the sea, in England.

I do not know enough about the English songs of the land to quote examples that are still growing under the surface. We all know those that have come to the top, such as "The Lincolnshire Poacher" or " It was a Lover and his Lass." I doubt if anyone knows what is coming along now—what loan from American swing, what echo of what old tune, what lewd couplet from the bar-room or the battlefields, is going to shoot into the flowing stream of English song. The tradition is so old, the English power is so great, that it is sure to come. Victoria Sackville-West, for example, put the raw material of half a dozen new songs—or, say, two—into her poem "The Land."

But what we are all looking for is a poet of the new black towns. Cobblestones, pavements, asphalt ; hammers, looms, factories ; shops, stations, omnibuses, underground railways, local government offices. Till we can digest these things, and make them our own in song, our civilisation is a rootless thing. Nor is it the heartbroken wails of our modem poets, major or minor, that will do it. If that is the best that can be done, we shall have to burn the place down and start over again. Until we can be of strong enough stomach to absorb and overcome our natural shudder at the brutality and in- spiration of the machines, as the medical student absorbs, and over- comes, the wisdom and horror of the human body, its birth, growth and corruption, in the grim jingles of the dissecting room and the laboratory, we shall never get great poetry from the industrial age.

For that objective acceptance we must look first amongst the popular songs in the back rooms, in the smoking concerts, and in the streets. If you ask for an example of what I mean, take half a dozen lines from a music-hall group of parodies:

"Twos Christmas night in the workhouse ward, A pauper sat and cursed the Board, And the food, on the plates, That was bought with the rates.. ."

Talk about the Poor Law Commission and the Webb Minority Report! When some unknown scribe can crystallise the attitude of millions in such a handful of words, there is power still. So the hopeful prophet will watch the Sunday papers, and listen at un- reported gatherings for signs that English popular song tradition will be justified, here also, in its children. It will not be all, or mainly, gloom. I quoted the lines above to show that the anonymous can do gloom, with the best, if it comes into their heads. The modern poets have, of course, set a pretty hot pace.

" The earth is full of graves and mine was there Before my life began, my resting-place, And I shall find it out, and with the dead

Lie down for ever, all my sayings said—,

Deeds all done, and songs all sung,

While others chant in sun and rain.

'Heel and toe from dawn to dusk,

Round the world and home again.'"

But the music-hall song plumbs lower depths.

John Davidson wrote his poem and then committed suicide, the best message he could find to give the world at the end of a poet's life. The anonymous can do the sombre, and everything else too, and keep coming up to the gong. The same rain-soaked, industrial, West of Scotland that produced John Davidson, produced a succes- sion of lyrics from Harry Lauder—and Harry Lauder was bred amongst the coal-pits of Lanarkshire, the old core of industrial savagery, where the very air is corrupted with a mouldering stench from the spoil-heaps of a hundred years. John Davidson did at least have the great sweep of the Clyde at Greenock, at his door. But even today we can hear

"I belong to Glesca,

Glesca by the sea, But when I get tight on a Setterdcq night, Glesca belongs to me."

So sings Will Fyffe, to rapturous applause from crowded industry. A strange ambition, one would think—but unless one can say "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem" about Glasgow, we will never redeem it. Nothing but popular song has got that length so far.

In this field Scots art is closely allied to English. The process of ballad-making in the North is easier to follow, that is all. The distances are shorter. You can trace back more rapidly our moist beautiful songs to the pit whence they were digged. It was only yesterday that Burns, an editor of genius, got hold of most of them, and brought out texts which could be communicated, other than by word of mouth. Consider what "Coming through the Rye" was like before it became suitable for the concert-platform. Imagine for yourself the forerunner stanzas of

" Ilka lassie has a laddie, None, they, say, hae Y et, a' the lads they lo'e me weel And what she waur am I ? "

Yes, you are right. Especially as "the Rye" was the stepping- stone ford of a tidal stream, 'where the lads of the village usually clustered, to gawk at the village girls coming over with lifted petti- coats. and to make the sort of comment that adolescents usually make in such circumstances.

Popular songs, in England and in Scotland, are still really popular. The test of a 'live tradition is that there should exist a school ; that is to say, a group, self-renewing ; where everyone can do the stuff ; some well, some ill. And the test of a school is parody-- that is to say, that someone should look at it from the outside and chi-yike it—pull its leg, challenge its ideals—but reproduce it. A live tradition is reproduced even in attack. A dead tradition cannot be stood on its feet, any more than a dead horse. There are no current satires of Jupiter and Minerva. No Rabelais in England is satirising the habits of the local monks. Pelissier could set his red- nosed comic strutting across the stage to squawk *" They sye the German Kaiser is a-gain' ter rule the waves, Yus! I don't fink

'E says 'e'll land his armies 'ere and mike us all 'is slaves, Yus! I don't fink !

running out in the pure English inconsequence— "But 'ave we yet forgotten 'ow the Corn Laws was repealed ? Or 'ave we got a statesman naow,.like good old Beaconsfield? Yus! I don't fink, don't fink!

I don't fink ! "

He was bounding and rebounding in parody of an idiom peculiarly English, relying on a tradition which everyone knew without being told. That was the lunatic patriotism of the English, bubbling out in a thousand vulgarities and inanities, such as the above ; and also in a thousand and one heroisms. That patriotism lies at the root of literature in this country, as in another, where Aeschylus chose as his epitaph only that he had fought at Marathon.

Albert Chevalier, Harry Lauder, Gracie Fields—here are ballad- mongers. Their stuff is worth examination, as' well as Most of the laboured anthologies of our times. In this way, as well as in that, poetry is born.