Stories of Humanity’s Adventures
Sing me a song of days gone by. Tell me a story around the fire. Better yet, give me both. So, to answer both these requests, today we present the ballad genre, the first of many posts with a twist.
Okay. We have spent a few months now with glorious poets of the female gender, and we won’t forget about keeping the gender balance in coming posts. Starting with today’s post, we will enter a quite different poetic tradition: the Ballad. For today, that is. Going forward, poems according to theme and/or type will appear in these “pages” for some time to come. So, here we go with our first foray into the expansive world poets inhabit. Prepare yourself for some of these ballads as the form can be quite lengthy. I do recommend “Twa Corbies” for a challenge.
The term “ballad” comes from medieval times, although an argument can be made that they appeared earlier. As narrative song, Scandinavian and Germanic, play into the ballads’ origins. The earliest appearance of the ballad was discovered in a 13th century manuscript in England. Originally dances occasioned ballads, or vice versa. Rather than one performer, the dancers sang in time with the dance.
Defining “ballad” is difficult as they vary in pattern, length, nationality, location, rhyme, and dialect. There is no strict definition of the form. Ballads do have a few things in common: a story with a beginning, middle, and end; bright imagery; usually comic, historical, tragic, or romantic. Granted, that’s quite a range.
Ballads are stories. They come in all shapes, lengths, and types. Although, my Japanese friends would not agree, even some haiku can reveal a plot with questions and emotions.
Consider this haiku by Matsuo Basho:
The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die
See? If one “feels” with the cicada – we wonder why it is silent or at least not exhibiting any “signs” – how will this small creature with its tiny nervous system pass way – no, “die”? the language of the better ballads is pointed and specific and clear about its meaning. A plot and typically a protagonist (every story needs one) and maybe another character or three. A dramatic ending usually completes the tale. Our three-line poem above meets these criteria. (Check out the first “exploration” at the end of the post.)
Here is one of my favorites: “The Ballad of John Riley.” This one is most often sung; Joan Baez performed it, as did The Byrds but neither originate it. This ballad is a traditional English one. This piece is spot on of the ballad definition – using both prose and music, among other qualities.
The Ballad of John Riley (Riley pronounced r -eye-lee – accent on the second syllable)
Fair young maid all in her garden
Strange young man came riding by
Saying fair young maid, will you marry me
This then, sir, was her reply
Oh no, kind sir, I cannot marry thee
For I've a love who sails the deep salt sea
Though he's been gone these seven years
Still no man shall marry me
What if he's died all in some battle slain
Or if he's drowned in, in the deep salt sea
What if he's found some other love
He and his new love both married be
If he's found some other love
He and his new love both married be
I wish them health and happiness
Where they have dwelled all across the sea
He picked her up all in his arms
And kisses gave her one, two and three
Saying weep no more, my own true love
I am your long-lost John Riley
Saying weep no more, my own true love
I am your long-lost John Riley
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And here is an authentic 16th century, Scottish ballad, a haunting folk ballad first published in a songbook in 1611. Go ahead. Read it out loud in your best Dundonian accent.
Twa Corbies
As I was walking all alane
I spied twa corbies makin a mane;
The tane unto the t'ither say
"Whar shall we gang and dine the day-o
Whar shall we gang and dine the day?"
"In behind yon auld fail dyke
I wot ther lies a new slain knight;
Naebody kens that he lies ther-o
But his hawk, his hound, and his lady fair
His hawk and his hound and his lady fair."
"His hound is to the hunting gane
His hawk to fetch the muir-fowl hame
His lady's ta'en anither mate
Sae, we may mak our dinner sweet-o
Sae, we may mak our dinner sweet."
"Ye'll light upon his white haus-bane
And I'll pyke out his bonny blue een;
Wi many a lock o' his yellow hair
We'll theek our nest where it grows bare
We'll theek our nest where it grows bare."
"Many a ane for him maks mane
But nane shall ken whar he is gane;
O'er his white banes, whan they are bare
The wind sall blaw for ever mair-o
The wind sall blaw for ever mair."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
15¢ Futures By Marilyn Nelson (1946 - )
Epiphany Davis, 1825
I set up my cash box and my bones and cards
on Broadway, most days, offering what I see
of what’s to come. For a donation, words
fall from my mouth, surprising even me.
Uncle Epiphany doesn’t forecast death
or illness worse than gout or a broken bone.
The sailors stop. They listen with caught breath
as I tell them some girl’s heart is still theirs alone.
(… or not. Young love is such a butterfly.)
Girls come, arms linked, giggling behind their fans.
The sad come. Uncle Epiphany does not lie.
I close shop, and come back up here to my land.
It’s a new world up here, of beggar millionaires:
neighbors who know how we all scrimped and saved
to own this stony swamp with its fetid air,
to claim the dream for dreamers yet enslaved.
I’m Epiphany Davis. I am a conjure-man.
I see glimpses. Glass towers … A horseless vehicle …
An American President who is half African …
Until you pay me, that’s all I’m going to tell.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
John Marr and Other Sailors – Herman Melville - 1819-1891
Since as in night's deck-watch ye show,
Why, lads, so silent here to me,
Your watchmate of times long ago?
Once, for all the darkling sea,
You your voices raised how clearly,
Striking in when tempest sung;
Hoisting up the storm-sail cheerly,
Life is storm–let storm! you rung.
Taking things as fated merely,
Childlike though the world ye spanned;
Nor holding unto life too dearly,
Ye who held your lives in hand–
Skimmers, who on oceans four
Petrels were, and larks ashore.
O, not from memory lightly flung,
Forgot, like strains no more availing,
The heart to music haughtier strung;
Nay, frequent near me, never staleing,
Whose good feeling kept ye young.
Like tides that enter creek or stream,
Ye come, ye visit me, or seem
Swimming out from seas of faces,
Alien myriads memory traces,
To enfold me in a dream!
I yearn as ye. But rafts that strain,
Parted, shall they lock again?
Twined we were, entwined, then riven,
Ever to new embracements driven,
Shifting gulf-weed of the main!
And how if one here shift no more,
Lodged by the flinging surge ashore?
Nor less, as now, in eve's decline,
Your shadowy fellowship is mine.
Ye float around me, form and feature:–
Tattooings, ear-rings, love-locks curled;
Barbarians of man's simpler nature,
Unworldly servers of the world.
Yea, present all, and dear to me,
Though shades, or scouring China's sea.
Whither, whither, merchant-sailors,
Whitherward now in roaring gales?
Competing still, ye huntsman-whalers,
In leviathan's wake what boat prevails?
And man-of-war's men, whereaway?
If now no dinned drum beat to quarters
On the wilds of midnight waters–
Foemen looming through the spray;
Do yet your gangway lanterns, streaming,
Vainly strive to pierce below,
When, tilted from the slant plank gleaming,
A brother you see to darkness go?
But, gunmates lashed in shotted canvas,
If where long watch-below ye keep,
Never the shrill “All hands up hammocks!”
Breaks the spell that charms your sleep,
And summoning trumps might vainly call,
And booming guns implore–
A beat, a heart-beat musters all,
One heart-beat at heart-core.
It musters. But to clasp, retain;
To see you at the halyards main–
To hear your chorus once again!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Cremation of Sam McGee
Robert W. Service
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."
A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Background
Most readers know something of Herman Melville, with his tales of the high seas and whaling. Did you know he was a prolific poet as well and that some of his poems were ballads? As noted on Poetry Foundation:
“Though his poetry is read less frequently than his novels (e.g., Moby Dick, Billy Budd) critics argue that it too is historically significant, thematically complex, and highly crafted. Stanton Garner, author of The Civil War World of Herman Melville, described Melville as “the third participant in the mid- 19th-century American poetic revolution,” along with Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. In fact, Melville spent the last decades of his life writing poetry. His published collections include Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), an intimate and highly personal response to the Civil War, and the allegorical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876).
His first book of poems, Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), is arranged chronologically, following the terrible arc of the Civil War. Melville had family members who served in the war, including his son Malcolm, who later committed suicide; he had watched Senate debates on secession, and had even traveled to the frontlines. The poems Melville wrote in response to these circumstances are considered by scholars to be as rich and complex as his earlier novels; like his prose fiction, the poems deflate core myths of American exceptionalism. But Melville’s poetry found few readers. “Unlike the popular poetry of the day, Melville’s verse was too dense, high-minded, and self-conscious to win a fireside reading by a family hearth,” Beauregard explains.”
If you know of the poet, Robert William Service, 1874–1958 you probably also know of his most famous poem: “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” posted above. As you can see from his excerpted bio, some of his poetry books even used “ballad” in their titles, so he is right at home among the other poets in this post.
A prolific writer and poet, Service published numerous collections of poetry during his lifetime, including Songs of a Sourdough or Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (1907), which went into ten printings its first year, Ballad of a Cheechako (1909) and Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), as well as two autobiographies and six novels. Several of his novels were made into films, and he also appeared as an actor in The Spoilers, a 1942 film with Marlene Dietrich.
A casual usage of what would today be considered ethnic slurs complicates contemporary readings of his work, though his epic, rhymed, often humorous poems about the West’s wilderness, Yukon gold miners, and World War I show the narrative mastery, appetite for adventure, and eye for detail that enabled him to bridge the spheres of popular and literary audiences.
He was a correspondent for the Toronto Star during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and served in World War I as an ambulance driver in France. After the war, Service married Germaine Bougeoin and they resided mainly in the south of France until his death. Poetry Foundation also notes:
"Service’s two-room cabin in the Yukon, which he lived in from November 1909 until June 1912 while writing his Gold Rush novel The Trail of Ninety-Eight (1911) and his poetry collection Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (1913), is maintained as a historic site for visitors."
Exploration 1: Consider the Matsuo Basho poem at the beginning of this post’s ballad selections. Does it meet the criteria to be a ballad: Plot? Protagonist? Surprising ending? And so forth.
Exploration 2: What is your opinion? Is it necessary for a poet (or any writer) to have personal experience in what he/she is writing about. For example, Melville and the sea and Service in the Yukon.
Exploration 3: Should ballads be considered poetry? Songs? Dance music? Something else?
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