Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/65

 12 s. i. JAN. is, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

' THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM '(US. xii. 259, 487). In my query I referred to a copy mentioned by Prof. Dowden as being in the library of the Duke of Devonshire. LIEUT. JAGGARD has supplied the useful information that a copy never existed in that library. I am not satisfied with his reference to the third copy. If such a rare bibliographical treasure had turned up, it would surely have been chronicled and the owner identified. Recently a copy of the 1612 edition found its way to America, which may account for MB. JAGGARD' s third copy of the 1599 edition. MAURICE JONAS.

THE TALLEST ONE-PIECE FLAGSTAFF IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE (11 S. ix. 7, 94, 254 ; xii. 73). The following extract from The Daily Telegraph of Dec. 30, 1915, may be worth adding to the discussion of this sub- ject :

" MONSTER FLAGSTAFF.

" The Royal Mail Steam Packet Merionethshire, running in the Eastern service of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, has just arrived in London, having amongst its cargo a flagstaff measuring 215 ft., and weighing eighteen tons. It has been presented by the Government of British Columbia to Kew Gardens, to replace the one recently taken down, measuring 159 ft.

" The new flagstaff is one of the largest in the world, and is made from the trunk of a Douglas fir-tree grown in British Columbia."

J. R. THORNS.

SONG WANTED (11 S. xii. 503 ; 12 S. i. 38). What MR. COOLIDGE wants is ' The Scholar Navvy : an Anticipation,' by G. K. Menzies, in a book of verses about Oxford. I can lend him a copy of the poem. H. COHEN.

3 Elm Court, Temple, E.C.

An American Garland, being a Collection of Ballads relating to America, 1563-1759. Edited with Introduction and Notes by C. H. Firth. (Ox- ford, Blackwell, 3s. Qd. net.)

STUDENTS of English literature and history may well be grateful to Prof. Firth for this book. The attitude of the generations of the street towards America and the successive problems presented by its conquest and colonization is interesting alike for what it includes and for what it ignores, and direct evidence of any sort con- cerning it is not plentiful. This renders the little that we have all the more valuable. As Prof. Firth remarks, it is surprising that America plays so small a part in the ballad litera- ture of the " black-letter period i.e. till about 1700. What with exploration and fighting the Indians, Puritan settlements, kidnapping into slavery, and the divers political and social dis- turbances in the colonies, one would have supposed there was plenty in the early English occupation

of America to stir the imagination and provoke the rough caustic wit of the ballad-monger. But for some reason it did not so turn out. Where- as the black-letter ballads printed during the- sixteenth and seventeenth centuries number some four or five thousand, examples relating to America are of the greatest rarity. No doubt some have perished indeed, so much is certain from entries in the registers of the Stationers'^ Company ; but, on the other hand, diligent col- lectors of ballads came pretty early upon the- scene, and if such songs had been popular and circulated in a great number of copies, they would surely appear as a larger percentage of the sur- vivals. One can but suppose that those points in the emigrants which might provoke satire could be more tellingly illustrated from examples at home ; whilst for story- telling and romantic purposes generally America was at once too un- familiar and too much of hard matter of fact.

Twenty- five ballads are given us here. The sources from which they come are the Roxburghe Ballads in the British Museum ; the collections of Rawlinson and Douce at the Bodleian ; Pepys's collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and the Suffolk collection at Britwell Court, to which must be added examples from Prof.. Firth's own collection, some of which had not been printed before.

The first ballad given is that on the ' Adven- turous Viage ' of Thomas Stutely, of slender interest except for its date. ' Have over the Water to Florida ' is one of the few which have some touch of literary merit. But of the group of earlier ballads the most generally interesting is the ' News from Virginia,' relating the voyage of Sir George Somers, who reached Virginia in 1610 after being shipwrecked on one of the Bermudas. ' London's Lotterie ' to be referred to 1612 is an amusing, and also rather instruc- tive, illustration of the kind of inducements held out to the people to support the foundation of the colony of Virginia. It is remarkable that,, when we come to the Puritan emigration, there is no ballad favourable to the Puritans. In the satirical verses which are included also in * Merry Drollery ' the peculiarities of the Roundhead are handled with a roughness which has occasional gleams of wit and cleverness in it.

The aspect of America more precisely of Virginia as the land to which the irksome or undesirable might be transferred by kidnapping,, and where they led a piteous and oppressed existence as slaves, forms the subject of the best of the remaining ballads if we except the half- dozen or so at the end which deal with Wolfe.. The last in the volume is the frigid and stupid song, with its tiresome classical conceits, supposed to have been written by Thomas Paine, which may be contrasted with that beginning ' Bold General Wolfe to his men did say,' a delightful' example of a street song.

This leads us to express a wish that the literary- editors of ballads would give more attention than they commonly do to the tunes to which the verses are to be sung. One can form no just idea of a ballad without being able to fit the words to their proper melody, for as often as not, the best points are made by the tune rather than by the words. We do not suppose that a great many of Prof. Firth's readers are able off-hand to hum ' The Lusty Gallant,' or ' The Townsmen's Cappe,' or ' A Taylor is a man.' We should like to suggest