قراءة كتاب Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886)
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Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs (1886)
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Come now hearken awhile to the songs of the god Lytierses.
Demeter, granter of fruits, many sheaves vouchsafe to the cornfield,
Aye to be skilfully tilled, and reaped, and the harvest abundant.
Fasten the heaps, ye binders of sheaves, lest any one passing,
Call out, "worthless clowns, you earn no part of your wages."
Let every sheaf that the sickle has cut be turned to the north wind
Or to the west exposed, for so will the corn grow fatter.
Ye who of wheat are threshers, beware how ye slumber at mid-day,
Then is the chaff from the stalk of the wheat, most easily parted.
Reapers, to labour begin, as soon as the lark upriseth,
And when he sleeps, leave off, yet rest when the sun overpowers.
Blest, O youths, is the life of a frog, for he never is anxious
Who is to pour him his drink, for he always has plenty.
Better at once, O miserly steward, to boil our lentils;
Mind you don't cut your fingers in trying to chop them to atoms.
These are the songs for the toilers to sing in the heat of the harvest.
Most modern harvest songs manage, like that of Theocritus, to convey some hint of thirst or hunger. "Be merry, O comrades!" sing the girl reapers of Casteignano dei Greci, a Greek settlement in Terra d'Otranto, "Be merry, and go not on your way so downcast; I saw things you cannot see; I saw the housewife kneading dough, or preparing macaroni; and she does it for us to eat, so that we may work like lions at the harvest, and rejoice the heart of the husbandman." This may be a statement of fact or a suggestion of what ought to be a fact. Other songs, sung exclusively at the harvest, bear no outward sign of connection with it; and the reason of their use on that occasion is hopelessly lost.
IV.
I pass on to the old curiosity shop of popular traditions—the nursery. Children, with their innate conservatism, have stored a vast assemblage of odds and ends which fascinate by their very incompleteness. Religion, mythology, history, physical science, or what stood for it; the East, the North—those great banks of ideas—have been impartially drawn on by the infant folk-lorists at their nurses' knees. Children in the four quarters of the globe, repeat the same magic formulæ; words which to every grown person seem devoid of sense, have a universality denied to any articles of faith. What, for example, is the meaning of the play with the snail? Why is he so persistently asked to put his horns out? Pages might be filled with the variants of the well-known invocation which has currency from Rome to Pekin.
English:
I.
2.
Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I'll beat you as black as a coal.
3.
Snail, snail, put out your horn,
Tell me what's the day t'morn:
To-day's the morn to shear the corn,
Blaw bil buck thorn.
4.
Snail, snail, shoot out your horn,
Father and mother are dead;
Brother and sister are in the back-yard
Begging for barley bread.
Scotch:
Snail, snail, shoot out your horn,
And tell us it will be a bonnie day, the morn.
German:
1.
Schneckhûs, Peckhüs,
Stäk du dîn ver Horner rût,
Süst schmût ick dî in'n Graven,
Da freten dî de Raven.
2.
Tækeltuet,
Kruep uet dyn hues,
Dyn hues dat brennt,
Dyn Kinder de flennt:
Dyn Fru de ligt in Wäken:
Kann 'k dy nich mael spräken?
Tækeltuet, u. s. w.
3.
4.
Slingemues,
Kruep uet dyn Hues,
Stick all dyn veer Höern uet,
Wullt du 's neck uetstäken,
Wik ik dyn Hues tobräken.
Slingemues, u. s. w.
5.
Kuckuch, kuckuck Gerderut,
Stäk dîne vêr Horns herut.
French:
Colimaçon borgne!
Montre-moi tes cornes;
Je te dirai où ta mère est morte,
Elle est morte à Paris, à Rouen,
Où l'on sonne les cloches.
Bi, bim, bom,
Bi, bim, bom,
Bi, bim, bom.
Tuscan:
Chiocciola, chiocciola, vien da me,
Ti darò i' pan d' i' re;
E dell'ova affrittellate
Corni secchí e brucherate.
Roumanian:
Culbecu, culbecu,
Scóte corne boeresci
Si te du la Dunare
Si bé apa tulbure.
Russian:
Chinese:
Snail, snail, come here to be fed,
Put out your horns and lift up your head;
Father and mother will give you to eat,
Good boiled mutton shall be your meat.
Several lines in the second German version are evidently borrowed from the Ladybird or Maychafer rhyme which has been pronounced a relic of Freya worship. Here the question arises, is not the snail song also derived from some ancient myth? Count Gubernatis, in his valuable work on Zoological Mythology (vol. ii. p. 75), dismisses the matter with the remark that "the snail of superstition is demoniacal." This, however, is no proof that he always bore so suspicious a character, since all the accessories to past beliefs got into bad odour on the establishment of Christianity, unless saved by dedication to the Virgin or other saints. I ventured to suggest, in the Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari (the Italian Folklore Journal), that the snail who is so constantly urged to come forth from his dark house, might in some way prefigure the dawn. Horns have been from all antiquity associated with rays of light. But to write of "Nature Myths in Nursery Rhymes" is to enter on such dangerous ground that I will pursue the argument no further.
V.
Children of older years have preserved the very important class of songs distinguished as singing-games. Everyone knows the famous ronde of the Pont d'Avignon:
Sur le Pont d'Avignon,
Tout le monde y danse, danse,
Sur le Pont d'Avignon
Tout le monde y danse en rond.
Les beaux messieurs font comme ça,
Sur le Pont d'Avignon,
Tout le monde y danse,