What with the more modern tone, and the lusty woodsmen, one has deserted the actual dance, the actual communal origin of song; but one is still amid communal influences. Another little song about the heart and the key, this time from France, recalls one to the dance itself, and to the simpler tone:--
Shut fast within a rose I ween my heart must be; No locksmith lives in France Who can set it free,-- Only my lover Pierre, Who took away the key![22]
[22] Quoted by Tiersot, page 88, from 'Chansons à Danser en Rond,' gathered before 1704.
Coming back to England, and the search for her folk-song, it is in order to begin with the refrain. A "clerk," in a somewhat artificial lay to his sweetheart, has preserved as refrain what seems to be a bit of communal verse:--
Ever and aye for my love I am in sorrow sore; I think of her I see so seldom any more,[23]--
rather a helpless moan, it must be confessed.
[23] Böddeker's 'Old Poems from the Harleian MS. 2253,' with notes, etc., in German; Berlin, 1878, page 179.
Better by far is the song of another _clericus_, with a lusty little refrain as fresh as the wind it invokes, as certainly folk-song as anything left to us:--
Blow, northern wind, Send thou me my sweeting! Blow, northern wind, Blow, blow, blow!
The actual song, though overloaded with alliteration, has a good movement. A stanza may be quoted:--
I know a maid in bower so bright That handsome is for any sight, Noble, gracious maid of might, Precious to discover.
In all this wealth of women fair, Maid of beauty to compare With my sweeting found I ne'er All the country over!
Old too is the lullaby used as a burden or refrain for a religious poem printed by Thomas Wright in his 'Songs and Carols':--
Lullay, myn lykyng, my dere sone, myn swetyng, Lullay, my dere herte, myn owyn dere derlyng.[24]
[24] See also Ritson, 'Ancient Songs and Ballads,' 3rd Ed., pages xlviii., 202 ff. The Percy folio MS. preserved a cradle song, 'Balow, my Babe, ly Still and Sleepe,' which was published as a broadside, and finally came to be known as 'Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.' These "balow" lullabies are said by Mr. Ebbsworth to be imitations of a pretty poem first published in 1593, and now printed by Mr. Bullen in his 'Songs from Elizabethan Romances,' page 92.