10
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPHI, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18. 1937.
DEWAR'S
The FAMOUS
WHITE
LABEL
Safe!
SOLE AGENTS:-
HOME DELIVERY
NAU
TOPS
of
your 1938
Vauxhall
If you are going home on leave, this must interest you.
You can arrange to stop ashore at home and drivo away in your own Vauxhall,
T
ROBERT LYND'S SATURDAY ESSAY
WO of the things that
we relics of the Vic- torian Age most de- plore in the modern world fare the gradual disappear- ance of the horse and the almost complete disappear- ance of the street ballad- singer.
It is true that the ballad- singer was on his last lege, even We assist you in this connection in the days of our youth. But without any trouble or complica-he was still to be found here and tion to yourself .. delivered there howling his wares and sell- to you at home and subsequentlying a sheet of paper containing in Hongkong,
the doggere he had aùng for a
penny.
Catalogue & Full
Particulars from
Hongkong
Stubbs Rd.
Garage
The
Often the ballad-singers work- ed in couples. A man and a
Hotel woman, who looked as if they
had slept in a ditch, would stand opposite each other in the middle Phone 27778/9.of a crowd of listeners and yell
their songs in the most merciless fashion into each other's faces.
They sang without pause from the start to the finish of the
A. S. WATSON & CO., LTD. Hongkong Telegraph. ballad, for the man would let the
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18, 1937.
WAR MAY SPREAD
Marshal Chiang Kal-shek yesterday issued a defiant mani- festo declaring that he had no intention of ceasing to regist Japan. The Japanese retort was quick, and rather to be ex- pected. Mr. Shigeru Kawagoe, the Ambassador to China, quiet- ly disclosed that it was possible. that governments similar to that established in Peiping would be set up in Central and South China. The war was far from ended, he said. The 'spirit of resistance, the national con-
seiousness, the patriotism and courage of China have not beení drained away in the blood the armies have shed in her defence, he-might-have-added.
woman sing the last half-line of each verse by herself in order to fill his lungs with air and be able to bellow out the beginning of the next verse from his twisted face before the old verse had died a painful death on the woman's lips. ·
That Shap
They
Sang
7
à last adieu, my dearest daughters,
With you I can ko longer slay,
have received the dreadful ANMMONS.
And, alas! I múnt obey,
I slew one night Mrs. Macfarlane, For which, alas, I do deplore,
Then went away and left ker
Weltering in her crimson gore.
The principal charm of these old ballads, I think, is the charm · of ingenuousness and bathina. How can we resist the exquisite Inept simplicity of the rhyme about Miles Weatherhill, the young weaver, who murdored the parson's servant at Tod- modern--especially the quatrain which runs:
With four loaded pistola, in a fit of
frenzy.
Miles to the Vicarage did hante
farthwith.
'
And with a rapon iconnded the
master.
And shot the maiden, named
Smith.
Even in the ballads of the Victorian Age, however, as we find them in Mr. Henderson's collection, the influence of the music-ball was already beginning to be felt.
Luckily ingenuoueness and bathos did not entirely dis- appear even after the triumph of the music-hall. The sentimental. songs of the halls carried on the tradition of the simplicity of the streets. There were fewer songs about murder, but the songs of tenderness were just as delightful outrages on the art of poetry.
Without Pause
It was in Kilkenny, I think, that I heard two ballad-singers singing a harsh and satiric dog- gerel about old-age pensioners when pensions first came in. It began:
Some people uscd deny their age— You often could them hear---
If you said they were seventy
Men in the music-halle had They would nearly strike you with never so happy as when he had
hearts in those days, and the their stick
an execution for murder or a
smell of beer, tobacco, and murder trial for his theme. One orange-peel made them pecu- of the most grisly of the ballads liarly amenable to the melting he quotes la "The Execution of mood.
year.
Now they are running to the parish
books.
Alice Holt," which begins:
They do not care about wind or A dreadful case of murder,
palak,
Such as we seldom hear,
-And-they-tell-the-priest-now-if-he_Committed_was_at_Stockport.
ran,
To try and make them old.
A better ballad to my mind was that sung in the streets of
In the County of Cheshire. Where a mother, named Mary
Bailey,
They did so cruelly slaughter
the Census was By poison administered all in her
beer
In the country and the town!
Have your childrewpot the maisles? Are your chimbleys tumbling
down!
By her own doughter.
They did not ask for litera-. ture. So long as the song was tender and sad and went to a waltz tune, they were happy. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch did not include "Two Little Girls in Blue" in his "Oxford Book of Victorian Verse," but it touched the Victorian heart as some of the poems he included did not. And how could it fail to, with its sublimely prosaic opening verse and chorus:
An old man gazed on a photograph, In the locket he'd worn for years:
reason why
It must be admitted that it
probable protection of the frontier, not increasingly grows that Japan will strike a blow at against the Japanese, perhaps, China's southern doors before but against a Chinese force very long. Where the blow will which might mistakenly or with fall can only be conjectured, but intent attempt to fight from Dublin when it seems likely that Canton will British territory. It is reassur- first taken-a ballad beginning: be the target. The Japanese ing to know that the military | Oh, they're taking of the renais
The ballad-maker was for the have less reason to love the authorities are alive to the dan- Cantonese than the more gers in such a situation as that
most part a moralist, and he is nephew then asked him the
time that
liked to make the murderer con- northern peoples, for it is from existing at this
fess his guilt and go to the gal- the south that the hottest anti-they are taking precautions for Japanese feeling has flowed; the protection of the border by But that was sung long before lows in a repentant spirit.
In "The Last Moments of A. and the weight of this stream the erection of "observation I was born. has not been checked by the posts" and that a dependable
A book of English ballads, Dalmas," for example, Dalmas Street Ballads" makes no concealment of the northern invasion and the cap-battalion is ready for any emer-"Victorian
That which has just been compiled by fact that he had committed the ture of Nanking. On the con-gency in that direction. trary, the southerners have de-worry can anfely be left to the Mr. W. Henderson, suggests that dreadful crime for which he was finitely overcome their previous competent men of the Rajput the English ballad maker was condemned: animosity towards the Central Regiment. authorities and are loyally fight- ing the invader. on a fronts.
dozen
of
BULLS AND INNERS
From the Office Butts
1 D
That picture had cost hims tears. "Come, listen," he said, "I will tell
you, my lad,
A etory that's strange but truct Your father and I, at the school one
day,
Met two little girls in blue.
Two little girls in blue, lad, Two little girls in blue.
They were sisters, 10e were
brothers,
And learned to love the 'two, And one little girl in blue, fad. Who won your Father's heart. Became your Mother; I marríro
the other, But now
apart."
100 have drifted
And now these inglorious.
that they had merely returned all but fadeil from the earth. to Shanghai.
What should be the immedi- ate consideration of the Govern- ment, it is suggested, is the Admitting for a moment that
problem of feeding the civilian the attack on Canton is im-
What a situation, and what population and sheltering refu-
words! "But now we have minent, what will be the im-
gces. It would be a pity if
drifted apart" seems to me one mediate effect upon Hongkong?
Hongkong were found unpre-
of the most nobly bathetic lines. It is difficult to predict with any
The typhoon is blamed for an English illiterature. pared for any emergency which
The way that horse looked at that certainty, except to any
And since it is unthe heroine, we thought he was considerable reduction in local this Colony will undoubtedly may arise.
likely that Canton will have any going to take a bit between his bird life. We were thinking glories of a simple world have be flooded with thousands
The crooner with his "close- refugees; that trade will be warning of attack, if it truly is teeth.
your-cyeses" and his "arms- sorlously affected and the "back intended, this Colony can ill af-
enfold-yous" has triumphed, and garden" on which wo largely ford to wait without action for
the ballad and the music-hall According to a market report, song of the kind we once knew depend for fresh foods will be a situation which might develop
tripe has fluctuated somewhat are almost as obsolete as the closed to us. There is naturally disastrously. It is not proposed
eggs are strong: frogs have cowboy's covered waggon. a certain element of danger for that anything involving, expen-
We received two contributions jumped considerably, while cut- the Colony in any war waged diture be undertaken at
In the stage, but it would be advisable to this column this week. One close to its borders. first place there is the risk of to take stock of the resources we had seen before, and the tle-fish has hardened. "Incidents," and there is good avaliable and to make certain other we haven't seen yet. cause for apprehensiveness on that nothing can interfere with this score. But it would seem the communications upon which that the chief dificulty facing Hongkong depends for its daily
the bread. the authorities would bo
this
A lady was fined for leaving of thing is liable to discommode furniture in the street. This sort the public.
☐ 口
口口
。 O
After sitting next to a lady We wish some public bene- factor would offer travelling wearing a fur coat, we would saxophone refer her to that advertisement scholarships players.
to
which "atops falling, hair."
Is there any hope of a re vival? I confess my heart leaped up with hope when I first heard "The Isle of Capri."
"Victorian Street Ballads." Edited by W. Henderson Country Life. 78, Od.
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