Eos: An enquiry into the theme of lovers' meetings and partings at dawn in poetry 9783111703602, 9783111314839

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Publié avec le concours financier de V UNESCO et sous les auspices du Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines

An Enquiry into the Theme of Lovers Meetings and Partings at Dawn in Poetry

Edited by

A R T H U R T. H A T T O U N I V E R S I T Y OF LONDON

1965 M O U T O N & CO. LONDON • T H E H A G U E • PARIS

© Copyright 1965 Mouton & Co., Publishers, The Hague, The Netherlands. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

P R I N T E D IN THE

NETHERLANDS

PREFACE

This collection of poetry from all over the world about lovers at dawn, together with what commentary we can offer, is a venture into the field of the comparative study of literature. In current usage two kinds of scholarly enquiry bear this name. One kind requires a close comparison of, let us say, the extant dramas of Oedipus, which must all derive from one source. The other kind is inspired by a universal outlook embracing all oral and literary creations within given genres throughout the world, whether historical connexions be revealed or not. This second type of comparative studies clearly embraces the former, but scholars who engage in these studies would scarcely ever aspire to such particularity. They would rather pursue themes like 'The Birth of Tragedy' on the one hand, and 'The Oedipus Myth' on the other, that is, they would study on a comparative basis the emergence of all tragic ritual that was highly developed enough to be called 'drama', and, in the latter instance, they would enquire into myths and tales from all over the world that have roughly the same sequence of narrative events as the Greek myth of Oedipus. In the wider type of enquiry, the unity which comparative study presupposes is given in the first place not by unique historical descent — this could never be fully reconstructed — but by the unity of the mind of Man, who, as long as he has remained unbroken, has expressed himself in art, not least in the art of words. To attempt to decide which of these two types of studies has the better claim to be known as 'comparative' would be idle. It would be wiser to retain the one name for both, whilst remembering that the narrower discipline is subordinate to the broader, a fact which should be reflected in the structure of departments of comparative literary studies in the universities. The present volume adopts the broader outlook, although, for example, the history of the Provençal alba plays an important part within it. More work of our sort has been done in the field of the heroic epic ; but the comparative study of love-poetry has not been wholly neglected. It is our hope that this volume will help to redress the balance. Despite our universal aspirations, we are well aware for a variety of reasons that our collection cannot be exhaustive. We could scarcely expect so complex a theme to be represented below a certain general level of culture and we have in fact found no examples by the natives of Australia, Northern Siberia, North America or tribal Africa; but we were, on the other hand, surprised not to find dawn-songs from Norway and Sweden in spite of favourable social conditions among the peasantry ; and the absence of examples from both the folk and divan poetry of Turkey remains

6

PREFACE

baffling. We think it possible that poems of our kind may be found among the many tribes of Central Asia and Southern Siberia, and that scholars of the Soviet Union might make a small though interesting collection if they tapped their vast resources; and some further specimens will surely be found in other areas that we were unable to cover. If readers of this book are reminded of similar poems or songs in languages beyond our reach and will kindly communicate them to me with information on their context, I will do my best to publish them together, or, more happily, to incorporate them in a revised edition, provided that their quality and interest warrant it. While we were collecting, I was naturally curious to discover whether there is any other type of love-poem both as widespread as the alba and as rich in its latent possibilities; but as far as I can judge there is none. Women's laments about their lovers, already recognised as an archaic genre of love-poetry in Europe, might set the theme of a fascinating collection; but with a single character, or at most one main character, and the inevitable predominance of monologue, this genre is essentially less complex than ours, and it also lacks an obligatory décor. Other eyes may see other things, however, and I for one shall greet with interest the next collection of poems on a truly world-wide theme. Not all communities that were sufficiently developed have produced albas, but most societies have sung love-songs, even where love-songs could lead to lawsuits. With machines to remind us lest we ever forget, we need no persuading that singing about love is not necessarily a sign of social health. But a failure to sing anything at all on themes normally considered poetic — and love is surely one — is bound to strike us as morbid. The only songs which the Atimelang of the remote island of Alor east of Flores are said to know, are concerned with the romance of money. As they dance on the eve of a ceremony with its inevitable haggling over debts, these puritanical financiers sing songs that allude to the dawn. The following is a typical example. A CREDITOR:

When the earth is at dawn, when the world is light, Fani, my chief, I shall see something very tasty; Something sweet will appear for me. You will scratch for wealth, You will scrabble for treasure. Place tallies in my hand, Give me the promised day... The wealth for which you scratched, The treasure for which you scrabbled, The wealth for which you dunned, The treasure for which you asked, Your creditor will gather together and carry away.1 EOS was conceived towards the end of the nineteen-forties. It was completed during the early nineteen-fifties. In 1958-59 it was thoroughly revised, after which it lay with 1

Cora du Bois, The People of Alor, 2nd edition (University of Minnesota Press, 1944), p. 140.

7

PREFACE

the publisher awaiting a financial subvention. The year 1959 thus gives the true date of the work. In order to bridge the gap between then and now we have compiled an appendix of additional material (Appendix II). Thanks to the generous support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the obstacles to publication have been surmounted and, collectively older than we might have been by half a millennium and in alliance with an enterprising publisher, we place before the reader studies that have languished too long. I cannot end this Preface without recording the pleasure, scarce ever to be repeated, which I had in editing this collection, and with it my deep debt to the contributors and to others who in various ways have helped it into print. How many men, I asked myself, have had the delightful adventure of knocking at the doors of knowledge and never finding them closed, and not only this, but of finding friends behind them as charming to know as they are learned? This experience has permanently enriched me with its wealth of human contacts, so that if I had the time and means I could follow our book round the world — it of course follows the sun — and find at each halt a friend whose face I may perhaps never have seen. The desire to make this book was not a day old before I was joined by Bernard Lewis, who speedily enlisted a band of contributors from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Leonard Forster soon confirmed my belief that a worldwide collection must be attempted. Without the loyal help and wisdom of these two friends, no demands on whose advice in matters of scholarship or policy from start to finish have proved to be too heavy, it is true to say this work could never have appeared. The eager discernment of Jerzy Pietrkiewicz soon brought us a nucleus of contributors from the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London (but what I remember even more are his words when failure to achieve publication seemed near: 'As to my contribution, I give it you.'). The approval of Arthur Waley, and then, of Edward M. Wilson, finally dispelled my fears that because our work was so exciting it might not be thought quite so serious. I wish to thank my colleague, L. L. Hammerich, Emeritus Professor of German at Copenhagen, and R. N. Frye, Agha Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard University, Dr. S. C. Aston of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, and J. R. Bracken, Esq., M. A., Deputy Secretary of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, for their comprehension of our aims and the help which they afforded when most needed. Our many other debts are recorded in our Acknowledgements. On the pleasure afforded by the appearance of our work there are some shadows. Dr. A. Bake, Dr. V. Elwin, Dr. O. Loorits, and Dr. S. Westfal, contributors for Indian Music, Indian Aboriginal Poetry, Estonian and Livonian, and Lithuanian respectively, died, to our deep regret, before seeing their work in print. Their contributions appear here as a monument to their memories. Queen Mary College, University of London.

A. T. Hatto, General Editor,

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Contributors and the Editor have received help in one way or another from many more than are named here or on other pages of this book. So much time has passed since our work was first concluded that we fear we may not have remembered every kind deed that has furthered our enterprise. If any of our readers who is conscious of having helped us does not find his name recorded here we are heartily sorry and beg to be forgiven, pleading that the passage of time and the several revisions of the book have confused our memories. Individual contributors have acknowledged especial debts at the foot of their contributions, but all would wish to be associated with their thanks. But in addition to those named there and in the Preface, the following have earned our gratitude by supplying texts or commentary, or by easing the passage of our work into print: Mr. Jan Bijl; Dr. Jonas Balys, who sent us many Lithuanian specimens; Professor C. Bresgen, for permission to print the text of No. [299]; Professor John Brough; Dr. John Carthy; Sir Gerard Clauson, K.C.M.G.; Professor Theodor Frings, a pioneer in the comparative study of love-poetry, for his encouragement; Professor W. R. Geddes and the Syndics of the Oxford University Press, for permission to print our No. [113]; Mr. Basil Gray, C.B.E.; Mile. Ljubica Jankovic and her sister the late Danica Jankovic; Professor Matti Kuusi; Professor Janko Lavrin; Mr. A. L. Lloyd for help over and above that acknowledged in the English section and in Appendix I; Professor R. J. McClean; Professor John Mavrogordato for the only rhymed translation in our collection, made for us; Professor M. F. Meiklejohn; Professor Herman Meyer, for his timely good opinion; Mr. C. S. Mundy, for negative testimony on Turkish; Professor Hans Neumann; Professor F. Norman and the Editors of the Modern Language Review for permission to print our No. [293]; Professor A. Perosa; Dr. R. Popperwell for negative testimony on Norwegian; the Astronomer Royal, Dr. J. G. Porter, for advice on Dante's 'Lunar Dawn'; Dr. David Ross, for supplying our first Greek epigrams; Professor Harry Simon, for the Chinese poems on p. 803; Dr. E. G. Stanley; the late Professor Miodrag Vasiljevid, for permission to publish the text of songs perhaps otherwise still unpublished; Professor Radmilo VuSic; Professor Count Roberto Weiss; Professor Th. Weevers; Professor K. R. V. Wikman; Professor V. Zganec, for permission to publish the text of songs as yet unpublished; Professor V. Zhirmunskii, for drawing attention to No. [45]. We wish to thank Drs. F. Lorentz, A. Fischer and T. Lehr-Splawinski and Messrs

10

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Faber and Faber for permission to reprint Nos. [372-3] together with their translations; Messrs Macmillan and Co. for permission to reprint our No. [88], together with the late Mr. J. P. Mills' commentary; and Dr. Cora Du Bois and the Syndics of the University of Minnesota Press for permission to reprint part of a poem in the Preface. We have to thank Mrs. Cornelia Bake (together with Dr. J. R. Marr) and Mrs. Krystyna Westfal, whose sad task it was to read the proofs of their late husbands' contributions; and Miss Aime Luht, who discharged a like task for those of her tutor, the late Dr. Loorits. For kind permission to print and publish our Illustrations, we wish to thank the following: Sri Gopi Krishna Kanoria of Calcutta (Plate 4), from his Private collection; Dr. W. B. Manley (Plates 5 and 6); the Trustees of the British Museum (Plates 2,3 and 7); the Trustees of the Boston Museum of Fine Art (Frontispiece); and the Director of the University of Heidelberg Library (Plate 8). We are in the debt of the staff of Messrs Mouton & Company, for the fine typographical arrangement, and for the dust-cover. The Editor's personal debts are these. He thanks his friend Dr. Lawrence Ecker of Santa Monica, California, for the inspiration of his pioneering doctoral thesis 'Arabischer, provenzalischer und deutscher Minnesang' (1934), written during student days together in Berne under the supervision of Professor H. de Boor and Dr. G. Widmer; he thanks his colleague Dr. Paul Salmon for his brilliant undergraduate essay of (about) 1948, which first made him feel the need for a world-wide collection of albas, and now, again, for having, as a seasoned scholar, read the proofs of the German section. He thanks Mr. J. H. Kells for first drawing attention to illustrations of Indian Dawn Ragas. He thanks Mr. Adrian Whitworth, Librarian at Queen Mary College, for his untiring help in providing books and articles that were hard to come by and the College authorities for meeting the cost of a voluminous correspondence conducted at high speed round the globe. A.T.H.

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

Preface

5

Acknowledgements

9 PART ONE: G E N E R A L S U R V E Y

By the Editor I . INTRODUCTION

17

I I . A SURVEY

23

I I I . THE 'ORIGINS' OF D A W N POETRY

47

I V . MYTHOLOGY

69

V . THE CRYSTALLIZATION AND DIFFUSION OF SOME D A W N THEMES V I . RELIGION

73 87

V I I . MIME AND DRAMA

97 P A R T TWO

EGYPTIAN, CHINESE, JAPANESE, KOREAN, MONGOL,

by John A. Wilson (Chicago)

by Arthur Waley (London) by Arthur Waley by In-s6b Z6ng (Seoul) by C. R. Bawden (London)

105 107 114 126

132

12

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Baraba Tatar, compiled by Cushing (London)

TURKIC, I :

A. T.

Hatto;

II:

Chuvash, by

G. F.

137

by A . L. Basham (London), D. Bhattacharya, Verrier Elwinf, W. G. Archer (London), Douglas Barrett (London), A. Bakef .

INDIAN,

by Hla Pe (London)

BURMESE,

by E.

SIAMESE (THAI), INDONESIAN,

H.

140 181

S. Simmonds (London)

186

by Mme Hurustati Subandrio (Djakarta)

196

MALAY, by R. O. Winstedt (London)

199

DYAK, compiled by A. T. Hatto

202

by J.

HEBREW,

Segal (London)

B.

203

ARABIC,

by Bernard Lewis (London) and S. M. Stern (Oxford)

215

PERSIAN,

by G. M. Wickens (Toronto)

244

KURDISH,

by C.

J.

Edmonds (London)

248

ARMENIAN,

by C. J. F. Dowsett (London)

250

GEORGIAN,

by David Marshall Lang (London)

253

by J. H. Mozley (London)

255

by Julian T. Pring (London)

264

CLASSICAL GREEK, MODERN GREEK,

CLASSICAL, LATER, AND MEDIAEVAL LATIN, RENAISSANCE LATIN,

by

R.

A.

by John Lockwood (London)

271

Browne (Bangor) and Leonard Forster

(Cambridge) IBERIAN,

282

by Edward M. Wilson (Cambridge) (Mozarabic with S. M. Stern) .

O L D PROVENÇAL AND OLD FRENCH, ITALIAN,

by

R.

by B. Woledge (London) .

Glynn Faithfull (London)

.

.

.

299

344 390

TABLE OF CONTENTS

by G. Nandri? (London)

RUMANIAN,

MEDIAEVAL GERMAN, DUTCH,

by A. T. Hatto (London)

428 473

by T. J. B. Spencer (Birmingham)

505

by E. O. G. Turville-Petre (Oxford)

ICELANDIC,

554

by Mogens K. With (Odense)

562

by Melville Richards (Liverpool)

568

DANISH,

IRISH,

419

by Leonard Forster (Cambridge)

ENGLISH,

WELSH,

13

by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (Edinburgh)

O L D CZECH,

by Robert Auty (London)

CZECH AND SLOVAK, POLISH,

575 579

by Robert Auty

590

by Jerzy Pietrkiewicz (London)

600

WEND, by R. G. A. de Bray (Monash) by Branislav Krstic (Belgrade), Vera Javarek (London), de Bray, and V. de S. Pinto

YUGOSLAV,

BULGARIAN, RUSSIAN,

by

ALBANIAN,

R.

F. Christian (Birmingham)

by Anton £etta

R.G.A.

613 642 658 677

by Stanislaw Westfalf

680

by Zenta Maurizia (Uppsala)

693

LITHUANIAN, LATVIAN,

by V. de S. Pinto (London)

610

HUNGARIAN,

by G. F. Cushing (London)

704

ESTONIAN,

by Oskar Looritsf

721

LIVONIAN,

by Oskar Looritsf

736

14

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FINNISH,

by Leea Virtanen (Helsinki)

VOTYAK (UDMURT), QUECHUA,

by

739

by G. F. Cushing

748

Farfan (Lima)

751

J. M . B.

THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS,

by Samuel H. Elbert (Honolulu)

.

.

.

.

765

PART THREE: APPENDICES

With a Digression on the Stag and Doe Imagery of some Thirteenth Century Galician Poetry and the Question of its Ritual Origins

I . IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM.

I I . ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

(found since

1958)

771 820

I I I . THE MELODIES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE AND GERMAN DAWN SONGS

825

I V . THE CONTRIBUTORS

827

V . GENERAL INDEX

831

V I . INDEX OF POEMS

845

PART ONE G E N E R A L SURVEY

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

The beauty and interest of the poems assembled in this work are such that the compilers' task might well have ended with the finding, interpretation and translation of the texts. But widely divergent though the poems are in style and texture, they were chosen by the test of a common theme — the sayings and doings of lovers at dawn — so that one cannot read them together without asking oneself a number of questions. How are the astonishing parallels at different times and places to be explained? Why do some traditions tend at times to avoid this widespread theme and a few all but ignore it? Does nature abhor a vacuum in poetry, too, so that certain ideas are diffused at equal pressure in all directions unless impeded? If most traditions favour the parting, why do some prefer a meeting of lovers at dawn? Does the poetic imagination not soar as freely as we are accustomed to think, but rather flow down, repeating its patterns if such be the he of the land? It is to be feared that answers to these and similar questions will not always be found. But I shall attempt to discover how far one may safely go in this direction. There will be no attempt here to reduce this rich harvest to variations of one 'Urlied' or even of several. For to confuse the working formula by which we have collected 'to a common theme' with some universal form underlying and explaining all variants, recorded and unrecorded, past, present and future, is not to know our own face in the glass. Just-so stories enjoy an even wider diffusion than dawn songs, but (unless we have acquired a taste for them) the least entertaining are those fabricated by scholars. How far back ought we to trace the pedigree of this book? It is to some extent a matter of taste. But the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seems a suitable time to begin. On the eve of May Day 1712, though scarcely with symbolic intent, Addison printed a version of a Lappish love-song in the Spectator, beginning: Thou rising sun whose gladsome ray Invites my fair to rural play, Dispel the mist and clear the skies, And bring my Orra to my eyes (Spectator, No. 366)

18

GENERAL SURVEY

The subject of the poem is a lover's search for his beloved at dawn, and it could therefore be included in this study only by courtesy. Yet Addison's comment in a letter addressed to Mr. Spectator is ancestral. 'I was agreeably surprised,' he writes, 'to find a spirit of tenderness and poetry in a region which I never suspected for delicacy.' The poem is from the Latin of Joh. Scheffer's Lapponia of 1673, and the following is a rendering of the opening of Donner's German version of the re-edited original: Sun, shine strongly over Lake Orri! I would climb to the tips of the spruces If only I could see Lake Orri And where my love walks hidden in the heather, I would lop off their twigs That grow here ever anew And all their little boughs lop off That bear fine buds of tender green; I would follow the path of the clouds That go towards Lake Orri Could I but fly there on the wings of crows.. Addison felt it necessary to 'bind it in stricter measures' though pretending to no greater praise for his re-translation 'than they who smooth and clean the furs of that country which have suffered by carriage'. Tastes have changed. Addison's versification is far more remote from us as poetry than a plain rendering of the Lappish text which comes to us through a third language. In any case, most of us are now agreed that if we are interested in exotic poetry for its own sake the surest way to ruin it is to cross-breed it with an alien metre.2 But Addison's appreciation of what Scheifer gave him of a Lapponian song at that early date is beyond all praise. Our No. 10 from Estonia was printed in 1693 in Kelch's Lieflandische Historia. It deals with a love-meeting that is to take place at dawn: 'It is Jiiri, Jtiri! May I come?' "Do not come, dear love! Why did you not come yesterday, my love? Yesterday, love, I was alone, Now I, tender sprig, am one of five. Come tomorrow, early — Then I shall be alone again. Run to me through the dew, Hasten through the cool at dorbeetle-time — Then I shall be waiting in the meadow, I, fair maid, driving out the herd." 1

Lieder der Lappen (1876), p. 117 (No. 5). Compare for example the effect of rendering Classical Near Eastern poets in 17th and 18th century English metres, which has been attempted in our own time. 8

INTRODUCTION

19

This no longer passes for a folk-song, but rather as an attempt by some educated person to write one.3 In 1745 Philipp Ruhig published, with apologies, two Lithuanian dainos in his Betrachtung der Littauischen Sprache, a work written primarily for missionary purposes. One of them is the delightful song we print as No. 3: Early, early in the morning The sun was rising And mother dear was sitting Below the glass window. "I must ask you, dear daughter, Where have you been roaming? Where did the mist fall On your pretty garland?" etc.

Lessing reprinted the songs in the Thirty-Third of his Briefe die neueste Litteratur betreffend(19th April 1759) and remarked: 'The pious man apologizes for having quoted such frivolities. So far as I am concerned he would have to apologize for not having quoted more.' These three love-songs situated at dawn, the Lappish, the Estonian and the Lithuanian, were all printed by Herder in his Alte Volkslieder of 1774. All three were to have reappeared in the Volkslieder of 1778-9 (now inaccurately styled 'Die Stimmen der Volker in Liedern'): but only the Lappish and Estonian songs do so. The Lithuanian song is found in the printer's manuscript in a much improved version. Of Herder's Volkslieder only one other poem is included in our collection — the verses from the shattered Norse 'Lay of Bjarki' (our Icelandic No. 2). They are marginal to our theme and were included chiefly for the words 'I wake you not to wine, nor to the whispers of women', with their characteristically 'Heroic' denial of our theme. The Lappish, Estonian and Lithuanian love-songs, quaintly grouped by Herder with totally dissimilar Icelandic strophes as 'Nordic', are seen to have been collected by curious German scholars born and bred on the eastern or western marches of their land, and then to have been handed round by writers like Addison, Lessing and Herder as though they were rare jewels. They all belong to the group of the dawn meeting (the Lappish specimen more remotely), a group whose widespread occurrence, I believe, was first recognised during the present enquiry. And they were collected from those parts within Europe in which folk traditions were still in full vigour. Herder did not classify his poems according to genres and seems not to have been aware that songs about the meeting or parting of lovers at dawn were likely to recur. Even he cannot have dreamed of the wealth of poetry which his great anthology would inspire others to collect, nor of the light that would be thrown in days to come on written and oral traditions of poetry. 3

See the Introduction to the Estonian section, p. 726 below.

20

GENERAL SURVEY

Although some outstanding collections of oral poetry were made in the following decades, the next important step in the direction of the present enquiry was taken in 1876 by Wilhelm Scherer, who was struck by the parallel between European songs of parting at dawn and a Chinese poem in the Jesuit Lacharme's rendering of the Shih Ching.* This was the more remarkable since it appeared to him in this form: Cantavit gallus; iam frequentes in regias aedes convenere. Fallor, non cantavit gallus, sed muscarum fuit strepitus. Ad orientem apparet aurora et in regiis aedibusfitconventus hominum. Fallor; non aurorae, sed lumen est orientis lunae. Insecta volando iam suum Hong, hong ingeminant. Tecum dormire juvat; sed prope est ut dimittatur conventus hominum, et tu propter me aliorum offensionem fortasse incurres. This famous poem, which we now print in a rendering twice revised by Dr. Waley since his memorable translation of the Shih Ching, might well attract attention, since here, two thousand years before Shakespeare, are found most of the essential themes of the scene in Romeo and Juliet in which the hero takes leave of the heroine after a night of love (III, v, see No. [321]): "The cock has crowed; The court by now is full." 'It was not the cock that crowed; It was the buzzing of those green flies.' "Eastward the sky is bright; The court is in full swing." 'It is not the light of dawn; It is the moon that is going to rise...' ( = our No. [3D Here are the conventional signs of dawn and the dialogue in which the lovers dispute their meaning. But the idea of perfect reciprocity in love that causes a sudden change of sides in Shakespeare's passage is lacking in the Chinese poem. Instead, there are some hints of a new wife's duty towards her husband. (In a sense the scene in Romeo and Juliet may also be taken as an after-wedding song, for the lovers have been married in secret.) Since Scherer noticed the ancient Chinese poem, an Egyptian song has come to light which takes us back another seven hundred years to the thirteenth century B.C. Though simpler in form, this song has a highly honoured place in our collection. We print it as our No. [I]. 6 After Scherer's discovery considerable interest in the exotic analogies of alba and 1

Confucii Chi-King sive Liber Carminum. Ex Latum P. Lacharme Interpretation. Edidlt Julius Mohl (1830), p. 40, Cap. 8. Cantilenae in Regno Tsi, Ode 1. Friedrich Rückert gave a verse-rendering in Schi-King. Chinesisches Liederbuch, gesammelt von Confucius, dem Deutschen angeeignet (1833), pp. 106-7 'Die Königin weckt den König'. * We are greatly indebted to the late Henri Frankfort, formerly Director of the Warburg Institute, • finding it.

INTRODUCTION

21

Tagelied was shown: by W. de Gruyter in a dissertation of 1887;® by his reviewer Gustav Roethe in 1890;7 by Alfred Jeanroy in his well-known work on the origins of the French lyric in 1889 (Jeanroy's Gallic pretensions spoil what otherwise might have been a masterpiece);8 and by his reviewer Gaston Paris in 1891-2.® In 1895 there was another dissertation, by G. Schlaeger.10 Great progress was made in that decade in assessing the nature of dawn partings in mediaeval European poetry. The final impetus towards making the present collection and study came from Dr. Arthur Waley's annotated translation of the Shih Ching, which he entitles 'The Book of Songs' (1937). Here the analogy between the two dawn songs of the Shih Ching (Nos. [2] and [3]) and the European alba is briefly and effectively discussed from a point of view that begs no questions. In his unexpectedly rich collections of tribal poetry from India, Dr. Verrier Elwin acknowledges his debt to the 'Book of Songs', and for his own part shows himself well aware of the parallels between dawn poems in English and those in tribal Indian dialects.11 In all these more recent works the standard of comparison has been the song about lovers who part at dawn. This indeed is probably the most widespread type and the one with the greatest literary potentialities. But as our collection advanced it was seen that it would be wrong to adhere rigidly to this formula. In Spanish poetry, as Professor E. M. Wilson has so convincingly shown, lovers parted at dawn only since the end of the fifteenth century. Before then (so far so the records go) they met at dawn. Not to widen the search to admit this and striking parallels elsewhere would clearly have reduced our chances of understanding either convention. In Indian tradition lovers renewed their embraces at dawn, or said goodbye, or errant husbands parted from their mistresses and met their angry wives at dawn in their lawful beds (Nos. [61-2]): "You have been awakened by the crowing of the cock, and are fearful, (thinking) that you have spent the night in a stranger's house. Now embrace your beloved! Do not be afraid in your own home!" There is also the Indian scene surveyed from the sky at dawn as the sun or a god might view it, when plants and animals that live by day begin to stir, and lovers everywhere go home. Were we to cut into this varied tradition of dawn poetry and isolate those of apparently European type? We thought not. To have done so would have placed these poems in a false light, as perusal of the Indian section will show. It was advisable first to see and understand the poems in the context of their own tradition, and only then compare them with traditions farther afield. This has added greatly to the variety of our selection, a result with which few will • Of the University of Leipsic. Anzeigerfiir deutsches Altertum, XVI (1890), pp. 75ff. 8 Les origines de la Poésie lyrique en France au Moyen Âge. • Journal des Savants, Nov. Dec. 1891, March, July 1892. 10 Of the University of Jena. 11 See Verrier Elwin and Shamrao Hivale, Folk-Songs of the Maikal Hills (1944), p. 171. 7

22

GENERAL SURVEY

quarrel. Another and fundamental source of variety was our wish to study the theme in all its aspects, literary and oral, ritual, sacred and profane, lyrical, dramatic, narrative and epigrammatic, musical and pictorial. In our collection, then, there are songs and poems of sad or reluctant farewells in authorised, forbidden or neutral circumstances; partings after passion renewed; partings from spirit lovers at the crowing of the cock; soldiers' and convicts' farewells; errant lovers returning; lovers meeting; after-wedding songs; and mystic bridals at dawn. But the waking of a sleeper with a song at the window or door — the aubade or mattinata — has been excluded. On the other hand, poems of long loveless nights have sometimes been accepted where their traditions were closely involved with our theme, or where, as in Burma, they offered the nearest approach to it that convention would allow. Before more general questions are considered the various traditions of poetry must be examined in order to discover how far they favoured our theme and whether their dawn poetry ever crystallized into a genre. I will take them in the order of the collection.

Chapter 2

A SURVEY

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN

From Ancient Egypt there is but one specimen. It is of almost sensational antiquity (13th century B.C.). As in Greece and Italy to-day the morning bird is the swallow. A happy girl resents its chattering as in many a poem to come.1 Historically this poem may be remote, yet, in what looks very much like a stylised opening, it is familiar (No. 1). CHINESE

In the earliest dawn songs in Chinese there are traces of stylisation such as might be expected in originally ritual poetry cultivated by a rustic nobility. Compare the openings The lady says: "The cock has crowed"; The knight says: 'Day has not dawned'.

(No. 1)

"The cock has crowed; The court by now is full". 'It is not the cock that crowed...'

(No. 2)

These songs are thought to be after-wedding songs.8 There is a poem of the 4th century A.D. with two well-marked motifs in its brief four lines: the threat to kill the cock, and the wish that the movements of the heavenly bodies should be retarded in order to prolong the night (No. 3). A 6th century poem is based on similar motifs (No. 5). Serious Chinese poetry shows only a passing interest in the theme. Whatever may have been lost in transmission, nine poems from the storehouse of the oldest living civilisation are not many. In the later poems it is always the sadness of parting that has interested the poet, sadness attenuated to the rarity of mist and cloud in a poem by Po Chu-i (No. 6). The theme was used with the effect of a leitmotif in at least one lyrical drama (pp. 97 f.). 1

Cf. Nos. [163], [164]; [177]; [270-3], ' Dr. Waley's 'guess' (see p. 107, below) receives support from comparison with a Balkan afterwedding song (see p. 65).

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JAPANESE

A genre was evolved in Japan by the 8th century at the latest, a genre so well-marked that it came to have its own name of kinu-ginu ('helping each other to dress'). The theme could be set in poetry competitions. In keeping with the brevity of their form (i/ia, hokku and wakiku) and with the general spirit of Japanese love-poetry, kinu-ginu poems tend to be retrospective and nostalgic, with a growing inclination towards wit and epigram as the form became briefer, and the more romantic potentialities were exhausted. This is an entirely aristocratic affair. Among the themes used is the threat to kill the cock, which goes back to mythological poetry of the early 8th century A.D. (In one poem the cock is killed, and a fine feather is appended to a letter to say so — No. 15). The theme of the dawn parting has been traced in some latterday folk songs. There is a technical term for the bird of parting — wakare no tori. KOREAN

The theme of parting at dawn occurs at intervals in the history of Korean poetry but a genre was not evolved. Indeed, the conventional time of day for a lovers' parting was sunset, not sunrise. On the other hand, sunrise — when the lone wild goose cries in passage overhead or the cuckoo sings with choking voice — provides a typical setting for a lonely and wistful lover. A poem dated post 1400 A.D. in which a lover implores the cock not to crow, though natural enough, seems isolated from all poetic convention (No. 2): it was the cock's rôle to rouse amorous dreams when lovers slept in lonely beds, not to wake them after a night together. Nevertheless the wish that the weasel should kill the cock is known from a modern folk song (p. 129). One of our songs is popular in style. The other two are sizo, a form widely appreciated by high and low. MONGOL

Three versions built up by incremental repetition on essentially the same theme show that the a/èa-convention is established in Mongolia, although in the conditional mood. There is a reference to a young man's horse, to a fox or wolf skin spread, and then we have the girl's words : "If your love is true, go only when the dawn has broken". A refrain 'Oh poor Siiileng', common to all three versions, gives this lovely song an air of unresolved lament — we do not learn whether her man was true. Content and technique seem to owe nothing to the dawn poetry of long-established neighbours. TURKIC

Ottoman has yielded nothing to our enquiries. A stylized antiphonal alba from a Baraba Tatar epic-romance suggests that a genre may have been known (although antiphonal songs are widespread among the Turkic tribes). The themes of the meeting and parting at dawn are known to the Chuvash who have been long exposed to the influence of the Finno-Ugrians, with whom they share the institution of the evening spinnery.

A SURVEY

25

BURMESE

Our theme is absent from Burmese poetry. As though to make up for it, there is a sharply defined genre of poems by highborn ladies that deal with long nights of vain waiting for a lover, till the cock or the palace gong announces the dawn. It seems that poets' doubts about the evocative power of words and a rare delicacy of feeling in amatory matters, conspired to discourage the writing of love-poetry judged in any way indiscreet. SIAMESE

The theme of parting at dawn is well marked in Siamese poetry and is stylised in both lyric and epic. But a distinct genre did not emerge. In narrative passages the dawn is described at length and with great sensibility. Surprised and shocked by the dawn, the lover experiences great difficulty in leaving: but his beloved mingles her tears with fear and suspicion that he may not return. So far, the theme has not been found in folk-songs. INDIAN

Indian poets had a deep and varied interest in our theme. As many as four kinds of dawn poem have been recognised by Professor Basham in Sanskrit alone. In them certain elements recur: the sun or morning breeze that wakes the lotuses and the jasmine, scattering pollen through the air; the long 'anger' of doe-eyed girls with their errant lords; women returning at dawn, weary from the toil of love. Yet the poet's sympathy with the mood of nature at dawn, its sights, sounds and fragrances — so vivdly sensed, so dispassionately expressed — often absorbs our interest in persons, so that we are somehow deceived of our rational knowledge that this is a manipulation of a traditional genre. Only occasionally are we reminded of poems from other countries — by the cock's 'fearless' throat (a concealed threat of murder made plain by our Frontispiece) or by a reference to dawn, 'divider of lovers'. In the Sanskritic vernaculars the conventions harden to a degree perhaps best gauged from the setting apart of two or three special dawn ragas* or musical modes for the singing of dawn songs.4 There are also numerous pictorial representations of lovers at dawn, but they are to be viewed not as illustrations of the poems but of the ragas\ after which, new poems describing the moods and attributes of dawn ragas were composed and inscribed on their illustrations.5 Apart from excerpts from narrative poems the Prakrit and Sanskrit specimens are in the short siikti or epigram. In them there is no trace of ritual or folk-song, whether they ultimately descend from such a source or not. Nor is it possible to relate them to a tradition in Tamil. There is a very remarkable poem in Tamil which may be * Properly speaking raginis, for they are feminine. See the Note on this topic by Dr. Arnold Bake; The Indian Section, VII: 'The Classical Indian Dawn Modes', p. 157, below. 6 See The Indian Section, VI: 'Dawn Motifs in Indian Painting', by Mr. Douglas Barrett, p. 155, below. 4

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older than any of those in the Aryan languages of India, but it is altogether different in subject-matter and style (No. 1). In Vaishnavite poetry of the 14th and 15th centuries, which portrays the Soul's love of God by means of the profane analogy, dawn poems are not rare. How are we to assess the dawn songs of the poor and technically backward Indian tribes, which are at times quite mature in their treatment of our theme? Is it possible that India's ancient tradition of literature of whatever tongue has left them unaffected? Those who know them best affirm it,8 and as far as our theme is concerned the claim is fully borne out, since I have failed to find anything either in subject or in treatment in our literary poems that would permit them to be regarded as even remote models for the tribal songs. Tribal dawn songs are easily recognisable: one has a dawn refrain (No. 42); another expresses the wish that the sun could delay its rising, in a way more reminiscent of a Hellenic or Renaissance Latin poet than of an educated Indian poet of any age (No. 46); a third parodies our theme (No. 47). MALAY (INDONESIA)

The virtual absence from Indonesian poetry in Malay of poems situated at dawn is thought to be due to the discouragement of improper behaviour and its portrayal in the arts following the conversion to Islam and its unique fusion with some of the established cultures of Indonesia. Reference to the Arabic section below (pp. 215ff.) will show that avoidance of erotic themes, among them the subject of the present study, was not an inevitable accompaniment of Islamic religion and culture. Her Excellency Mme. Subandrio has ingeniously strung together some existing pantun in the traditional manner to the theme set by our investigation, as it might have been done impromptu at a party (No. 1). MALAY (MALAYSIA)

Our theme is scarcely known. Five poems with no marked affinities have been collected, and Sir Richard Winstedt draws attention to a poem giving a general picture of events at dawn (not unlike Ovid's — Classical Latin No. 1), in which it is assumed as a matter of course that truant youths are on their way home (p. 199). (On the other hand, a well-marked specimen comes from the Land Dyaks of Sarawak.) HEBREW

The Egyptian song mentioned above reminded its translator' of a passage in the 'Song of Songs' (2:12,13), though not because the latter provided a 'dawn' context. Yet it happens that this same passage was misunderstood by many Christians until well after the days of the Authorised Version as an invitation to love 'till the day break and the shadows flee away'. Professor Segal shows that this ought to read 'till • Dr. Elwin and Mr. Archer in personal communications. The contributor for Egyptian, Professor John A. Wilson, in his original translation in Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament, Ed. J. B. Pritchard (1950), p. 468. 7

A SURVEY

27

the day breathe and the shadows (of day) flee', that is till evening, not till dawn. We have to turn from the Hebrew of the Bible to that of Muslim Spain to find dawn songs. They occur at a time when Jewish poets were beginning to adapt the magnificent language of the Old Testament to secular use (no very difficult task so far as the 'Song of Songs' was concerned). Thus there is a unique poem by Solomon ibn Gabirol (No. 3) : from one angle it is sacred, from another profane. The profane and erotic aspect is based upon Arabic models, the sacred aspect is Biblical, with the Return from Exile symbolised by the Dawn. Solomon was followed by Judah haLevi (No. 4). Unfortunately too few poems have survived for us to judge whether or not there was a genre. ARABIC

The Arabic tradition of love-poetry is of particular interest to European scholars because the view has been advanced persuasively though not convincingly that the Provençal lyric (itself once thought to be the mother of all) was more or less inspired by it. As we have shown elsewhere (p. 76), this view finds no support in a scrutiny of dawn poetry. There is no special genre of dawn poetry in Arabic in the sense that there is in Provençal. The motif is of fairly frequent occurrence but is nevertheless of minor importance in Arabic poetry. It dates from the post-Islamic urban poetry of the Hijaz, that is, from the 7th century. In pre-Islamic poetry there is the theme of the parting of tribes (and so of lovers) as camps are struck at dawn; though no example of a lovers' parting situated at dawn is known to Professor Lewis and Dr. Stern. There is also the theme of the phantom of the beloved that vanishes at dawn. Both occur in the nasib or erotic prelude to the qaçïda (pp. 215ff.) and are of major importance in Arabic poetry. Dawn partings continue from the Umayyad (Nos. 1-9) to the 'Abbasid period (Nos. 10-21) and beyond (Nos. 31 and 32) with but little modification apart from fashions in style and treatment, like those occasioned by the Caliphate of 'Umar (which led to a platonisation of love-poetry — "Udhri love'), or by the artistic embroidering of themes with conceits and images under the 'Abbâsids (Nos. 11-16). This is also true of the dawn poetry of Muslim Spain (Nos. 22-30). In the earlier poetry there is some romantic sentiment and a tendency to dwell on the sadness of parting (Nos. 1-5; 7-9): in the later the subject may be treated epigrammatically or in a lapidary style. Dawn imagery is listed in at least two treasuries of conceits (p. 222). Heroic and romantic elements such as are found in most aristocratic albas and tageliet soon evaporate from the urban tradition. This is underlined by the addition of the wine-bottle or by its utterly usurping the place of the beloved (Nos. 20, 29 and 31, and see p. 221). In the popular manner of Ibn Quzmàn of Andalusia our theme is parodied to enhance a panegyric effect (No. 33). The theme of the long-awaited or reluctant dawn is highly developed, as in the Galician cantigas d'amigo, though naturally in a very different way, and it is the man who waits for dawn. (Here one recalls the refrain

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Edoi lelia doura from a song on the long night by Pedro Eanes Solaz (Nunes ccxxxvi) where lelia surely contains the Arabic for 'night' — laylV) PERSIAN

Surprisingly, all that has been noticed is a well-formed lyrical poem and a passage from epic poetry. ARMENIAN

A genre of dawn poems was established of which seven highly wrought specimens survive from the hand of a single poet. CLASSICAL GREEK

Three kinds of dawn poems are discernible in the poetry of the ancient Hellenic area: songs of the swallow, those in the tradition of 'Lokrian' songs, and late Hellenic epigrams. We have no more than a fragment of Sappho's complaint about the swallow (No. 2): but there are two other poems (in which the situation is sublimated in dreams) to show that the theme was established (Nos. 3 and 4). The sole surviving Lokrian song of any sort happens to be a dawn song (No. 5). It is a popular song rather than a folk-song. It deals with a bourgeois intrigue in which the cuckold is referred to less elegantly than the mediaeval French jaloux as 'that man', though with the same studied imprecision. Writing in 220 A.D. (by which time they had been established for some centuries) Athenaeus observes that Lokrian songs could be heard in abundance in Phoenicia. Is it a coincidence that the earliest dawn epigrams in Greek are those of Meleager of Gadara, who lived most of his life in Tyre (d. circa 70 B.C.)? His poems are already so highly stylised — three begin with 8p0po O. E. Eostrx, cf *Auziwandalaz > O. E. éarendel = 'Morning Star' or 'Early Dawn') • See pp. 272, 293f. and 508, below. « See p. 255, below. • See p. 141. 5 P. 659. 4 Pp. 420f.

MYTHOLOGY

71

and Baits (Lith. auSrd). Wherever we find a myth attached to her name she is conceived as a beautiful young woman. But if there were myths of the Dawn common to the Indo-European tribes when they were living in their ancestral homelands, there probably never was a time when it was in the power of scholars to reconstruct them, had they wished to do so. Leaving the Indo-European-speaking Latvians and crossing into Finno-Ugrian Estonia we find a very different mythology, despite the close contacts of recent millenia and some secondary overlapping. In Estonia the Dawn or Morning Star is no beautiful young woman, but a very old man. He wakes the Sun in the morning and goes with her to show her the way. When they arrive at the end of their day's journey he commends the Sun to the care of Evening or of the Evening Star, a young maiden who makes the Sun's bed for her. The two servants fall in love and kiss during the summer-solstice. Far from being gods they are humble mortals raised to the sky to serve the Sun.7 Dr. Loorits connects the story with Altaic and ultimately Chinese astronomy. 8 This myth about the annual meeting of two stars recalls in a general way the myth of the Japanese Feast of Tanabata, which also came from China. Here the two stars are fixed stars (which simplifies the problem of their movements), aPy Aquilae and Vega. They, Oxherd and Weaver Maid, were doomed by the Ruler of Heaven to live on opposite shores of the Heavenly River or Milky Way, and allowed to meet only once a year, on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Month, the date of this Autumn Festival. There are no less than a hundred-and-twenty poems on Seventh Night in the Manydshu, written in the period when the Chinese myth was being assimilated. This is the night When the celestial lovers meet To undo, the one for the other, Their girdles of Koma brocade Ah, that rapture of the skies! • It would be strange if among the many poems about the Oxherd and the Weaver Maid there were not one in which these famous lovers did not do up each others' girdles in kinu-ginu fashion,10 since as stars they must assuredly fade and part at dawn: but we have not had the good fortune to find one. In the Japanese Kojiki or 'Records of Ancient Matters' (completed 712 A.D.) we read how the Deity of Eight Thousand Spears woos the Princess of Nuna-Kaha in Koshi. Arriving before her house he sang: ' O. Loorits, Grundziige cles estnischen Volksglaubens (= Skrifter utgivna av kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademienfor Folklivsforskning, 18:1) I (1949), pp. 535ff. The movements of Venus are, however, not such as would enable the Morning and Evening Stars to 'kiss' at every summer solstice. 8 See below, p. 721. 9 The Manydshu. One Thousand Poems, selected and translated from the Japanese. Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai (1940), No. 924 = K.T. X 2091. I am indebted to Dr. Waley for naming the stars. 10 See the Introduction to the Japanese poems, p. 114, below.

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Without having yet untied even the cord of my sword, Without having yet untied even my veil, I push back the plank door shut by the maiden; While I am standing here I pull it forward. While I am standing here the nuye sings upon the green mountain11 And the voice of the true bird of the moor, the pheasant resounds; The bird of the yard, the cock, crows. Oh the pity that the birds should sing! Oh these birds! Would that I could beat them till they were sick!" The Princess sings a reply in which she tells the god to be patient. In a second strophe she sings: When the sun shall hide behind the green mountains, In the night black as the true jewels of the moor, I will come forth. Coming radiant with smiles like the morning sun, Thine arms white as rope of paper mulberry bark Shall sofdy pat my breast, soft as the melting snow. The poems on the theme of parting at dawn collected in the Manyoshu some fifty years after the Kojiki are already courtly and stylised (our Nos. 1-6). But we do not meet with the threat to the cock again until the following century, in the Ise Monogatari (No. 7). In a non-Sanskritic myth of the Bondo hillmen of India, boys and girls were unable to rest from their love-toil until the cock was born crowing from a mushroom so that the Sun, in the shape of a Black Bull, broke his tether and leapt into the sky. 13 Such are the myths of love and the dawn which have been collected in the normal course of compiling and interpreting our poems. It would have lead too far afield to make a special search for erotic dawn myths as such, since the widespread identification of sun and moon, dawn and sunset, morning and evening stars with members of the Oedipal family and their various incests, would have assured us of a quite unmanageable harvest. Accordingly no such search was made. On the whole one would expect myths to reflect prevailing customs as far as meetings and partings at dawn are concerned, rather than that they should be an independent source of dawn poetry. Indeed, the human element is easily recognized in the foregoing examples.

11

The nuye (sometimes written nuS) is the 'night-thrush', a sad bird. " B. H. Chamberlain, "Ko-ji-ki" or Records of Ancient Matters (— Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan-, Supplement to Vol. X (1882), Section XXIV), 2nd edition with annotations by W. G. Aston (1932), who renders 'Oh the pity' as 'How annoying!' and suggests as a valid alternative to 'till they were sick*: 'till they stopped', u See p. 150, below.

Chapter 5

T H E CRYSTALLIZATION A N D D I F F U S I O N O F SOME DAWN T H E M E S

Only in a few cases is it possible to trace the diffusion of themes which recur in this work. The most obvious and notable case is the diffusion of the Provençal alba. Traditional influence of the alba is perceptible in Northern France, in England, Scotland and Wales and of course the United States, and thence in Liberia; in Italy, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the western fringes of the Slav world — Slovenia, Croatia, old Bohemia, possibly in the Carpathians, certainly in German-speaking Transylvania, and in Polish-speaking Silesia. The influence of the alba on songs and poems in the native tongues of the Iberian Peninsula has not been proved. Renaissance learning has carried several dawn themes of the Greek Anthology either direct from the originals (as far as they were then known) or through the mediation of Ovid, from Italy to France, Spain, Great Britain, Holland and the German-speaking world: the invocation of dawn or of the evening and morning star; Zeus's prolongation of the night with Alcmene. A traditional song of wooing beside the water with a transparent excuse for tarrying ('a drake muddied the water') has been found in Portugal, France (especially Gascony and Brittany), Lithuania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The centre of diffusion is unknown.1 The Iberian song of a meeting at dawn may have influenced a native Quechua tradition in Peru. 2 An ancient ballad of the spirit-lover who must return to the Other World at cockcrow has left easily recognizable variants in the Edda, in the Danish folkeviser and in the English and Scottish ballads.3 Some established dawn imagery has been inherited from mediaeval Indian poets by the Siamese.4 Apart from very minor and occasional borrowing (like the possibly German parting at dawn while the nightingale sings, in contrast to the established native tradition of dawn-meetings in Lithuania, our No. [434]), this summarizes all the movement that can be traced reliably. 1 See p. • See p. » See p. 4 See p.

84, below. 762, below. 558 and p. 562, below. 188, below.

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Important as several of these influences are, they quite fail to account for some of our most striking parallels — the threat to murder the cock, the identification of one or other of the lovers with dawn, the dispute as to the nearness of dawn, the wooing of girls at dawn beside the water (without the added motif of the transparent excuse). Any attempt to explain these motifs in terms of diffusion from a single source leads to absurdities. 1. 'KILL THE COCK'

The threat to kill or harm the cock occurs in Hellenic Syria c. 90 B.C. (our No. 9), in China in the 5th and 20th centuries A.D. (Nos. 3 and 9), in Japan in the early 8th, the 9th and 11th centuries (Nos. 7 and 15, and p. 72), in Korea in the 20th century (p. 129), in India by implication in the 11th century (No. 17) and pictorially c. 1600 A.D. (see the Frontispiece), in Armenia in the 16th century (Nos. 5 and 6), in Russia in the 19th century (No. 4) and in Peru in the 20th century (No. 4). If we assume 'monogenesis' in this case we are at once overwhelmed by the many and conflicting explanations which are in theory possible: that the threat to kill the cock (like so many other decorative contrivances) came from China and spread east to Japan and west to India and Greece and so to Orthodox Russia (and from there perhaps to Peru by several routes among which it would be fastidious to choose); or that it originated in or near India (like the domesticated cock himself) and travelled east and west; or in Greece, and travelled east and north: and so on. When we weigh these possibilities one against the other the sole result is our embarrassment, for there is no evidence to incline us towards any theory in particular and we are left with the assumption of monogenesis as an article of faith. Moreover, is one to think in terms of oral or scribal transmission, or of both, as convenient? If oral, the matter becomes at once intangible; if scribal, it must be remembered that such major questions as the influence of Greek upon Indian literature up to the Hellenist period are of very uncertain issue, even in the great field of drama, let alone minor genres of poetry.6 In any case the assumption that a good idea can occur originally only once in the lifetime of the world is not one that recommends itself to those who read at all curiously. Perhaps the assumption is truer of erratic ideas (like that of monogenesis) than of ideas that hit the mark? Moreover, if the theory of the monogenesis of cultural acquisitions is itself a good idea (as no doubt it was thought to be) there is a touch of Hegelian arrogance in the proposition that the idea of monogenesis could have occurred only to one person and was then diffused. This idea in its dogmatic form would in fact seem to occur polygenetically in the folklore of folklorists. A more profitable line of enquiry is to ask ourselves whether those ideas are really so original after all in the traditions of dawn poetry that we know. Poets have original ideas: but only relatively so. Those poets who have absolutely original ideas would sooner or later have to be classed as mad, as indeed some are. 6

See p. 145, below.

THE CRYSTALLIZATION AND DIFFUSION OF SOME DAWN THEMES

75

The idea that a lover should threaten with death the cock who separates him from his mistress is striking and pleasing at the first hearing, not least because we readily understand it. In a flash of intuition which may be compared to a chain-reaction we traverse a nexus of ideas to their source. The links of this chain grow out of one another so naturally that it is quite perverse to set them down in order, yet this must be done: 1) How delightful to be in bed at night with one's mistress! 2) How hateful that it must end at dawn! 3) How hateful the signs of dawn! 4) How hateful that live herald of dawn! 5) Kill him! If poems and songs of dawn-partings are widespread (and they are); if the parting is conceived as an unwelcome event (and it often is); and if the cock is a common herald of dawn (and he is) : then the lover's threat is likely to recur (and it does). Under similar conditions similar chains of motivation will be formed. But this is not to say that poems in which cocks are threatened with death grew in five separate stages! The wit of man — and illiterate peasants, too, are human — moves somewhat faster. With this warning example of how various peoples of various periods can hit on the same idea, we can safely turn to some other recurrent themes. The diffusion of the alba is a matter of precise literary history (section 2). The widespread songs of wooing by the water at dawn on the other hand must have arisen independently (section 3). But when this theme is linked with the motif of the ironically transparent excuse, we are inclined to assume diffusion from a centre (section 4). These will be treated in turn below. 2.

THE ALBA

The type of poem in which lovers are awakened by the watchman's singing or by his playing on bag-pipe or horn is of especial interest to the European scholar, since its elaborate convention emerged already fully developed during the earlier known history of Provençal courtly poetry, and it came to be widely imitated. The further refinement that the watchman favours the illicit amours of his master's lady — on condition that her love for her knight be 'true' — may well have been introduced in the course of the 12th century, but we have no means of knowing this ; for most extant albas are undatable. But whatever its early history, the alba presents one of the most highly specialized kinds of dawn poetry in the world. The alba convention was well suited to the requirements of feudal poets, and to their code of love. The erratic crowings of the cock were beneath the notice of the nobility for both military and social reasons, and its rôle in poetry and art as the symbol of the wakeful conscience made its avoidance in courtly songs of forbidden love complete.6 On the other hand the watchman was the official herald of dawn in feudal society and had sufficient prestige as warden of the castle at night and as a distant relation of the Watchman on the walls of Zion, to throw a mantle of seemliness — in poetry — over love-affairs that gained his approval.7 • 7

See pp. 277f. and p. 431, below. See Nos. [239], [244], [245], [285], [286].

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It is unlikely that we shall ever know how the first albas with watchman came to be written. But of one thing we may be sure. If the alba continued a tradition of dawn songs which instead of the watchman had a bird or the morning star for herald, it was quite inevitable that these should have been replaced by the watchman whose business in life it was to diagnose those signs : 'inevitable' not because he does in fact appear in this rôle in the extant poems, but because the reasons why he does so are so very clear. Scholars have proposed two different 'origins' for the watchman of the Provençal alba: the Islamic muezzin and the Christian watchman of certain hymns and secular songs devoid of erotic interest. Among those who favour the derivation of the Provençal love-song altogether from Andalusian models some have naturally claimed the muezzin on his minaret at dawn as the prototype of the watchman on his keep. But although our collection contains examples of lovers awakened by muezzin or hodia (examples which were not adduced by the propounders of the theory, who produced none), examination of the circumstances shows this derivation to be most improbable. In all but one of them (i.e. in our Nos. [130], [157], and [379n]) the call to prayer wakens lovers who are not of the Muslim faith. In the Balkan poems the hodza is almost a figure of fun : 'The cows are lowing around the house' — "They are not cows but dragons" — 'The Turks are calling on the mosque' — "They are not Turks, they are wolves, sleep awhile my lamb ..." (our Yugoslav No. 4). The Armenian poet Qouchak Nahapet (K'uô'ag Nahabed) is more outspoken: When the muezzin calls to the mosque the lover trembles. Mullah, you have shouted enough. We know it dawns. I am going to pray to God to transfer all my troubles to you! (No. [157]) Though perhaps Christians ought to be at matins, it is not their affair. It leaves them cold, or angered by the disturbance. But, judging by our one example from the Islamic world, it leaves a Muslim shocked: The caller cried 'To Prayer', frightening us, So that the whole night passed for no use.

(No. [130])

This suggests that if the alba was inspired by models in Andalusia at all, it will have been through Mozarabic models in which the muezziris call may have been sensed as no more than a typical outside disturbance, not a call of the Faithful to prayer. But even this will not give us the heart of the alba. For in the alba, before the watchman became his friend, a lover risked his life in another man's castle to make love to one of his ladies, possibly to his wife. The man who might detect him was the one who cried the dawn: the watchman. Further, by great good fortune there are four Mozarabic dawn songs extant (Iberian Nos. la-d); but there is nothing in them to suggest the waking of lovers by the muezzin. Only in one, indeed, is there any question of a night of love, and the text has three corruptions which make a final interpretation impossible (No. Id). Nevertheless, this poem comes nearest of all four to the Proven-

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77

çal convention, since there is talk of the lover ('dawn') fooling the spy or watcher (raqlb). The other three seem to fit into the general tradition of Iberian dawn poems until the end of the 15th century, according to which lovers meet, not part. 8 Finally, we note that the unique Muslim poem on the theme comes from the area of Baghdad towards the eastern end of the Arabic-speaking Muslim world, while the area suggested for borrowing is Andalusia, in the west. The other theory, that the alba descends from hymns, religious albas and even secular watchman's songs without love-interest, cannot be discussed without reference to the famous 10th century bilingual poem Phoebi claro nondum orto jubare (our Mediaeval Latin No. 8). This poem consists of three Latin strophes on the coming of dawn, followed in each case by an alba refrain in a southern Romance dialect which is not further locatable.9 Some scholars take the poem to be a love-poem, among them Miss Helen Waddell, whose beautiful verse rendering all but persuades us that it is so, so long as we are reading it.10 Others, and they include scholars who give proof of having studied the whole question of sacred and profane matutinal poetry in detail, claim it as a morning hymn or sacred alba.11 Those who interpret the song as a love-poem recognize the look-out as that same friend of lovers who appears in the more highly developed secular Provençal albas (e.g. our Nos. 3, 8); the 'slothful', and those who lie 'unaware' and 'heavy with sleep', as the lovers; and the ambush of the enemy as the wiles of the injured husband's spies and eavesdroppers. But it must be admitted, if this is so, that the language is no nearer to its original than is the language of allegory. To this may be added the argument put forward above,12 that no early alba refrain can be judged in isolation; for the existence of erotic a/èa-refrains in two so divergent Romance traditions of love-poetry as the Provençal and the Iberian, suggests that the association of the dawn with love is of some antiquity in the Romanic world. Religious alba refrains on the other hand cannot be taken back so far, since apart from a possible Mozarabic example alba, alba es(7)de... luz enuno dia,1S they are restricted to the Provençal tradition, and are entirely lacking in all-Latin hymns. The a/èa-refrain of the present song, which is at least a hundred and fifty years older than all other datable examples, therefore has a prior to be tested as an erotic refrain or as an elaboration of one, despite all pre-conceived notions that erotic albas could not possibly have existed at this time. Since, however, there is no explicit mention of the lovers in the text (pigris, incautos, torpentes remain incurably ambiguous), contemporary listeners could have 8

See pp. 301 f. Seep. 354. 10 Mediaeval Latin Love Lyrics (1929). 11 Thus Laistner, Germania, XXVI (1881), pp. 415ff.; Roethe, Anzeigerfur deutsches Altertum, XVI (1890), p. 86; Schlaeger, Studien iiber das Tagelied{1895), p. 78; Ruggieri, "Per le origini dell* alba", Cultura neolatina. III (1943), pp. 191 ff. " P. 34. " See p. 300, below. I quote Dr. Stern's emended version. (Dr. Stern in 1964 is more certain than he was in 1957 that in its Arabic setting this phrase refers to a festival. Ibn Quzmàn might nevertheless be quoting a Mozarabic refrain that refers to Easter. See Professor E. M. Wilson's remarks on p. 303, below.) •

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recognised the poem as a love-poem only because the vernacular refrain, from habitual association, told them so. But a most awkward difficulty, to my mind, is that the sympathetic watchman is probably a relatively later development within the Provençal alba tradition, dependent on the code of amor cortois, of which there are no signs in the 10th century anywhere. The case of those who favour its interpretation as a lovepoem thus rests entirely on stylistic intuitions which cannot be made explicit in argument. On the other hand the language used in the Latin strophes is of a kind frequently met with in morning hymns.14 The parallel between its martial terminology and that of the Modena song16 can be safely discounted, since the Ambush and Snares of the Satanic Host at Night from which Light delivers the Sleepers are a common-place of such hymns.16 Even more critical are pigris (slothful) and torpentes (heavy with sleep). If these apply to lovers, they are the only slothful lovers in a world collection of dawn poetry: the 'sleep' of lovers at dawn is otherwise very light, or just a way of saying something else. It is so light that the soft rays of the morning-star, even the faint dust of the Pleiades may break it! The sleep of the heavy, slothful sleepers of this song is something other than this. It is the Sleep of Sin. In agreement, the word for Watchman is spiculator,17 that is, speculator, which is used in the Vulgate for the Watchman on the walls of Zion (Isaiah 52:8 and Ezekiel 3:17). Thus if Phoebi claro owes anything to a vernacular love song this needs only to have been its refrain. It would have to be interpreted as yet another gloss on an erotic dawn theme a lo divino, for unquestioned examples of which readers are referred to other sections.18 Yet if the song is to be regarded as a religious parody with a refrain taken from a love-song, one could not argue from this that there were at this time secular and erotic albas with a watchman as waker. A widespread Romance a/èû-refrain in love-poetry will certainly have antedated the earliest Provençal alba with watchman;19 so that even if we concede that Phoebi claro is a religious parody of a secular and erotic theme, we have no legitimate means of importing a watchman into it from love-poetry. If on the other hand it is a straightforward morning hymn with ana/èo-refrain which was taken, stylised or not, from a watchman's ditty of real life (such as I have quoted for Germany)20 it follows that there were refrains in existence which, when the time was ripe, could also be woven into vernacular love-songs as a typical disturbance at dawn, no doubt together with the man who uttered them, the Watchman. We might also understand from this song how a poet could eventually use the watchman as a mouthpiece for his views on love, as the bilingual poet does for his views on Light and Darkness : for even if the Watcher's speech ends at 'Surgjte', the rest of the poem adopts his point of view. 14 15

"

17 18 14 ,0

See the works referred to in footnote 11 above. A. Roncaglia, "II 'canto delle scolte modanesi'", Cultura neolatina, VIH (1948), pp. 5ff. Cf. Nos. [192], [193c]. Line 3. The Iberian, Nos. [217], [233], p. 320; and the German, p. 439. See p. 34, above. P. 434n, below.

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It ought to be clear that it is quite impossible to derive an erotic genre like the alba or any character in it from a chaste genre like the dawn hymn, or the latter from the former. Why should chastity and hope of the new day turn to romantic adultery and sadness at parting in poetry — a sphere in which standards are easily maintained and self-denial costs no more than the paper it is written on? All that we learn from this fine and intriguing song is that the Watchman was a figure with literary possibilities, and that û/èa-refrains were already current in Romance in the 10th century. It would be useless to extend the enquiry to other Latin hymns of dawn, with or without a sacred watchman, for they are all very much more remote from the profane alba than is Phoebi claro.21 The watchman of the secular alba is derived as little from the sacred type as he was from the muezzin. But we may be sure that the sacred watchman fortified the secular in course of time, as he was fortified by him. Here it would be wrong to overlook a Provençal alba (our No. [237]) and a Middle High German tageliet (No. [280]) whose combined evidence may be useful, since they show certain correspondences. The alba is situated in the open air beneath a hawthorn, one of several trees under which lovers meet in Provençal and Old French poetry.22 Nevertheless the lovers are roused by the Watchman's cry and by his piping, which there is no reason to suppose were intended for them. The a/ôa-refrain expresses the lovers' sorrow at having to part: it does not render the Watchman's cry, although on three occasions it follows mention of the Watchman. All this time the birds are singing. Whilst noting that the simplicity of this alba suggests a relatively early date, Professor Woledge does not exclude the possibility that it was written as late as the 13th century.23 There is no difficulty, however, in dating the tageliet within a decade or two. It can scarcely be later than 1165; nor does it owe anything to any known alba or aube. At the most it may owe a certain suggestion of 'love as service' to French courtesy. But in every major respect it can be interpreted as an authentic product of the native AustroBavarian tradition.24 In it, too, the lovers lie beneath a 'tree of love', the lime. The lady espies a little bird in which we are meant to see the nightingale.26 Taking the better reading of wan as 'one' (I have rendered it by an impersonal passive construction) there is an indefinable suggestion of a human waker, though it may well be the bird. Some ten years later comes a tageliet in which it is unnecessary to postulate the presence of a Watchman (our No. [281]),2e and a decade or two later still, another, in which the Watchman is quite certainly absent (our No. [282]). Taking No. [237] and No. [280] together as dawn songs of parting that have arrived independently at something like the same stage of development, we could place them » Cf. our Nos. [191], [192]. " See my article "The Lime-tree and Early German, Goliard and English Lyric Poetry", Modern Language Review, XLIX (1954), pp. 193 if. M P. 381, below. " See p. 436, below. " See pp. 430 and 795, below. " See my note "An Early Tagelied", Modern Language Review, XLVI (1951), pp. 66ff.

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genetically as prior to a turning-away from open-air settings in favour of settings within castles, such as we find in all other albas and in all courtly tageliet of later date than the first three. I think that the reasons why such a change of scene should have taken place are discernible. Narrative poetry continued indifferently to lay the scene of love-encounters in gardens and orchards, or in bed-chambers, but even here we note a distinction. Gardens and orchards are 'plesaunces' where ladies may still be found with propriety; whereas peasant lasses were wooed in 'wild' spots in the woods or fields.27 In an age of increasing disdain of the peasantry the lyric, which was a form of homage to the fair sex, could no longer afford to suggest that ladies were to be had under trees in the May season like lasses in pastourelles (who for their part often exerted a right of refusal). In Germany, Albrecht von Johannsdorf (fl. 1185-1209), who was writing at a time when the Provençal fashion was at its height, painted a delightful scene beneath a lime, where all that was missing — and this was beyond redress — was his lady.28 When after this Provençalising period Walther von der Vogelweide returns to open-air settings, the woman beneath the tree has lost in rank. Just how humble she is there is no means of knowing. She was humble enough to be natural — no great lady.29 No doubt similar considerations led to the discouragement of al fresco settings in France. Again, if dawn songs in France and Germany were once al fresco and devoid of watchmen, the introduction of this figure would naturally have drawn lovers from the meadows to the castle which it was his duty to guard and wake at dawn. Lastly, it was only when the knight entered the lady's castle that he took a risk in any way equal to hers as an adultress wholly within the power of her menfolk. This was important, in an age of chivalrous make-believe that Love and one's mistress were all in all. The influence of the alba with watchman is easier to establish than its origins. It was taken to Italy, Spain and Portugal in the original Provençal and no doubt imitated in the same tongue by native poets of those lands, together with the other genres. But the ninth alba in our collection (our No. [245]) was the only foreign example to survive. According to Sr. Riquer it was written in the late 13th or early 14th century by a Catalan poet.30 Albas with watchmen were imitated in the native dialects of Northern France and Germany. Only one of the five Northern French aubes in our collection features a watchman, the elaborate No. [248], and in fact it presents two. The influence of the alba is marked in the unique mediaeval Italian dawn parting (No. [256]), but is well assimilated. 'Evil Jealousy' survives (cf. Nos. [243] and [244]) : but the a/ôa-refrain is replaced by a recurring Une Partite, amore, a deo (Be gone, my love, adieu), and the 17 18 29

"

As often in the French and Latin pastourelle. Hatto, "Lime-tree", p. 208. Lachmann-Kraus, Die Gedichte Walthers von der Vogelweide (1936), 39, 11 'Under der linden'. P. 386, below.

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Watchman's cry by lo maitino è sonato (morning has sounded), in which we may see the urban practice of 13th century Bologna.31 In the two Welsh examples (Nos. [341] and [342]) the influence of the alba is perceptible. The Welsh nobility were versed in Provençal and Northern French culture and had direct access to the peotry, like the Anglo-Normans. It is therefore not surprising to find 'Jealousy' again in No. [342]. But that great poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (No. [341]) transformed and individualised everything he touched, more so than his less rhapsodic contemporary Chaucer. The Welsh did not live often or long in the great castles of Wales, and Dafydd less than some. Thus the lady says to him: 'Open the door ... and run to the woods'. The lovers are wakened by the light and by crows (No. [341]), or by the cuckoo and the cock (No. [342]). If they have to take account of wardens, these are watchdogs. It was in Germany that the vogue of the alba with watchman really caught on, and to a far greater extent than in the land of its origin. German tageliet are numbered by the score, and they echoed down the centuries until they were succeeded by popular versions, in which the watchman was replaced by the village watchman or even by the police. Within a generation of his introduction he was a famous and controversial figure. But the dawn refrain was generally not preserved. The decisive exponent of the alba in German was the great narrative poet Wolfram von Eschenbach.33 No tageliet with watchman can be proved to be earlier than his. Receiving Mediterranean culture from the south and west (a fact she is apt to forget) Germany's rôle was to pass it on to the east (which she remembers well). So it was with the alba. In our collection there are dawn songs with watchman in Wendish (No. [375]), in Polish (No. [367 b]), Slovenian (No. [388]) and in the Croatian enclaves of Hungary which can only derive from German models, as the following considerations will show. In one of the Polish specimens (No. [367 b]) the watchman bears the Polonised name of wahtorz (Mediaeval German wahtxre, Modern German Wâchter); and Polish has no native tradition of dawn-partings. In a variant he is trebacz ('trumpeter'), compare the Wendish specimen No. [375]. In the closely related No. [369] he is a bailiff. Both songs are from Silesia.38 There are hints of an obstructive watchman (varta, cf. Pol. warta, Czech varta from Mediaeval German warte = 'watcher', 'overseer') in an Ugro-Russian love-song from Sub-Carpathian Russia, which, however, does not name the dawn.34 In the Slovene song ([399]) the watchman is ëuvaj. He opens the song in the manner of some popular German Tagelieder, as an impersonal herald of dawn. The close connection between Slovenian and Austro-Bavarian popular love-poetry has merited a separate subsection.35 In Yugoslavia we approach a region in whose poetry adultery is an insult to be wiped out in the blood of the guilty wife, in keeping with a society but lately organised on a 'Heroic' basis. With a characteristic gesture, the wronged husband as often as not lets the lover go free, telling him that when he, too, was young he was also ,l

See p. 403, below. " See p. 437, below. »» See p. 602, below. M See p. 663, below. 86 See the Slovene sub-section of the Yugoslav section below, pp. 621 ff.

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a successful love-thief. There can be no doubt of the alien origin of this type of song. It is no accident that the example in which the motifs are found in their most coherent form is from the transitional area of Slovenia (No. [388] ).38 The linguistic background of the Provençal word for 'watchman' is not without interest, gaita comes from Germanic *wahta 'watch'. Strangely enough there is a word gaita in the Iberian languages meaning 'pipe', 'bagpipe', which by the evidence of some old French texts was typical of the watchman in rustic aubes (see pp. 347f.). For some time it was thought that the Iberian gaita 'bagpipe' was derived from the Provençal gaita 'watchman' who played it. But the existence of Turkish gayda 'bagpipe', 'pastoral flute' with dependent forms like gajda in the Slavonic languages of the Balkans and of gaita in the Arabic of Morocco, was an obstacle to easy acceptance of this derivation. Recently attention has been drawn to the fact that the Galician pastoral bagpipe was and continues to be made from goat-skins, and that since the Gothic for 'goat' was gaits (fem.), which would be assimilated into the Romance feminines as gaita, and since there were Goths in the Peninsula and Suebi in Galicia in particular, a Germanico-Iberian form *gaita = 'goat-skin bagpipe' must be the source of the Iberian and ultimately Arabic, Turkish and South Slavonic gaita etc.37 This would account for much. Musical instruments and their names travel far. The journey from the Peninsula to Turkey and beyond via Morrocco is not unreasonable. Yet it is odd that the bagpipe should be the typical instrument of the Provençal watchman of the same name. Furthermore, in Portuguese gaita has the other meaning of 'cock-crow (at dawn)'. The evidence tends to discount the idea that gaita 'watchman' could be diffused from Southern France into Spain without acquiring an initial gw, or that a literary gaita was likely to have been borrowed: nevertheless Port, gaita 'cock-crow' ( = the last watch of the night) seems to owe something to the Provençal. Thus the possibility of mutual influence between the Provençal and the Iberian words does not seem to be entirely excluded; so that with watchman, bagpipe and cockcrow, one feels that did one but know the whole story one might also learn something worth knowing about the evolution of dawn poetry in the south-west Romanic area. It is to be remembered that with a change of fashion in Castile, songs of parting at cockcrow appear suddenly for the first time at the end of the 15th century, and that songs of this type are found at a later date over a wide area (see Nos. [224-6] and pp. 313 ff.). 3.

WOOING BESIDE THE WATER

Songs of wooing beside the spring or well at dawn are also widespread.38 They grow independently from the fact that among their many domestic tasks women fetch 86

See p. 617, below. " See J. Corominas, "Gaita", in Estudios dedicados a D. Ramon Menéndez Pidal, I (1950), pp. 20ff. See also G. Körting, Lateinisch-Romanisches Wörterbuch (1907), col. 1907. 88 See our Nos. [208], [209], [210], [384a], [480], [493].

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water at dawn or dusk, or rise to wash clothes at dawn, the world over, and so give enterprising suitors perhaps their only opportunity during the day of 'speaking a word' with their sweethearts. In a Bulgarian song we read: Rada went to fetch cold water, but neither returned nor fetched it. As she came from the cold water, smart handsome Petar advanced to meet her, saying: 'Rada, my first love, give me a little water.... Let me not say I was parched with thirst for water, but for you'. (our p. 644)

Dr. Pinto also quotes a ballad in support: 'Nikola loved young Gergana, loved her and courted her keenly at the spring by daybreak and evening...' From India there is a Gond song which offers a remarkable and yet quite natural parallel to the Bulgarian song of Rada, with its special sort of thirst: O water girl with tinkling anklets That sounded under the dark mango-tree O water girl! Your pot of bronze Is shining in the setting sun, Your lips are dry and thirsty as my heart... Go bring me water from the lonely well Fear not the dark, I'll go with you My heart is thirsty, water girl.88

The time of day in this tribal Indian poem is dusk, not dawn, but we nevertheless have much to learn from Dr. Elwin's and Mr. Archer's comments and parallels. 'It is always said that there is no place where a girl looks more beautiful than by the well. Her upright and graceful carriage is emphasized when she places the heavy pot on her head.' How shapely is the pitcher on its stand How sweet my water girl down by the well.40

Besides assisting a girl to show off her figure, a well is also a convenient trysting-place for lovers, for not only does it provide a girl with an excuse for going out but it often takes her out of view of the village street.41 0 water girl with tinkling anklets You are walking to and fro Go and fetch water, for the dusk is falling 1 will meet you at the lonely well.4'

In this light the proverb about the pitcher that goes too often to the well recovers its full meaning. *• Elwin and Hivale, Folk-Songs of the Maikal Hills (1944), p. 132 (No. 204). 40 Ibid., No. 209. 41 Archer, The Dove and the Leopard (1948), p. 69. 41 Ibid.

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Information from Dr. Elwin quoted elsewhere43 makes it clear why there are no songs of wooing by the well at daybreak among his tribesmen: people are too busy with their preparations for the day's work. The same is true of Mr. Archer's tribes.44 In addition to this association of women with wells, springs and fountains, derived from village custom, there is a more ancient equation of women with wells and fountains. Connected with this same group of ideas are the widespread myths of naiads and fairies of springs and wells. There is much overlapping here, which it would be fruitless to try to disentangle. The universal nature of the wooing by the water can be seen from the following examples, though they are not situated either at dawn or at dusk. In the Odyssey, Eumaeus's nurse was seduced while washing clothes beside the sea (XV, 420), and it was while she was engaged in the same task after rising at dawn that Nausikaa would have found a husband — had not Odysseus proved as heroically resistant to a maiden's charm as to the magic of goddesses and witches {ibid., VI, 15ff.). A Korean folk-song runs: The boy behind the bush Blows his reed-pipe: The girl fetching water Sighs by the well.44 In a book about the poetry of the North American Indians there is an account of wooing by the spring.46 Against this universal background Christ's oifer to the Samaritan woman of water springing up into everlasting life in return for water from her well, appears even more sublime and paradoxical, and we understand better than before why the disciples were mildly scandalised and for once refrained from asking questions. Although Christ spoke of husbands it was the woman's soul that he was wooing (John 4:4). 4. THE TRANSPARENT EXCUSE

Yet despite the universality of the theme of wooing by the water typically at dawn and sometimes at dusk, we must take note here of a more highly developed European version of it that is best explained by diffusion from one source. It is the song in which a girl excuses herself to her mother for staying overlong at the spring (our Nos. [384 a], [348 b], [408], [429], and [430]). The excuse is always that some animal, a stag, a drake, a falcon, a nightingale (and we may add: the Pasha's grey flock or the Bey's horses) have troubled the water. Apart from the variation in the kind of animal (dictated no doubt in the main by local animal symbolism,47 the chief features of the song remain surprisingly uniform " "

44

" "

P. 149. P. 155. A well known song kindly translated by Professor In-sdb Zdng. Alice C. Fletcher, Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), pp. 34f. See below, pp. 778ff. and 815ff.

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over the centuries despite its wide dissemination. The lovers regularly rise at dawn and meet beside the water, so that we classify their songs in this work as 'dawn-meetings'. In the four Balkan examples (Nos. [384a], [384b], [408] and variant [408n]) the lovers meet beside the water by day, dally on into the night, and separate only at dawn. This is probably because dawn-partings are highly developed in the Balkans and dawnmeetings are of rarer occurrence, so that our song was integrated into the former class. Another important feature, one that is not always quite explicit, is that the animal who troubles the water is an unruly lover from another village or community — no decent lad from a girl's own village would behave so! In Galicia he is a stag from the mountain; in Lithuania a wild drake or a flyer from the sea; in Brittany and Gascony, too, he is a wild drake (Aquet guit saubatjoun); in Yugoslavia he is a stag or a falcon from the fortress, but in the former of these last two examples, which is the earlier in date, it is made clear that the lover is claiming the girl directly, after being long denied by her mother in his honest wooing; in Bulgaria it is the Bey's horses or the Pasha's grey flock — far be it from any Bulgar, even a madcap, to behave like a Turk. It is remarkable that the three earliest specimens, two of them by the 13th century Galician Meogo, the third a traditional Serbian song recorded in the early 18th century, agree that the animal is a stag (cf. Nos. [209] and [384 a]). I have argued in a Digression below48 that the Stag-and-Doe imagery of Meogo's nine songs and of one by Vidal d'Elvas was traditional in Galicia and probably of Celtic origin. It is in any case so highly developed that it cannot be derived from a song about a stag troubling the water. Had Meogo known of a song on this theme from farther east it would have fitted perfectly into his repertoire of Stag-and-Doe songs. If that was what happened, his source could have been the source of the Serbian song as well. Had the original song been about a wild drake, it would be easy to see how Meogo or a forerunner substituted the local stag for the bird, in Galicia, where stags were traditional: but in Yugoslavia, where stags are not traditional, such a substitution would be difficult to account for. Here, too, a new trait has entered, apparently through superficial borrowing from the Unicorn. The Serbian stag muddies the water with his antlers, and clarifies it with his eyes: the Unicorn according to the Zoroastrian and Christian tradition dips his horn into an envenomed pool and so purifies it. If the motif of the stag troubling the water can be said to be very early, that of the wild drake is by implication almost equally so. Though the extant specimens are 19th century songs from Lithuania, Gascony and Brittany, all are highly conservative areas, with Lithuania remote from the two French provinces. This drake is supported by other birds: by a salacious nightingale from 16th century France who dipped his tail into the water49 and by the falcon of the later Yugoslav variant. (The falcon is a leading symbol for 'lover' in the whole Balto-Slavonic world and even appears as a subsidiary image in the 'stag' variant, from which he might have ousted the alien stag.) The issue between stags and wild drakes cannot be decided for lack of evidence. We must be content with the suggestion that both versions are very old — far older 48

"

Pp. 815ff. A. Jeanroy, Les origines de la poésie lyrique en France, 2e édn. (1904), pp. 200ff,

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than many would care to date so sly a song: for in it, by a deft use of traditional symbolism, a girl is made to betray herself to the audience, if not to her own mother, by means of a transparent excuse. How easy, and how flattering to current theories about gesunkenes Kulturgut50 to make Meogo, a gifted poet who was heard at court, the originator and father of all subsequent versions! Fortunately, the discovery of the Mozarabic poems entirely frees us from any obligation to derive folk-songs from courtly poems as a matter of principle.61 This song of the transparent excuse seems to be exclusively European. It is very much less likely to have arisen independently than songs in which the life of the cock is threatened. For even if girls made trysts with lovers beside the water, animals muddied it, girls pleaded this disturbance as an excuse, and disbelieving elders detected a lover, the song must nevertheless have been launched by a poet who relished the situation. The case for diffusion from a common source in this instance is at least respectable. In a 15th or 16th century Spanish song the animal symbol was forgotten and we are given this elliptical thought: Mano k mano los dos amores, Mano k mano. El galan y la galana Ambos vuelven all agua clara, Mano a mano. Hand in hand, the two lovers, / Hand in hand. // The lover and his beloved, / They trouble the clear water, / Hand in hand.62

60

The seeping of cultural acquisitions from those who introduce them down to the lower strata of society. It is against the extreme application of this idea that one must object. It would be amusing to have even a brief account of the culture acquired by the British aristocracy from their social inferiors down to quite humble levels. Some German writers consider that all folk-song beyond the most primitive communal or choral songs derives from the outmoded songs of the upper classes. There is of course sufficient evidence of this movement for those who support the view in its extreme form to ignore what contradicts it. 51 See pp. 299 ff. There was a recognizable tradition of cantigas cTamigo at least two hundred years before the named courtly poets of the 13th century. " Asenjo Barbieri, Cancionero musical de los siglos XV y XVI (1890), No. 53.

Chapter 6

RELIGION

The theme of this work is at some points intertwined with religious themes. Spiritual relationships, as of the Soul with God, are sometimes expressed in the language of physical love. Or secular love-poetry is allegorised so as to bear a spiritual interpretation. Or a sacred tradition blossoming anew in worldly poetry yields ambiguous poems, hallowed in phrase, profane in meaning. Where there are religions of Love and Light it is inevitable that dawns, both sacred and secular, should overlap. Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus have availed themselves of the analogy of the love that is known to all, in order to convey what is known only to the devout and mystical. 'Kfsna's passionate love-making with Radha, a milkmaid, was interpreted as a symbol of the mutual love of God and the soul'.1 With other names these words would apply equally well to the 'Song of Songs' in its post-classical Jewish and its Christian interpretations.2 In the original Hebrew the 'Song' has no alba situation.3 But throughout the Middle Ages in Christendom it was apt to be read as leading up to one, as can be seen to-day in this mistranslation from the Authorised Version: "Until the day break and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether" (2:17). Compare our No. [296], a late mediaeval German poem, which is composed of phrases culled from the 'Song' and bears the title 'Aperi michi' ('Open to me...' 5:2). The recurring refrain-like passage in the 'Song' 'I adjure you, o daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and by the wild roes, that ye rouse not nor waken love until it pleaseth'4 was also misinterpreted in a sense that recalls the alba. St. Jerome renders 'not awaken my beloved till she please' (dilectam, quoadusque ipsa velit); and the Authorised Version reverses the sexes with 'nor awake my love, till he please'. There is a third passage in the 'Song' which is of interest to us, a dawn meeting beginning rather like an Iberian alborada (cf. our No. [215]) but ending less guardedly: 'Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field: let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vinyards ... there I will give thee my loves' (7:11). 1

Mr. Bhattacharya on Vaishnava poetry, Indian Section, IV, p. 147, below. See p. 205, below. * See the Introduction to the Hebrew poems, p. 206n, below, 4 2:7, 3:5, and 5:8. 8

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In Indian Vaishnavite poems, however, which are as candid in their amorous references as the 'Song', the dawn situation frequently occurs in a stylised and probably traditional secular form. Our Nos. 38-40 offer a selection from an extensive range. As can be seen, they read very much like ordinary love-poems: but a metaphysical undertone is occasionally perceptible — 'As the dawn comes, we see with anxious hearts life deserting us' — which gives them a quality distinct from that of the earlier poems in Sanskrit (see Nos. 3-32) and brings them nearer to certain schools of 17th century European poetry. Compare our No. 38 (Chandidas, 15th century) Never have I seen such love, nor heard, Even the eyelid's flick contains eternity, Clasped to my breast you are far from me... and No. [325] (John Donne, early 17th century) Thy beams so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou thinke? I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke... Aske for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday, And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay. Another European analogy with Vaishnavite poems that use existing erotic themes for spiritual ends is to be found in the poems of the mystical German nun Mathilda of Magdeburg (13th century), who in the verse passages of her 'Flooding Light of the Godhead' used the language of the Minnesang5 and specifically of the tageliet,6 to convey the sorrow of the soul on having to leave the divine embrace — since in this life all good things must come to an end. In the Islamic world §ufism gave rise to mystical poetry that used the language of love. One might accordingly have expected a larger yield of Persian mystical dawn poems than of Arabic, for Persian poets adopted the mystical idiom far more freely than Arabic writers.7 But Professor Wickens points to the lack of editions and works of reference in this field. All we have is the possibility that a considerable yield of dawn poetry might one day be obtained from the unexplored storehouse of Persian mystical poetry. 'The meetings of the §Qfi fraternities at which much of such verse was "uttered" and copied down, commonly lasted through the night'. 8 The Arabic mystical poet had fewer forms at his disposal than the Persian. Convention left him a choice between the qa$ida and the ghazal, both associated with love. 'Thus the models of Arabic mystical poetry are the secular odes and songs of which passion is the theme; and the imitation is often so close t h a t . . . it may not be possible to know whether the beloved is human or divine — indeed, the question whether he himself [the poet] always knows is one which students of Oriental mysti• See p. 428, below. • P. 438. ' See the Introduction to the Persian poems below, p. 244.

9

Ibid.

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9

cism cannot regard as impertinent'. Muhyiddin ibn al-'Arabi, the poet of the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, found it necessary to defend his first recension in a second which contained the poems, a commentary and a new preface. Devout critics had found it 'vain and amatorious', an opinion in which they were followed by Dozy, who maintained that the poems were erotic in the first instance and that the mystical commentary was invented to cover up the scandal they had caused. R. A. Nicholson, whose account is followed here,10 successfully defends Ibn 'Arab! from this charge, remarking how fortunate it was that the poet was challenged, otherwise much of his poem would have remained forever obscure — though it is not to be expected that a mystical poet should be able in the sober mood of exegesis to give a perfectly satisfactory explanation of his mystical utterances. But one thing is clear: the beautiful Ni?am plays roughly the same part in Ibn 'Arabl's allegory as Beatrice in Dante's. Another movement of the human spirit that has produced seemingly erotic verse with a sacred meaning was the secularisation of poetry among the Jews of Muslim Spain.11 Such was the prestige of the Hebrew scriptures for aesthetic as well as religious reasons — indeed they had no possible rival — that if ever secular Hebrew poetry was to emerge, it had to emerge from them. That is why we have a poem by Ibn Gabirol which varies its colours like shot silk according to the position of the beholder: first we see a poem which, had it not been necessarily rendered into the English of the Authorised Version, could have been loosely confused with a poem from the contemporary Arabic; but when we look again, its subject is the Redemption from Exile. 'He that is ruddy of cheek' is the Messiah according to the interpretation of I Sam. 15:2; the dawn is the hour of Redemption from Exile (No. 2). Once a beginning was made, it was possible for Judah ha-Levi to go further in the direction of the profane, in the same magnificent idiom (No. 4). But here we must turn back to the sources of non-erotic religious dawn imagery, which in some of its aspects became entangled with erotic themes only comparatively late in Hebrew and Christian literature. It is natural in religions which concern the worship of sun or sky that light should be prominent in their sacred literature. But it is only with the unfolding of the higher religions in the Near and Middle East that Light and Enlightenment and with them the Dawn, finally detach themselves from their physical associations and assume heightened spiritual and poetic meaning. This triumph is accomplished when Evil is identified with Darkness, and Good with Light.12 If, as in Christianity, the Resurrection and the End of Time in the Day of Judgement and Everlasting Life are added, the Dawn becomes a triple dawn: the Birth of Light in the East; the Redemption and the Resurrection; and the general Resurrection of the Dead. The latent possibilities of dawn imagery in which the sun itself is but a major term '

R. A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism (1921), pp. 163-4. The Tarjuman al-AshwOq (= Oriental Translation Fund. New Series, XX) (1911), pp. 3ff. 11 Pp. 209ff., below. 11 A character who hates the light, like Wagner's Tristan (and probably Wagner himself at the time when he created him) opens himself to very grave suspicions. 10

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in a vast allegory, have been exploited by prophets and poets in unbroken chains for well over two and a half thousand years. It is possible and desirable here to trace only one of these chains, and briefly. Our choice must inevitably be the JudaeoChristian. It is the one best known to the writer; it appears to be the best documented; and as far as can be seen, it is the one that has most to do with our theme. Dealing more specifically with the dawn, Professor Segal has shown this imagery to have been carried forward in Hebrew tradition from Isaiah (e.g. 58:8) to Judah haLevi. The Hebrew verb 'to seek the dawn' developed a religious meaning 'to seek God'.18 If we widen the search we find that the passages on light and darkness quoted below pass from the creation of light in Genesis, through the prophecies of Isaiah and Zacharias the father of John the Baptist, the affirmation of Christ, to the mission of St. Peter and St. Paul to the Gentiles, with no link omitted; and then to Ambrose and Prudentius, the Mozarabic Liturgy, Dante and the Spanish Renaissance poets. To begin with Genesis: 'And darkness was upon the face of the deep' ; u 'and God said, Let there be light'.15 St. John the Evangelist takes this up with 'And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth it not' :16 but the Psalmist (and then Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Jesus Christ) had intervened to give the words their spiritual meaning: 'God is the Lord which hath shewed us light'.17 In Isaiah we read: 'The people that have walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath light shined' ;18 'Then shall thy light break forth as the morning and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee: the glory of the lord shall be thy reward'.19 The former passage is repeated in Matthew, when Jesus 'came and dwelt in Capurnaum ... that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet'.20 Very similar words are used in the Song of Zacharias on the birth of St. John the Baptist: 'And thou, child, ... shall go before the face of the Lord ... to give knowledge of salvation unto his people ... through the tender mercy of our God whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death .. .'21 That which had been prophecy is now stated as accomplished fact in John: 'Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life' ;22 'I am come a light into the world, that whatsoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness'.23 When St. Paul receives his mission he is told 'To open their eyes, and to turn them from 13 1« IS 16 17 18 IS 10 11 21 as

P. 209. 1:2. 1:6. 1:5. 118,27; Vulgate 117,27. 9:2. 68:8. 4:16. Luke 1 : 76-79. 8:12. 12:46.

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darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God'. Fulfilling this mission he extends the hallowed imagery to the Gentiles: 'For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts' ; 25 'For ye were sometimes darkness, but now ye are light in the Lord'. 26 Compare St. Peter: ' . . . that ye shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light'.27 In a passage in his Second Epistle the image is more highly developed: 'whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts'. 28 The derivative image of the Watchman begins with the Psalms: 'Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep'.29 It is a persistent theme in the Book of Isaiah: 'Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem';30 'Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion'.31 Then with a new twist: 'His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber'.32 But again: 'Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee'.33 The Watchman's mantle then falls upon Ezekiel: 'So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore thou shalt hear the word of my mouth, and warn them from me'. 34 St. Paul, whose Hebraism was so deep-rooted, perseveres with this theme like Isaiah. In his Epistle to the Romans he writes: 'And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light'.36 To the Corinthians: 'Awake to righteousness, and sin not'. 36 To the Ephesians: 'Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light'.37 Like the Watchman, the Cock was to play a part in the religious poetry of the Christian Middle Ages. The cock is not clearly identifiable in the Old Testament. He came to the Near East from India via Persia in the 9th to 8th centuries, a passage which was further helped by the Zoroastrians.38 Zoroastrianism is another Asiatic religion in which Light is contrasted with Darkness and indeed in a fierce and even conflict which only " " " "

28

28 30 31 32 33

34 36 36 37 38

Acts 26:18. II Cor. 4:6. Eph. 5:8. I Peter 2:9. H, 1:19. 121:4 (Vulgate 120:4). 52:1. 52:8. 56:10. 60:1.

33:7, cf. 3:17. Rom. 13:11-12. I Cor. 15:34. 5:14. See below on the symbolism of the Cock, p. 788.

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a third and minor force, man, can decide.39 The Cock who heralded the dawn and dispersed the powers of darkness was naturally sacred to them. The influence of this Persian cock is probably to be perceived in the Talmudic saying 'As the cock espies the dawn, so shall Israel see Redemption'. 40 It is certainly present in early Christian symbolism and iconography. It also seems to have affected early Christian interpretations of St. Peter's Cock; for St. Ambrose noticed in his Exameron that Peter was reliable after cock-crow, but not before. 41 In Prudentius' magnificent Hymrtus ad Galli Cantum (our No. [192]) Peter submits to the symbolic necessity of committing his sin of denial before cock-crow — 'though his mind remained blameless' (strophe 13-14). There is even some reason to believe — though it is incapable of proof in terms of New Testament Greek — that the Evangelists themselves or their successors were affected by this alien symbolism in their accounts. For there are discrepancies of minor detail in the fulfilment of Christ's words to Peter when it comes to be narrated, 42 which encourage the thought that they are a not undramatic elaboration of something more concise — such as a Saying. And the widespread convention of 'Third Cock' for 'dawn' suggests that what was said was 'before the cock crow thrice thou shalt deny me' and not 'before the cock crow thou shalt deny me thrice'. In which region and tongue such a displacement of a word for 'thrice' could have taken place I will not venture to assert, beyond pointing out that St. Peter came to Rome, in whose Latin tongue such an ambiguity is quite possible by the evidence of the Vulgate ante quam gallus cantet ter me negabis (Matth. 26:34). Nevertheless, a Saying to the effect that 'before Third Cock you will deny me' (expressing Christ's insight that Peter would not maintain his exaltation at having cut off Malchus' ear) seems possible, and gains support from St. Mark's embarrassed conflation 'before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice' (14:30); which, alone in these accounts, shows knowledge of the repeated crowing of the cock towards dawn. And with St. Mark we are once again back in Rome. Reference to the hymns of St. Ambrose and Prudentius (Nos. [191] and [192]) will show how the 'Persian' interpretation of St. Peter's Cock bore fruit. So respected was the cock as a symbol of the wakeful conscience that for many years Christian knights avoided chanticleer in their adulterous songs of dawn. 48 The dawn is mentioned explicitly in the 'Song of Songs', in a comparison: 'Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?' (6:10). The answer that was often given to this question was 'The Blessed 38

W. B. Henning, Zoroaster (= Ratanbai Katrak Lectures 1949) (1951). Third Lecture. Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft, XIV (1911), p. 23. 41 Bene fortis in die Petrus, nocte turbatur; et ante galli cantum labitur tertio... Idem tamen post galli cantum fit fortior... Exameron V, 24, 88ff. Quoted by G. van der Leeuw, "Gallicinium. De Haan in de oudste Hymnen der Westersche Kerk", Mededelingen der Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde. Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 4, No. 19, pp. 833 ff. 42 Matthew 26:34 '...this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice'; Mark 14,30 '...this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice'; Luke 22,34 '...the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me'. 43 See below, p. 431 and pp. 790f. 10

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Virgin Mary', since Christ is the Day, and day is born of dawn. It has been remarked how appropriate the epithet alba (white) is for the Immaculate Virgin.44 In this passage aurora (as it reads in the Vulgate), once the name of the Goddess of Dawn, is eclipsed by the humble Maid. 45 To others, John the Baptist was the Dawn, or a Morning Star — 'He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light'44. In the Scriptures there is another star that acted as harbinger and was symbolically if not actually a Morning Star: 'Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the east'.47 This, together with the Birth of Christ as Light, accounts for the imagery of many Christmas hymns.48 (On Christmas Day, some thought, Christ celebrated His nuptials with the Church in an allegorical interpretation of the Song already referred to. 49 ) The Resurrection, both from its own nature and because of its official date at the spring of the year, has such powerful associations with dawn as to need no emphasis here. The two events have been closely intertwined in the ritual behaviour of Christendom. As the Resurrection takes great splendour from the image of the Sun reborn, so Easter marks the time when lovers could meet at the dance.60 Giraut de Borneilh's famous profane alba begins like an Easter hymn (our No. [238]): Reis glorios, verais lums e clartetz, Deus poderos, senher... King of Glory, thou true light and brightness, Mighty God, Lord... Compare such phrases as lum ni clartat (ni alba) in Peire Espnahol's religious alba.61 Thoughts of the general Resurrection of the Dead were not so gay. Assuming the mantle of Isaiah's Watchman, poets in their turn scan the horizon for signs of the dawn of Judgement Day. The slothful are bidden arise and shake off the fetters of sin (our Nos. [194], [300] and [301]). Some later European poets use this theme to great effect. At the end of his Epitaph upon Husband and Wife, which died, and were buried together (our No. [331]), Richard Crashaw uses it deftly. (In the final scene of the First Part of Faust, Goethe weaves this theme into echoes of a more secular theme of parting at dawn.) A Slovenian dawn song of unusual stamp confronts the sleep of two guilty lovers with that of death, which is sensed as imminent (our No. [400]). From the apocalyptic expectation of dawn comes the expectation of a new day on earth as imagined and desired by revolutionary political parties, or by nations yearning 44

Schlaeger, op. cit., p. 42. " It is interesting that St. Jerome with his acute awareness of pagan literature can write: Quae est ista... quasi aurora consurgens. " John 5:35. Matth. 2:2. 48 Cf. our No. [217] and pp. 318, 421. 4 ' See below in this chapter, pp. 95 f. 50 See above, p. 54f. 51 Ed. E. Stengel, in Zeitschrift f . roman. Philologie, X (1886), pp. 160f.

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for freedom. Jewish expectation of a return from exile had both religious and political aspects. The Biblical and Hymnal language of dawn was reinforced by the liturgy. This is especially true of the Mozarabic liturgy, from which some typical prayers are quoted (our No. [193]). Here we have the crowing of the cock, the beating of its wings, the vanquished shades of night, lauds by the birds (surely larks? = alaudae, see p. 812, below) and the Birth of Day. The Introit of the second Christmas Day Mass, said at dawn, is taken from Isaiah Chapter IX: Lux fulgebit hodie super nos etc.63 The Gradual is from Psalm 118, 2Ó-7.64 The Dawn, Daystar, Watchman, Cock and Morning Star of the Bible figure variously in Christian matin and seasonal hymns during many centuries, in languages sacred and profane. The examples alluded to in the Introduction to the Armenian section much resemble those of the West.65 Religious albas and tageliet of the earlier variety derive from the Biblical passages cited above, or indirectly through matin hymns in Latin, and in no sense from erotic dawn songs. (Only considerably later, in Germany, are there fully elaborated parodies of the secular tageliet, with the lover as Sinner, his lady as the World and her jealous husband as the Devil.56) There is one apparent exception: by the evidence of Latin hymns, which lack them, the a/èa-refrains of the religious albas in Provençal are purely local, and the poetic tradition in which they occur is the same Provençal tradition that produced the secular and erotic alba, also with refrain. Thus, either there was a strong tradition of real watchmen's songs from which the courtly erotic and the courtly religious albas were nourished; or the religious alba borrowed its refrains from the erotic. The exceptional Latin hymn with a Romance refrain (No. [194]) does not help us to decide, since its refrain is open to the same double derivation. 6 ' Provençal religious albas make a freer use of the available Biblical imagery than the German : they mention Mary and the Dawn, the Daystar, the radiance of Christ in the Dawn. For some time religious tageliet remain warnings in the voice of the Watchman. This shows that the German tradition does not derive from the Provençal, though the general idea might be taken from it. It also gives us a very important hint as to the relationship between religious and secular dawn songs within their own traditions. Although the religious kind were not parodies, they were complementary and opposites — palinodes to their worldly equivalents. The link between sacred and profane in Provençal was the a/èa-refrain: in Germany (where dawn-refrains are the exception) it was the Watchman, already a dominant figure when Walther von der Vogelweide wrote the first religious specimen we know (in 1201 A.D., our No. [300]). There is other evidence to corroborate this idea of complementary opposites, since " " " " " "

Not all such uses of the word 'Dawn' were as noble or justifiable as that of the Latvians. 9:2. God is the Lord, which hath shewed us light. Vulgate 117, 26-7. P. 250, below. See our No. [301], by Hans Sachs. See above, p. 77.

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Latin notes for a sermon that have come down to us in two versions from the beginning of the 14th century, give us six pairs of opposites by their German names: Corresponding to the usage of worldly men there are six kinds of spiritual songs: there is the song of those who watch — taglied, of those who lament — chlaglied, of those who love — minnlied, of those who praise — loblied, of those who revile — scheltlied, of those who rejoice — vreudenlied. The sacred versions of these genres are then discussed in detail. The passage on the taglied is of immediate interest: First: Taglied are sung by watchful men who rouse the slothful from their sleep to work. Note on lovers. Prelates and doctors ought to sing this. Isaiah [lxii, 6]: 'I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem'. It is their duty to announce to those who sleep in their sins that the day of Mercy and Grace is approaching. Isaiah [lxi, 1] 'Arise, shine Jerusalem' [misquoted]. Again [ix, 2] "The people that walked...'" The passage on minnlied runs: 'This is the song of Phylomena [i.e. Philomela] who from her great love, lamentation and singing dies; for Love is strong as death.' (The connection between the spiritualised Nightingale and our theme is dealt with below in a section on the Nightingale.59) Apart from the misinterpretation of Song 2:17,80 the first time that these sacred themes were brought into contact with erotic ideas was not when the developed courtly alba and tageliet had already become famous and analogies were easy to perceive; but in an earlier generation, when mystical thought like other important aspects of mediaeval culture was beginning to take on an amorous and romantic tinge. Among the feudal aristocracy, Heroic and early feudal aloofness were beginning to soften into the chivalrous cult of woman; in ecclesiastical circles, 'Byzantine' severity and monastic asceticism began to give way to a warmer appreciation of the humanity of the Holy Family, above all of the Virgin Mary. From this time it was possible to use worldly love as an allegory of the divine, first in terms of a new quasi-erotic mystical language from within; and then, from without, through parody of secular themes and genres a lo divino. It goes without saying that the former has produced the best poetry. These developments have been studied with masterly precision by Theodor Kochs,81 who dates them from the 11th century onwards, and names the allegorised 'Song of Songs' as the point of departure. Already in early centuries the 'Song' could be interpreted as the nuptials of Christ and the Church (cf. the Jewish 'God and the Synagogue'82), of Christ and the Soul,63 and of God, Christ or the Holy Ghost and Mary, who was also symbolised as the 68

A. Schdnbach, "Em Zeugnis zur Geschichte der mhd. Lyrik", Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum, XXXIV (1890), pp. 213 if. Primum: Taglied cantant vigiles homines desides a sompno ad opus excitantes. nota de amatoribus. hunc debent canere prelati et doctores. Ysias: super muros tuos, Jerusalem " P. 797. ,0 See above, p. 206n. "1 Das deutsche geistliche Tagelied (1928). " See p. 205, below. •« Ibid.

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Dawn. Here one could pause with Professor Kochs to reflect on the reasons for the undisciplined piety of those mystical poetesses who depicted love-scenes that would shock the modern reader. But in our book there is some great poetry that can better occupy our attention. In the poetry of Dante worldly love has fused with spiritual love at a high level. In an ecstatic passage of baffiingly rich texture at the end of the Purgatorio (our No. [258]), where Dante at last finds Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise 'he weaves a synthesis of the Ideal Church, the mystic woman symbol and the rosy dawn'. 65 Of three phrases chanted in Latin the first is Veni, sponsa, de Libano ('Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse') from the 'Song of Songs' (4:8). Spanish dawn poetry in this vein is generally less theological than Dante's. Its imagery is less intellectual and remote and it was presumably within reach of the average playgoer.66 So far as it uses profane formulas it is supported by an ancient tradition of poetry about happy meetings at dawn when the world is fresh, not sorrowful partings after a night of forbidden love. Moreover the whole style of this earlier poetry, love-poetry though it is, has been claimed by its justly proud inheritors as 'virginal'; and we others can certainly allow that it is reticent. The religious poems which use such well-worn rhymes as día. alegría (our No. [233]) or even whole refrains — Quando salireis, Alúa galana, quando salireis el Alua? (No. [217]) — do not court the risks run by straightforward parodies of profane songs (like the German), since in Iberia the 'gloss' is freely built round the traditional opening refrain or

estribillo,47

" " " "

P. 289 and pp. 316ff., below, and Nos. [232-3], See the Introduction to the Italian poems, p. 405, below. See p. 319, below. P. 310.

Chapter 7

M I M E AND DRAMA

The theme of parting at dawn contains the seeds of drama. The opening phrase about the dawn is a rising curtain. The two main characters, torn between the pleasure of being together and the anguish of having to part, provide dialogue that may rise to tragic intensity if they are in danger. The song of the birds, the sounds of horns, drums or matin bells, the cries of the watch or the summons of the muezzin to prayer are noises-off. The sky at dawn is a back-cloth. It was only to be expected that some of our songs were not only danced but mimed. In the absence of direct evidence others, from their obviously dramatic structure, may reasonably be supposed to have been performed in the same way. From here it is but a short step to a whole scene based on so poetic and dramatic a farewell. The use of dawn songs of regular type as a convention to suggest the accomplishment of lovers' designs and to mark a new day of the action, depends on the existence of dawn songs ready to the playwright's hands. Another possible use of this theme is its use as a leitmotif in lyrical drama. Professor Woledge considers it probable that some of our albas were sung and danced by several performers (p. 347). 'One of our poems in fact cannot be understood at all unless we imagine a certain amount of movement and at least three singers' (No. [248] and see note on p. 388). Some of the metres used suggest a link between albas and dancing, and in two pastorales peasants are depicted as sharing out the roles of Watchman (a bagpiper) and of Lads and Lasses (p. 347). As to Germany, it is scarcely rash to suggest that our No. [289] was mimed, with its dialogue between Lady and Watchman over the inert figure of the sleeping Knight and its alternating refrains 'Wake him, my lady' and 'Sleep, dear friend'. Had our folk-songs always been recorded with the manner of their performance I have no doubt that some few would be found to have been mimed like the ritual song of the waking of spring (No. [378]) and, presumably, the after-wedding songs. There are several examples of a more or less dramatic distribution of roles in latter-day balladesque songs (e.g. No. [379]), showing how naturally the theme lent itself to this sort of thing. To begin with the lands of the rising sun. There are indications that the alba could be put to use in the Chinese theatre.1 In the 13th century Yuan drama 'The Western 1

The need for this chapter disclosed itself towards the end of our enquiry, as a result of the often striking use made of the alba motif in classical European drama; so that contributors for Asiatic

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Chamber'? the theme of separation at dawn recurs rather in the manner of a leitmotif like other themes, such as tears of blood or the crow of ill-omen in the scene of the lover's humiliation. After their first exchange of poems over the garden wall, Ch'ang says that if Ying-ying really loves him he will exchange verses with her until the bright day dawns. The scene in which Ying-ying and her widowed mother burn incense in the temple ends at dawn with the ladies' departure, and Ch'ang (who is masquerading as an inmate of the monastery) concludes it with an aria which surely alludes to the alba: 'The moon has set, the bell has rung, the cock has crowed; the lovely girl has gone ... the service has reached its end ... it is the hour of rising dawn — day has come too soon'. 3 When Ying-ying leaves Ch'ang's room after their first stolen night together the moon is still shining brightly, but the falling dew and the hushed wind suggest the approach of dawn. Here it is the shivering maid outside, not the cock, who warns the lovers to part. In an aria in the next scene the maid sings: 'If you had only gone to her at night and come away at dawn, you might have gone on doing it as long as Heaven and Earth last. Why, by your grasping rain and holding the clouds4 must you needs keep my heart perpetually in my mouth? You ought to have come by moonlight and gone by starlight. Who told you you could stay dallying here all night long?'.5 After the wedding, when Ch'ang has to leave Ying-ying to seek glory in the examinations, the formal parting is placed at sunset with wild geese flying south (cf. our Korean song, No. 3 and p. 127). In her opening aria Ying-ying begs the forest to stop the sun in its path through the heavens (the same motif occurs in Korea). But her husband's tears have dyed the white-frosted trees red since early morning. This is the end of one version of the play. Another version shows how Ch'ang passes an anguished first night of absence in an inn and imagines that he has Ying-ying in his arms, only to wake and find it was a dream. All he sees is the mistdrenched air, the hoar-frost on the ground, the morning-star just rising and 'the fading moon still bright'. In an aria we are told that the twittering of swallows and sparrows on the boughs prevents the fulfilment of the love-bird's happy dream of union. 6 (In the same way the swallows cut short the amorous dreams of pseudo-Anacreon and Agathias of Myrina, Nos. [164-5]). In the little that I have managed to read of Japanese drama in translation I have noted no conventional use of the kinu-ginu poem (Nos. [22], [31]); but in the brief No play of Hatsuyuki ('Early Snow') by Komparu Zembo Motoyasu (1453-1532), languages were not forewarned. Rather than trade further on the kindness of these contributors I have made a superficial enquiry into what was available in translation; so that it is not to be thought that the contributors are in any way responsible for what appears above. Where I have received help I have acknowledged it. The passages that refer to European drama rest on firmer foundations. 8 Translated S. I. Hsiung (1935) and H. H. Hart (1936). 8 Properly speaking there seems to be overlapping here between the erotic alba and the theme of a night of devotion ended by dawn. This is not inappropriate to a love-affair conducted in and about a temple. 4 I.e. making love. 6 I am grateful to Dr. Waley for translating this passage, about which the published translations do not altogether agree. • S. I. Hsiung's version, p. 213.

MIME ANDJJRAMA

99

on the disappearance from its cage of a white bird of that name, a chorus chants the following lines: ... We called it Hatsuyuki, 'Year's First Snow', And where our mistress walked It followed like the shadow at her side. But now alas! it is a bird of parting Though not in Love's dark lane.7 Against 'bird of parting' Dr. Waley notes 'wakare no tori, the bird which warns lovers of the approach of day'. It is therefore a direct allusion to the kinu-ginu poem. (There is more in this play than meets the eye. Far from concluding that the bird is at liberty, the ladies who kept it assume on the basis of a dream that the worst has happened. Prayers are said, masses are sung. The bird's soul answers from the sky.) With Sanskrit drama I was less fortunate. The rules about what might be enacted on on the stage were discreet. Some will learn with relief that even a kiss was forbidden. This would seem to favour the development of conventions, as indeed it did; but among them I have traced no allusion to the dawn poem, in which Sanskrit and Prakrit poetry was so rich (Nos. [49-79]). The beginning of the Sixth Act of 'The Little Clay Cart' 8 might in theory have matured in this way. The courtisan is wakened at dawn in bed: but we learn that her lover is already up and walking in a garden. Nevertheless, the audience are left in no greater ignorance as to what has happened than a European audience presented with an alba — the lady had come to her lover the night before in a thunderstorm!9 The earliest straightforward application of our theme to drama in Europe that has come to notice was in the 1502 version of the Spanish play La Celestina. But it is more convenient to begin with Italy. The blind poet Luigi Groto introduces a highly stylised dawn parting into his La Hadriana (1587) that offers some perplexing parallels to Shakespeare's famous scene in Romeo and Juliet (1597) (No. [266] and see pp. 40ff. and pp. 519ff.). Beneath the usual Renaissance machinery — apostrophe to Night, Moon and jealous Dawn, the trope of the beloved brighter than day — one detects another idiom. Is the nightingale among the thorns compounded of the nightingale of Alba No. 6 and the hawthorntree (a French tree of love) of Alba No. 1? Or, noting the sadness of the nightingale among the thorns, should we look to Arabic and Persian?10 Either is feasible in Italy at this time. The first hint that the lovers of the closely related story of Romeo and Juliet took leave of each other at dawn is found in Bandello's Novelle (1554) (see below, pp. 519ff.). The first writer known to have expanded this into a recognizable dawn passage was Arthur Broke in his Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet, in prose (1562), '

Waley, The No Plays of Japan (1921), p. 243. P. Regnaud, Le Chariot de Terre Cuite (1877). • See the illustration, with commentary, in W. G. Archer's Kangra Painting (1952). PI. V 'The Gathering Storm'. 10 Seep. 794. 9

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GENERAL SURVEY

Shakespeare's immediate source. Broke knew of a play on this theme; but whether it was in English, whether Groto and Shakespeare can have been acquainted with it, there is (as Professor Spencer says) no certain knowledge. Yet given the similar conditions within the limits of Renaissance convention there is no greater need to assert unique inspiration in this matter than in the wider range of the world's traditional poetry. All that is important is that in using this theme Shakespeare knew he had something to work on which his audience would understand, and he proceeded to write by far the finest sustained passage on a lovers' parting that we know (No. [321]). His formula has been independently discovered on at least two other occasions in the history of poetry: in ancient China (No. [3]) and in the Balkans (Nos. [379], [405]). Shakespeare prepares for his alba after the secret wedding with a prothalamium by Juliet for herself, as befits her clandestine nuptials ('Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds . . I l l , ii). The farewell scene takes us with a broad sweep past the consummation of the marriage, more than justifies itself as an action with its own meaning and beauty, and (as Dr. Faithfull has surmised in the parallel case of La Hadriana, p. 401) points forward to the tragic end. This is the lovers' last conversation. Juliet recalls that the lark may exchange eyes with the toad — surely a premonition of death. Looking down from her balcony on Romeo for the last time she sees him 'as one dead in the bottom of a tomb'. There is much talk of death besides. Though the day is 'jocund', Juliet's soul will soon outfly the lark, 'advanced above the clouds, as high as heaven itself' (IV, v). At second cock next morning Juliet herself lies as one dead and will soon be laid in the tomb, there to die. Hie dawn in Act III is therefore in a sense the great dawn of their eternity. It is because this is allowed to show through, that their passionate exchanges so move us. The over-psychologization of literature, above all of Shakespeare, is a thing to be avoided. But I venture to suggest that in his alba Shakespeare is preparing us for the tragedy as certainly as in what follows on the entry of the Nurse, for the reasons already given and also because I believe that the equation of dawn with new life, that is, the death of old life, is an image deeply embedded in our minds and one of which genius has long been aware. Bound by our title we have not gone out of our way to illustrate this, though an important aspect of this image has been mentioned in the previous chapter on Religion (p. 89). One may recall, too, that in the prison scene before Gretchen's execution at the end of Goethe's Faust (Part I), her disordered thoughts hark back to the dawn of her seduction, but that she knows the present dawn, in which she stands once again beside her lover, to be the dawn of 'the last day', with a powerful suggestion of Doomsday. In James Elroy Flecker's Hassan (completed 1914) there is another very skilful suggestion of the great dawn under threat of execution: ISHAK: Dawn is the hour when most men die. CALIPH: Your death is granted you, Ishak; you

have but to kneel. (A red glow on the horizon.) ISHAK (as he kneels calmly): Why have they pinned the carpet of execution on the sky? MASRUR: It is the Caliph's dawn.

MIME AND DRAMA jafar: ishak:

101

Thy dawn, O Master! Thy dawn, O Master of the world, thy dawn; The hour the lilies open on the lawn, The hour the grey wings pass beyond the mountains, The hour of silence when we hear the fountains, The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder, The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder, O Master of the world, the Persian dawn... (II, ii)

Ishak is a poet and knows what he means when he says 'Thy dawn, O Master of the world'. The equation occurs more or less explicitly in various songs and poems, both artful and artless, as when a bride is wedded to death or a soldier rides out from his mistress's bed through his last battle to his grave (No. [432]). Although the 'Divine Comedy' is no drama, it is of some interest to note that Dante and Beatrice part company for the last time in the great dawn at the end of the Paradiso (p. 392 below). The second passage by Shakespeare is from Troilus and Cressida (No. 9), a strange play not of tragic love but of rank betrayal. The lark is succeeded by ribald crows, which Professor Spencer suggestively connects with Pandarus and Thersites (p. 523). The knocking which is heard and appears to have roused the lovers is by Aeneas come to hand Cressida over to her father, already a traitor, to the Greeks and Diomed. There is talk of the cold, and of catching cold. The new gloss on this love is swiftly obscured by such harsh themes. In Wily Begvild(1606), after rogues have been routed, the true lovers invoke Night for their stolen nuptials in a series of comparisons (No. 10). The music they summon turns out ingeniously enough to be a sort of dawn song, with which we begin a new day of the action. The Spanish play La Celestina (1st known edition 1499) has already been mentioned. In the 1502 version Melibea awaits the tardy arrival of Calisto and whiles away the time with a song of sleeplessness, jealousy and the dawn in the Iberian manner (cf. Nos. 4 and 5). Calisto comes, and takes his leave while it is still dark — so dark that he slips from his ladder and dashes out his brains. There is little poetry here in the English version of James Mabbe (1631). 'Is it possible?' asks Calisto. 'Looke an it be not day already: Me thinks we have not been here above an houre, and the Clock now strikes three'. 'My lord', answers Melibea, 'for Jove's love, now that all I have is yours, now that I am your Mistris; now, that you cannot denie my love; deny me not your sight'. Calisto goes out and with the adapter's full approval straightway breaks his neck.11 Among the copious dramatic works of Lope de Vega there are several passages both sacred and profane that refer to our theme as it was developed in Spain, sometimes 11 Reprinted by J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly (1894). The information was supplied by Professor E. M. Wilson.

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with great beauty. Iberian poets altogether succeeded in deftly retouching traditional themes. In El ruyseüor de Sevilla (1603/8) there is a subtle and amusing song based on the dawn parting (No. 26). The song has a dramatic function. The nightingale which must on no account be scared stands for the lovers, and the fiction is so handled that the girl's unwanted suitor and her father are 'deceived by the truth' (see p. 316). The farewell scene in El Caballero de Olmedo (c. 1620) (No. 27), a play based on a version of La Celestina, is a highly wrought parting in the Renaissance manner: dawn is envious, Inès is brighter than day. (After a few scenes Alonso rides out rashly to his death.) 'The separation helps to emphasize the Romantic infatuation of the lovers which was a contributory cause of the catastrophe'. Both Lope de Vega and Calderon have religious dawn lyrics in their plays. Lope's are considered to be the more enchanting (p. 319) (cf. our No. 30 from the Bodas entre el alma y el amor divino, on a dawn journey of the Soul to the Bridegroom, p. 340 below). On the other hand, Calderon's have structural dramatic qualities which Lope's lack (cf. No. 33 from La Piel de Gedeon). The dawn song with Watchman was used with skill and humour in the Dutch morality play Tspel van de Cristenkercke (c. 1540) by Reynier Pouwelsz (No. 9). Self-conceit (Reformation ideas) attempts to seduce Upright Simple Faith (a daughter of the Church), but Scriptural Care saves her with edifying conversation throughout the Night of Ignorance until the Dawn of the Light of Faith. The evening before, the Watchman had sung an invocation to courteous lovers to 'set about their business ... in the fire of love' (p. 483), for the birds had stopped their singing. Now that the birds pipe up again he opens the shutters with a yawn and congratulates Upright Simple Faith on her escape. After advising lords to hunt in the Green Wood of Scripture and Labourers to work in God's Vinyard, he goes off for a meal. Professor Forster observes that it is clear that the functions of the traditional watchman have been divided between this secular Watchman and Scriptural Care, the spiritual guardian. Goethe's use of the great dawn in Faust was mentioned. But this was not his first use of the dawn situation in drama. He had used it already in Götz von Berlichingen (1771) for the parting between Adelheid and Franz, which follows a watchman's song from the keep. Goethe twice revised this passage, so that no more than a vestige remains. The original scene is thought to have been prompted by the youthful Goethe's passionate reading of Shakespeare. Wagner's use of the theme in Tristan und Isolde (with Brangäne for Watchman, to save a voice!) also deserves mention. There must be other scenes in which the dawn parting is introduced in a recognisably stylised manner, but they are unlikely to be as distinguished as some of the examples referred to above.

P A R T TWO

EGYPTIAN by

JOHN A. WILSON (Chicago)

At dawn the maiden hears the voice of the swallow or martin inviting her to the open fields. But she refuses to go out without her lover, who has awakened and made her happy by promising to walk with her. The text is written in Egyptian hieratic on papyrus (Papyrus Harris 500 = British Museum Papyrus 10060, Recto, V:6-8) and is to be dated to the thirteenth century B.C. It belongs to a group of love songs of that age carrying a romantic exaltation of the companionship of a young man and young woman and an open delight in nature. A somewhat more literal translation will be found in Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament (Princeton University Press, 2nd ed. 1955), p. 468. A masterly study of the literary genre is Siegfried Schott, Altägyptische Liebeslieder (Zürich, 1950).

106 Anonymous

EGYPTIAN

No. 1

13th century B.C.

frrw ti mnt hr mdt, sw hr dd: "p? t? hd - ih w't.t?" im.k p? 3pd iw.k hr tttt.i! gm.n.t sn.S m t'y.f hnkyt, h3ty.[i] ndm m h'w ddw n.i: " n n tw.E r w'y! iw drt.i mdE drt.t, ir.i swtwt.E iw.i hn'.t m st nb nfrt." dt.f (wi) m tpyt n nfrwt, bw hd.f piy.l hSty.1 [1] "The voice of the swallow calls and says: / '"It is daybreak — where are you going?'" / Oh, no, bird, you may not distract me! / For I have found my darling on his bed, / And my heart is more then happy / When he says to me: 'I shall not be far away! / With my hand in your hand, I shall wander about / And be with you in every pleasant place.' / So he makes me preeminent among maidens, / And he does no injury to my heart."

1

Papyrus Harris 500, Ro., V: 6-8. Transliteration by J. A. Wilson.

CHINESE by ARTHUR WALEY (London)

You must imagine, as the setting for the two surviving early Chinese albas, a society consisting of small States, somewhat like pre-Bismarck Germany, tied together by a common culture and religion. The capitals of these small States were not much larger than big villages, walled for defence. The landlords, constituting an upper class, rode to battle in war chariots, attended by the peasantry who followed on foot. Warfare was almost continual, but was mitigated by chivalrous customs that made it approximate to European mediaeval jousting. In theory the rulers of these States owed allegiance to the King of Chou who ruled over a tiny State near the modern Lo-yang. But the allegiance was chiefly cultural and had very little political reality. The 'Book of Songs', the earliest collection of Chinese poems, contains over three hundred pieces, of which a hundred and sixteen are connected with courtship and marriage. Two of them are typical albas, dating probably from the 6th century B.C. In both, the Romeo and Juliet situation occurs, the lady reminding her lover that the cock has crowed while he, on his side, maintains that it is still night. The resemblance to European albas is perhaps not so striking as would appear at first sight. The Songs were preserved owing to the fact that they were interpreted in a moral sense and used by Confucian teachers for purposes of edification. The official interpretation of our albas - an interpretation dating perhaps from about the 3rd century B.C. - is that No. 1 'is a satire on those who do not delight in virtue. It describes the seemly conduct of old days, as a reproach to present times when people do not delight in virtue but on the contrary are addicted to carnal pleasures'. No. 2 is said to have been written 'in recollection of a wise consort. The duke Ai (of the State of Ch'i, 10th century B.C.) was sensual and lazy. That is why the song tells how some wise consort or serious-minded lady warns him that dawn is at hand, which is the right way to be helpful to one's husband'. These songs, then, were in each case taken as dealing not with gallantry (as most European albas do), but with married life. Even if this is true (which may well be) one cannot help suspecting that they were originally connected with some particular rite or institution. They may for example conceivably have been sung outside the bridal chamber by the wedding guests on the morning after the wedding. But that is only a guess. Some of the Songs if not composed by peasants at any rate deal with their lives rather than those of the nobles. No. 104 of the 'Book of Songs' which

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begins 'We thought you were a simple peasant bringing cloth to exchange for thread' is certainly of this kind. But our two albas clearly deal with patrician life. The word I have translated 'knight' means some one who rode to battle in a chariot, as opposed to the infantry - a member in fact of what Germans call the Offizierkreis. Encouraged by the fact that the record of albas in China begins in so promising a fashion we might expect to find a rich harvest of them in subsequent centuries, when the surviving literature begins to be abundant. Actually, over a thousand years pass before we find another example! This may be largely due to accidents of transmission. The amount of poetry that survives from the period between the Songs and the beginning of the Christian era is very small. We begin to get a continuous succession of song words, preserved because they were sung at Court, in the 1st century A.D. Many of the old themes, such as fighting, drinking, separation, still survive. But new perspectives open - of urban life, or of travel and trade, as in the song: 'Travelling stranger, from what part have you come, And what wares have you brought from all lands?' 'Rugs I have and carpets and frankincense, Thorough-wort, camphor and rosemary.' With rugs and carpets came foreign tunes. From this time onwards, among the upper class at any rate, native music becomes almost extinct. Moreover, in the 4th and 5th centuries northern China falls under foreign domination. 440 A.D. is the date given in connection with our next two albas (Nos. 3 and 4). They occur in a collection of 'reading airs' 1 supposed to have been recited by courtiers during the mourning for the Empress Yuan, who died at the age of 35 in 440. There are no less than eightynine 'reading airs'. The text is very corrupt. It is clear, however, that they are all love-songs and that the difficulty of understanding them is increased by their being full of plays on words; for example, wu yu = 'no cause', but also 'no oil' (in the lamp), p'ei = 'grief', but also 'love', lien = 'lotus', but also 'affection', and so on. They are very often irregular in versification: Po men ch'ien Wu mao po mao lai Po mao lang shih nung Liang pu chih Wu mao lang shih shui In front of the white gate / Black hat and white hat came. / The white-hatted one was me: / But truly I do not know / Who 'black hat' was. 'Black-hat' was presumably a rival suitor. Two of the songs are translated in my book Chinese Poems (1946), pages 108-109: Ho ming kuo fan lai Hsiang hsiao k'ai men ch'ii, Huan ch'ii shen shang hao; Pu wei nung tso lii. 1

Yo Fu Shih Chi, XLVI.

CHINESE

109

Wu ku ch'i k'ai men; Cheng chien huan-tzu tu. Ho ch'u su hsing huan, I-pei yu shuang lu. When dusk gathered you came in over the hedge; / But when dawn was near you sallied out at the gate. / Alas that my dear one should care only for himself; / What happens to me he does not care at all. // At the fifth watch I rose and opened the door / Just in time to see my love go by. / 'Where do you come from, where have you spent the night / Dear love, that your clothes are covered with frost and dew?' As will be seen below, the first of the two albas (No. 3) contains the cock-motif. In the second (No. 4) it is the watchman, sounding the hour on his drum, who disturbs the lovers. After a further gap of nearly two hundred years we find a typical alba situation and the cock-motif in a little romance called 'The Cave of Amorous Fairies', written by Chang Tsu (c. 660-720 A.D.). The book seems to have reached Japan 2 in the 8th century and was very popular there. In China it disappeared until it was re-introduced from Japan in recent years. The story tells how the author, in the course of an official journey, met a fairy called Sister Ten, attended by fairy handmaidens. It is of course the description of an ordinary, earthly love-meeting, disguised by Taoist coverlanguage. The amorous fairies (yu hsieri) are in fact courtesans (yu nu), as was recognised by Japanese commentators. The style is elaborately allusive and antithetical, the effect being very like that of minor Elizabethan writing. Until the actual lovemeeting very little happens except the interchange of neat little verses. The description of the love-making itself is as follows: It was now very late in the night. My ardour was so fierce that I could wait no longer. The fish-oil lamps filled the whole room with light; the wax-candles shone brightly on either side. Sister Ten now called to Cinnamon-heart and Peony, saying, 'Help the gentleman to take off his riding-boots and travelling-cloak. Put his head-wrap aside and hang up his belt.' Then I myself helped Sister Ten to lay the silk bedspread, to undo her gauze skirt and take off her red vest and green petticoats. Her beauty filled my eyes; the wind of her fragrance cleft my nostrils. I had lost my heart beyond recall; the passion that possessed me could no longer be controlled. I thrust my hand under her red pants. Our legs intertwined beneath the bed-spread and our lips touched. I pillowed her head on my arm, gave her a little rap between the breasts and fondled her thighs. Every kiss filled me with delight, every embrace with sweet pain. The breath in my nostrils smarted; my heart within was coiled and tied. Soon my eyes blazed, my ears tingled, my veins swelled, my limbs relaxed. I was beginning to know how rare, how precious was the encounter that brought us together and had in a short space been three times her lover when to our dismay first at midnight the sick-jay3 woke us, and then the heartless, roystering cock at the third watch signalled the break of day.

* There was some influence of Chinese on Japanese poetry, but not in the case of albas. There are a few Japanese poems that contain allusions to the 'Cave of Amorous Fairies', e.g. the poem by Princess Ryöshi (d. 1216 A.D.) in Fubokusho, ch. XXVII. • The crow.

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A great deal of love-poetry was written in T'ang times (7th to 9th centuries) but it was usually omitted from published works. Where it survives it consists generally in eulogies of Court ladies or in poems expressing their feelings. Poems of secret love, where they occur (as in the works of Li Shag-yin, c. 810-860), are expressed in very cryptic fashion and often, to increase the mystification, have the heading 'No Title'. But in Li Shang-yin's time a new form of poetry was springing up, the fzu, in which the metre follows the tune. When foreign tunes were first used in China the traditional Chinese verse-forms in lines of equal length were fitted to them by repetition of syllables and by the introduction of meaningless sounds, like our 'tra-la-la', to fill up the gaps. In the 9th century (earlier specimens are of doubtful authenticity) a whole new range of metres was attained by writing words which exactly fitted the tunes. One of the earliest authentic examples is Po Chii-i's 'A flower but not a flower', written in the first quarter of the 9th century (No. 6). Like so many later fzu it is exquisite in sound, but enigmatic in meaning. I suppose it is about a brief encounter with a lady called Flower-mist. It certainly concerns a parting of lovers at dawn, and on that score is entitled to figure in this book. Hundreds of 9th and 10th century t'zii are preserved, but I have only found two that could possibly be called albas. They depend for their effect entirely on their verbal music, impossible to reproduce in English. I have therefore simply given (Nos. 7 and 8) a word-for-word translation, and a prose explanation of the meaning. Probably folk-poetry, particularly that of Southern China, would yield further examples. I am only able to supply one such poem (No. 9), obviously semi-literary in character, but said to have been collected as a folk-song.

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CHINESE

Anonymous

No. 1

6th century B.C.

Yu tzu chieh lao (log). Ch'in se tsai yii; Mo pu ching hao (hog). Chih tzu chih lai (leg) chih Tsa p'ei i tseng (tseg?) chih. Chih tzu chih shun (djwen) chih, Tsa p'ei i wen (mwen) chih, Chih tzu chih hao (hog) chih, Tsa p'ei i pao (pog) chih."

Nii yiieh, "chi ming", Shih yiieh, 'mei tan'. "Tzu hsing shih yeh; Ming hsing yu lan. Chiang ao, chiang hsiang, I fu yu yen (ngan)1 I yen chia chih, Yu tzu i (ngia) chih; I yen yin chiu (tsiog)

[2] The lady says: "The cock has crowed"; / The knight says: 'Day has not dawned.' / "Rise, then, and look at the night; / The morning star is shining. / You must be out and abroad, / Must shoot the wild-duck and wild-geese. // "When you have shot them, you must bring them home / And I will dress them for you, / And when I have dressed them we will drink wine / And I will be yours till we are old. / 1 will set your zitherns before you; / All shall be peaceful and good. // "Did I but know those who come to you, / 1 have girdlestones of many sorts to give them; / Did 1 but know those that have followed you, / 1 have girdle-stones of many sorts as presents for them. / Did I know those that love you, / 1 have girdle-stones of many sorts to requite them."2 Anonymous

No. 2

"Chi chi ming i, Ch'ao chi ying i." 'Fei chi tse ming (mieng) Ts'ang ying chih sheng (shieng).' "Tung fang ming (miang) i, Ch'ao chi ch'ang i."

6th century B.C.

'Fei tung fang tsS ming (miang), Yiieh ch'u chih kuang. Ch'iung fei hung hung (hweng-hweng) Kan yii tzu t'ung meng.' "Hui ch'ieh kuei i; Wu shu yii tzu tseng."

[3] "The cock has crowed; / The court by now is full." / 'It was not the cock that crowed; / It was the buzzing of those green flies.' / "Eastward the sky is bright; / The court is in full swing." I 'It is not the light of dawn; / It is the moon that is going to rise. / The gnats fly drowsily; / It would be sweet to share a dream with you'. / "Soon all the courtiers will go home; / Do not... hate."8 Anonymous

No. 3

5th century A.D.

Ta sha ch'ang ming chi; Tan ch'ii wu chiu niao. Yuan te lien ming pu fu shu, I nien tu i hsiao.4 1

Old pronunciation (Karlgren system simplified) is given in cases where the rhymes would not otherwise be recognised. 2 Shih Ching, No. 82 = Arthur Waley, Book of Songs (1st. ed. 1937, 2nd. ed. 1954), No. 25. 3 Shih Ching, No. 96 = Book of Songs, No. 26. I am not satisfied by any of the explanations of the last line, and have preferred to leave a blank. 4 A 'Reading Air', Yo Fu Shih Chi, XLVI 7 b.

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[4] Strike to its death the cock that keeps on crowing; / Drive off with pellets the bird on the tallow-tree. / If only night could be joined to night, with no day between; / In one year only one dawn! Anonymous

No. 4

5th century A.D

'Pai i ch'io yii i ; Liang yen ch'ang pu tsao.' "Fan-shih wu ku hsing; Li nung ho t'ai tsao?" B [5] 'A hundred sobs and still you go on crying? / Those two eyes never for a moment are dry.' I "The drummer of the watch is only on his fifth round,8 / And yet you leave me? Why so early in the night?" Hsü Ling (507-583 A.D.)

No. 5

6th century A.D.

Hsiu chang lo wei yin teng chu I yeh ch'ien nien yu pu tsu Wei tseng wu lai Ju-nan chi T'ien ho wei lo yu cheng t'i. 7 [6] The embroidered curtain and gauze hangings dim the light of the lamp; / If this one night were a thousand years it would still not be enough. / How I hate them, those sorry villains, the cocks from Ju-nan.8 / Though the River of Heaven9 has not set, they still crow each against each. Po Chü-i (772-846 A.D.)

No. 6

early 9th century

Hua, fei hua ; Wu, fei wu. Yeh-pan lai, T'ien-ming ch'ü. Lai ju ch'ung mèng chi-to shih ; Ch'ü ju chao-yün, wu hsün ch'u. 10 [7] A flower, but not a flower; / A mist, but not a mist. / At midnight coming, / At daybreak gone. I Coming like a spring dream, for how short a while! / Gone like a morning cloud, never to be found again. 5

'

7 8

'

10

A 'Reading Air', Yo Fu Shih Chi, XLVI 8 a. I. e., it is about 3 a.m. Ku Shih Chi, 110, fol. 5. This was sung to the tune 'The crows go to roost*. A place in Honan province famous for its cocks. The Milky Way. 'Works', Ch. 12.

113

CHINESE

Wei Chuang (c. 855-950 A.D.)

No. 7

9th century A.D.

Chi-huan liang-chi, tai-mei ch'ang. Ch'u lan fang; pieh t'an-lang. Chio sheng wu-yen hsing-tou wei mang. Lu leng yueh ts'an jSn wei chi; Liu pu te chu lei ch'ien hang. 11 [8] [Word-for-word translation] Head-dress awry, substitute eyebrows spread." / Leaves orchid chamber; parts from fragrant boy. / Horn sound stifled; stars, pole-star faint-vague, / Dew chilly, moon scrappy, people not yet up. / Cannot make stay; tears, a hundred rows. Sun Kuang-hsien (d. 968 A.D.)

No. 8

Chin yeh ch'i, Lai jih pieh. Hsiang tui ti k'an ch'ou chiieh? Wei fen mien, Nien yao tsan. Wu yen, lei man chin.

10th century Yin chien lo, Shuang-hua po, Ch'iang wai hsiao chi i-wu. Ting fu-chu Wu ch'ing-ts'ung, Tuan ch'ang hsi fu tung. 13

[9] This night, meeting; / Next day, parted. / Face to face, how endure extremity of grief? / Fondles powdered face, / Fiddles with jade hair-pins. / No words; tears fill dress. // Silver arrow falls;14 / Frost-flowers thin. / Outside wall, dawn cock 'kikeriku'. / To harken to its bidding / No inclination. / Heart-broken, east west.15 Anonymous

No. 9

20th century

Ts'ui jen ch'u men chi luan t'i, Sung jen li-pieh shui tung hsi. Wan shui hsi liu hsiang wu fa; Ts'ung chin pu yang wu-keng chi. M [10] Making one hurry out at door — cock's raucous cry; / Taking one to separation — water, east west. / Push water west flow, think — no way;17 / From now not feed fifth-watch cock.

11 11 13 14 14

" "

Hua Chien Chi, III. 2. Women shaved off their eyebrows and painted substitute ones, often higher on the forehead. Hua Chien Chi, VIII. 6. The silver arrow points the time in the waterclock. The 'east' and 'west' mark the distance that will separate the lovers. From: Chung-kuo Min-ko yen-chiu (Study of Chinese Folk Song), by Hu Huai-ch'fin (1925), p. 99. 'Think — no way* means 'I think about it, but can find no way'.

JAPANESE by ARTHUR WALEY

Koi, the ordinary Japanese word for love means 'longing'. Most Japanese love-poems deal with separation and its sorrows, and the alba situation is consequently not very common. It is, however, far more frequent than in the Chinese poetry that has come down to us and in the various collections dating between the 8th and the 14th century A.D. there must be over a hundred poems dealing with partings at daybreak. In the Manyoshu (a collection made shortly after 759 A.D.) there are very few dawn partings. In Manyo 3985 (No. 2 in our collection) it is the crows, not the cock, that wake the lovers. The cock-theme becomes frequent from the 9th century onwards.1 The next collection, the Kokinshu (905 A.D.) introduces a theme which is perhaps peculiar to Japan - the kinu-ginu (our No. 12). Kinu means 'clothes', and kinu-ginu means 'mutual dressing', that is to say, the moment when lovers help each other to dress, preparatory to the man's departure at dawn. Kinu-ginu poems deal mainly with secret lovemeetings. But as the court assembled very early in the morning a husband might be compelled to leave his wife or concubine at daybreak. From about the 12th century onwards kinu-ginu means little more than 'the morning after', and it is doubtful if the authors of kinu-ginu poems had in mind an actual scene of 'putting on each other's clothes'. The second standard theme of alba poems is the comparison of the image of the beloved that haunts the lover's mind to the ariake no tsuki, the dawn moon. This seems to have its origin in a Manyo poem (495) which does not itself deal with a dawn parting: Asa-hi kage Nioeru yama ni Teru tsuki no Ahazaru kimi wo Yamayoshi ni okite... That leaving of you / At the pass across the mountains! / You, of whom I seemed to have had a glimpse as unsatisfying / As one has of the moon that shines / On the hillside fragrant in the rays of the morning sun... 1

Nevertheless in a song in the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters, completed 712 A.D.), the cock (together with the nui or 'night-thrush' and the pheasant) arouses a lover's hatred for bringing his wooing to an end by announcing the dawn before he has accomplished his purpose. See the General Survey, pp. 71 f., above. - Ed.

Figure 2

'Though morning bids us part, I shall keep the moon in my bosom.' (Binyon, Cat.) By Nishimuri

Shigenaga (1697-1756) about the year 1747. (Cf. L. Binyon, A Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Woodcuts in the British Museum, 1916. Shigenaga No.6.)

JAPANESE

115

The dawn moon here only comes in as a comparison; it does not mark the hour. But in later poems (e.g. our No. 18) the parting is envisaged as taking place at dawn towards the end of the lunar month, when the moon is visible for a brief moment just at dawn, and becomes the symbol of the beloved, with whom the lover has had all too brief a meeting. The typical verse-form of the period here dealt with is the uta, a verse of 31 syllables arranged in five lines - 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. Its beauty consists in the perfection with which a thought and a body of sound are fitted into a small rigid frame. An uta runs into its mould like quicksilver into a groove. In translation only the thought survives ; the poem no longer 'goes', any more than a watch goes if you take its works out of their casing and empty them upon a sheet of paper. In the examples I have given the reader must for himself discover the possibility of poetry. If he is a poet, this will present no difficulty; just as a watch-maker would see in the scattered springs and wheels the possibility of a watch. From the 12th century onwards the uta ceases with rare exceptions, such as the poems of the monk Saïgyô (1118-90), .o be an expression of individual feeling. The making of uta becomes a competitive social pastime, a game played solely by the upper classes. The language of uta, which remained standardized, became more and more remote from that of everyday life. The «ia-competitions (uta-kai) which took place at Court or at the houses of nobles were social occasions at which the clothes worn by the competitors (described in a style closely resembling that of our fashionmagazines) were a matter of quite as much interest as their verses. The best uta of this period were reflective; the worst and most frigid were the love-poems, and among the love-poems the kinu-ginu poems are perhaps the most artificial of all. The examples recorded in the present collection are the most translatable and the most representative that I could find. Owing to plays on words and double meanings many uta would require an impracticable amount of exegesis. The Manyôshù contains many poems that are obviously the product of ordinary people - peasants, soldiers and village-girls - rather than of the Court. Some of the anonymous pieces in the Kokinshii give the impression of being folk-poetry. (All the subsequent collections of uta are manifestly Court poetry.) Among these and other collections of mediaeval folk-poetry I have searched in vain for the a/ôa-situation. Uta have of course continued to be written down to modern times; but the poetic vitality of the Japanese, in the 17th and 18th century, went into the very short poems known as haikai, in the forms called hokku (i.e. three Unes of 5, 7, 5 syllables) and wakiku (couplets of seven-syllable verse, such as Nos. 25 and 26). Note: The theme lives on among popular poems of the sort published by G. Bonneau in his second group of modern Japanese folk poems.2 The following themes occur: the woman regrets that the mist conceals the outline of her departing lover (cf. Dr. Waley's Nos. 1 and 2 from the Manyôshù) f a lover tells his companion to sleep on without anxiety — the temple 2 3

L'expression poétique dans le Folk-lore japonais, II (1933), 'Tradition orale de forme fixe'. Bonneau, No. 128.

116

JAPANESE 4

bell will say when it is dawn; on the mountains the fallen snow melts in the morning sun — like the coiffure of that girl as she leaves her lover's bed.5 In a fourth poem cockcrow and the unwanted dawn are associated with the Feast of the Dead.4 From a comment on a iVb-Play translated by Dr. Waley it can be seen that there was a set expression for the 'bird of parting' in a/Z»a-settings — wakare no tori. The play in which it occurs belongs to the 15th-16th century.7 — Ed.

4

Ibid., No. 193. » Ibid., No. 250. * Ibid., No. 190: Cette nuit, nuit de Fête des Morts, / Quatorze au quinze du septième mois: / Et cette aube qui vient déjà; déjà / Ce coq qui chante ! 7 See the General Survey, pp. 98 f., above.

Figure

' H e a v y his h e a r t is. yet p a r t h e m u s t . L o n g will be t h e w a y home., a s h e t h i n k s o n her." ( B i n y o n ,

By Suzuki Hantnobu

id. 1770). (Binyon,

Catalogue., Harunobu

Cat.)

No.37.)

3

JAPANESE

Anonymous

No. 1

117 7th-8th century

Waga seko ga Asake no sugata Yoku mizute Keu no aida wo Koi-kurasu ka mo. 1 [11] In the dim morning light / So faintly I saw / My lord's form / That I fear all to-day / Will be spent in longing! Anonymous

No. 2

7th-8th century

Asagarasu Hayaku na naki so! Waga seko ga Asake no sugata Mireba kanishi mo. 2 [12] Morning crows, / Do not caw so early! / When I see my lord's form / Only by dim morning light / 1 feel so sad! Otomo no Yakamochi (718-85 A.D.)

No. 3

8th century

Yo no hodoro Waga dete kureba Wagimoko ga Omoerishiku shi Omokage ni miyu. s [13] When in the dim light before dawn / I went away / My lady's face / Showed clear enough / What was passing through her thoughts. Princess Takata

No. 4

8th century

Waga seko ni Mata wa awaji ka to Omoeba ka, Kesa no wakare no Sube nakari-tsuru.4 1

Manyoshu, XII. 1, 2841. Compare the alternative version: Asa-to de no I Kimi ga sugata wo / Yoku mizute / Nagaki harubi wo / Koi ya kurasamu 'As you went out at the door at dawn / So faintly I saw your form, / That I fear the long spring day / Will be spent in longing.' (Manyoshu, X, 1925). • Manyoshu, XII. B, 3095. * Manyoshu, IV, 755. 4 Manyoshu, IV, 540.

118

JAPANESE

[14] Perhaps it is because I think / That with my lord / I never again shall meet. / That at this morning's parting / 1 was so utterly at a loss.

Anonymous

No. 5

7th-8th century

Tada koyoi Ai-taru kora ni Koto toi mo Imada sezu shite Sayo zo ake-ni-keru.8 [15] Before I had even exchanged greetings' / With the boy whom I met / This one night only / Night broke into day.

Anonymous

No. 6

7th-8th century

Akenu-beku Chidori shiba naku Shikitae no Kimi ga ta-makura Imada aka-naku ni.7 [16] Dawn is almost come, / For the plovers are in full cry, / And I still not tired / Of your lovely arm-pillow!

Ariwara no Narihara(l)

No. 7

9th century

[17] The Ise Monogatari is a collection of a hundred and twenty-five anecdotes, each centering round a poem or group of poems. It is attributed to Ariwara no Narihara (825-80 A.D.). The fourteenth anecdote is as follows: 'Once there was a man whose wanderings brought him at last all the way to Michinoku.8 A woman of those parts, perhaps because she had never before set eyes on a gentleman from the Capital, fell deeply in love with him and addressed to him the poem Naka-naka ni Koi ni shinazu wa Kuwa-ko ni zo Naru-bekari-keru, Tama no o bakari. 5

6 7

Manydshu, X, 2060.

Euphemism for making love. Manydshu, XII, 2807.

* In the north-eastern part of the main island.

JAPANESE

119

Rather than / Die of longing, / A silkworm indeed / 1 would gladly become / For the rest of my life! It was a very rustic piece of verse, but it seems to have touched his heart, for he went and slept with her. However, before dawn came he rose to go; whereupon she recited the verse Yo mo akeba Kitsu ni hamenada, Kuda-kake no Madaki ni nakite Sena wo yari-tsuru. When the night is over / 1 shall give it to the fox to eat — / The wretched fowl / That crowed before its time / And drove my lord away. Saying that he must now set out for the Capital the man then replied with the verse Kurihara no Anewa no matsu no Hito naraba, Miyako no tsutu ni Iza to iwamashi wo. If the pine-tree of Anewa / Which is in Kurihara9 / Were a human being10 / I'd say 'Come along! I I'll take you back with me to the City'. She was pleased, and said 'It did seem as though he liked me'.11 Utsuku12

No. 8

9th-10th century

Shinonome no Wakare wo oshimi Ware zo mazu Tori yori saki ni Naki-hajime-tsuru.13 * Anewa and Kurihara are Michinoku placenames. matsu no hito naraba can also mean 'If there were some one waiting'. There is a play on matsu 'wait' and matsu 'pine-tree'. 11 The first of the three poems occurs almost verbatim in the Manydshu (vol. XII); the third is a variant on one of the 'eastern songs' at the end of the Kokinshu. Both were probably traditional folk-songs rather than poems made ad hoc. The male and female silkworms, which are never parted, are symbols of perpetual love. 11 Utsuku was the grand-daughter of Minamoto no Sadamu (815-63). Sadamu was a son of the Emperor Saga and became head of the Imperial Bodyguard. Utsuku's dates are unknown. Only one other poem by her is preserved. 18 Kokinshu, 640. 10

120

JAPANESE

[18] At dawn / So sorrowful was I at our parting / That I first / Before the cock / Began to cry."

Mibu no Tadamine (868-965) 1 6

No. 9

901-5

A.D.

Ariake no Tsurenaku mieshi Wakare yori Akatsuki bakari U k i m o n o wa nashi. 16 [19] Since that daybreak when we parted / After a loveless meeting / Dawn has become for m e / The saddest time of all.

Fujiwara no Toshiyuki (c. 868-901?) 17

N o . 10

9th

century

Akenu tote Kaeru michi ni wa Kokitarete A m e m o , namida m o Furi-sobochi-tsutsu. 1 8 [20] When, because dawn h a d come, / I set out on my way back, / Beating down upon me / Rain and tears / Fell all the while and soaked me through and through.

Anonymous

N o . 11

9th

century

Koi-koite Mare ni koyoi z o Osaka n o Yusuke-dori wa N a k a z u mo aranamu! 1 8 [21] My longing is very great. / F o r once in a way tonight / At our place of meeting 80 / May the bird we deck with mulberry cloth 21 / Refrain from crowing! 11 The 'crowing' of the cock and the 'crying' of human beings is expressed by the same work (naku) in Japanese. 11 Mibu no Tadamine was joint compiler (in 905) of the Kokinshu. This poem was written between 901 and 905. 19 Kokinshu, 625. 17 Fujiwara no Toshiyuke became Captain of the Bodyguard in the sixth month of 886. 18 Kokinshu, 639. 18 Kokinshu, 634. 80 The place-name Osaka means 'hill of meeting' and puns on this name are frequent in love-poems. The cock is festooned with cloth made from mulberry-bark when it is used in sacrifice. For the 'cock of Osaka' cf. Kokinshu, 535 and 740.

JAPANESE

Anonymous

No. 12

121 9th century

Shinonome no Hogara-hogara to Ake-yukeba, Ono ga kinu-ginu Naru zo kanashiki!22 [22] When with theflicker-flickerof dawn / Day returns, / How sad that it should come / To the helping of each other to dress! Anonymous

No. 13

9th century

Hototogisu Yume ka, utsutsu ka? Asa-tsuyu no Okite wakareshi Akatsuki no koye.28 [23] The cuckoo — / (A dream, or reality?) / Heard when at dawn / I left you, with the morning dew / Falling upon me as I went. Ki no Tsurayuki (882-946)24

No. 14

9th-10th century

Akatsuki no Nakaramashikaba Shira-tsuyu no Okite wabishiki Wakare-semashi ya. !S [24] If there were no such thing / As break of day, / Should I be making / This desolate farewell, / With the white dew falling upon me?26 Izumi Shikibu (c. 975-1050?)«

No. 15

lOth-llth century

Ikaga to wa Ware koso omoe, Asana asana Nao kikase-tsuru Tori wo koroseba.28 »« Kokinshu, 637. 13 Kokinshu, 641. •* Ki no Tsurayuki was the author of the famous Tosa Diary and joint compiler of the Kokinshu. 25 Gosen, 863; Shuishu, 715. 86 The meaning of the poem is 'If only there were no such thing as dawn and I were not obliged to part...'. 87 Izumi Shikibu was the most famous poetess of the 11th century. 48 Shu, V. The poem is written under the title: 'Some one went away in a hurry, having been

122

JAPANESE

[25] What is going to happen — / That is the thing that bothers me — / Now that you have killed the bird / That morning after morning / Always told the time? Saigyd (1118-90)29

No. 16

12th century

Kesa yori zo Hito no kokoro wa Tsurakarade Ake-hanare-yuku Sora wo uramuru.30 [26] To-day, now that / My lady's heart / Is no longer unkind, / I hate the sky / When it opens up at dawn. Minamoto no Michichika (1149-1202)31

No. 17

12th century

Kinu-ginu ni Naru to mo kikanu Tori dani mo Ake-yuku hodo zo Koe mo oshimanu.32 [27] Even the cock, / About whom one has never heard / That he has his kinu-ginu, / While dawn is coming / Cries without restraint.88 Saigyd

No. 18

12th century

Omokage no Wasuraru-majiki Wakare kana, Nagori wo hito no Tsuki ni todomete.34 [28] A parting that from my mind / Cannot be removed! / For the moon's beauty continues / The vision of my lady's face.85 warned by the crowing of the cock. Afterwards he sent me a note saying "I killed the hateful thing", and to the note a cock's feather was attached.' The poem, in a slightly altered form, is incorporated in the Izumi Shikibu Nikki, a short romance in diary-form dealing with one of Shikibu's numerous clandestine love-affairs. 23 Saigyo became a monk at the age of 22, and his love-poems may have been written, in some cases at any rate, while he was still a layman. 30 Sankashu, 77. The poem is headed Kinu-ginu. 31 Michichika rose to be naidaijitt (Chancellor) in the last years of his life. 33 Shinchokushu, XIII, 793. 33 See No. 8, above. 31 Shinkokinshu, XIII, 1185. 35 Literally: 'As regards vision not to be forgotten! Retaining in the moon remnant — the person's'. The inversion (nagori wo hito no for hito no nagori wo) is noted and explained by the commentators.

JAPANESE

Fujiwara no Toshinari (Shunzei) (1114-1204)

No. 19

123 12th century

Akebono no Wakare wo shirade Kuishiku mo Awanu tsurasa wo Urami-keru kana.36 [29] Not knowing / About partings at dawn / (I see now that I was wrong) / 1 bewailed the agony / Of not meeting at all.3'

Minamoto no Michichika

No. 20

12th century

Omoe tada Iri-yarazarishi Ariake no Tsuki yori mae ni Ideshi kokoro wo.38 [30] I would have you think only / Of what has no setting, / My love that rose before the the rising / Of the moon of dawn.

Fujiwara no Mitsutoshi (1209-76)39

No. 21

13th century

Kinu-ginu ni Naraba ikani to Omou yori Yo fukaku otsuru Waga namida kana!40 [31] From the moment we began to think / 'When it comes to the kinu-ginu, what then?' / Though it was still night-time / Our tears fell fast. 36

Choshu Eisd. " The meaning is: dawn-partings are so painful that even the time when we did not meet at all is to be preferred. 38 Senzaishu, XIII, 805. The poem has the title: 'Sent to some one whom the poet had visited secretly and left by dawn-moonlight, when it was still night'. The words iri and ideshi, here applied to the cessation and emergence of love, belong properly to the 'setting' and 'rising' of the sun or moon. 39 Fujiwara no Mitsutoshi was compiler, in 1265, of the Zokukokinshu. 40

Zokusenzaishu, XIII, 1344.

124

JAPANESE

Fujiwara no Motohira (d. 1266)

No. 22

13th century

Kinu-ginu no Akebono bakari Uki mono to Iishi mo, ima wa Mukashi narikeri.41 [32] I used to say / Nothing was so sad / As daybreak and its kinu-ginu / But now even that I Has become a thing of long ago.42 Anonymous

No. 23

14th century

Tsurakarishi Kimi ga kokoro wa Wasurarete Akenuru sora wo Urameshiki kana!43 [33] Now that the cruelty of your heart / Is a thing I can forget / With what resentment do I see / Dawn breaking in the sky! Basho (1644-94)

No. 24

17th century

Kinu-ginu ya Amari kabosoku Ateyaka ni.44 [34] At the kinu-ginu / Exposed as too fragile, / Too genteel. Basho

No. 25

17th century

Hagetoru mayu wo Kakusu kinu-ginu.45 [35] At the kinu-ginu hiding / Her scraped-off eyebrows.4' 11

Shingosenshu, XV, 1135. The meaning is that even the saddest moment of love is better than a love that has become a thing of the past. 4S Shingoshuishu, 1146, XIII. The poem is headed: 'After at last, just before dawn, having obtained a meeting with a woman who for years had withheld her favours'. " Haibungaku Taikei, Vol. I, p. 47. 45 Haibungaku Taikei, Vol. I, p. 272. " Japanese women depilated their eyebrows and painted eyebrows high up on the forehead. See above, p. 113. 42

JAPANESE

Jügo (or Chögo)

No. 26

125

second half of 17th century

Omoi-kane-tsu mo Yoru no obi-hiku.47 [36] Though it was a hard thing to bring himself to, / In the dark, he pulled at her belt.48 Yofü

No. 27

17th century

Kinu-ginu ya Yo no koto yori mo Hototogisu. 49 [37] At the time of kinu-ginu / Heard before anything else — / The cuckoo. Shöheki80

No. 28

17th century

Osoroshiki Kinu-ginu no koro Hachi-tataki!81 [38] Alarming / At the time of kinu-ginu / The knocking on the bowl!52

"

Haibungaku Taikei, Vol. I, p. 4. The lover has promised to wake the lady before dawn. Haibungaku Taikei, Vol. I, p. 3. 40 Shoheki was a pupil of Bashd. 81 Haibungaku Taikei, Vol. I, p. 37. 52 Monks used to go round at night knocking on their begging-bowls in the hope of being given money to go away. The lovers think it is some one banging on the door. 48

49

KOREAN by IN-SOB Z6NG {Seoul)

There is explicit evidence in ancient Chinese records (as was only to be expected) that the Korean people had their own style of music and song. Of the oldest recorded poems in the Korean language, known as Hyang Ga, twenty-five of which survive, scarcely one can be called a love-song. Hyang Ga belong to the Silla Dynasty (57 B.C. - 935 A.D.) and were written in Idu, a system whereby Chinese characters were adapted to the very different genius of the Korean language. Under the Goryo Dynasty (935-1392) a popular type of verse now called 'Longer Verses' came into fashion. Such verses often spoke of love, but no clear example of a dawn parting or meeting has come down to us. Towards the end of this dynasty, it appears, the standard form of a new kind of lyric was fixed, that of the Sizo or 'Extempore Song'. Its syllabic pattern was: (Line 1) 3 4 3 (or 4) 4 (Line 2) 3 4 3 (or 4) 4 (Line 3) 3 5 4 3 This pattern seems to be the one best suited to the genius of the Korean language and is capable of expressing the most refined poetic sentiments. Sizo have been appreciated by high and low alike and have flourished through many generations, markedly so after the invention by King Se Zong in 1443 of a new Korean syllabary which has been used as the national script. Sizo take their themes from the whole range of human existence. Various kinds of love-poetry have been attempted. Of the three dawn songs quoted in this section two are Sizo (Nos. 1 and 2). They call for no comment. But several others, not all dawn songs, or even love-songs, contain points of interest. It is typical for sad partings between lovers to take place not at sunrise but at sunset: The horse neighs to be gone — yet she does not let me go. The sun sets behind the hill and the way is a thousand ri. Dear love, rather try to stop the sun than cling to me and weep.1 1

New Comments on Old Sizo, edited by Sin Y6ng-Cz61 (1948). Anonymous (late Yi Dynasty?).

KOREAN

127

On the other hand, lovers are discovered at dawn in a mood of lonely longing. The dawn is frosty — the moon at dawn! A lone wild goose cries in passage. I fondly hoped the bird would bring Happy news of my dear love, But through the clouds, vast and unending, That lone bird's cries echo in vain.2 or again: He promised to come, but he is late — the peach-blossom will fall. The magpie crying in the dawn is still in doubt — Yet I will paint my brows, looking in the glass.8 (The lady prefers to think that her belated lover will come at last, and applies herself to her mirror encouraged by the morning cry of the magpie, a sign of good omen.) The following Sizo illustrates the well-known inventiveness of the Korean race. Surely there is no other song that gives such practical advice on how to secure a long night? This long, long night of the Eleventh Month, 1 will sever it at the waist! I will stuff one half under the quilt of the spring wind: Then on the night of my lover's return, I will unfold it for him!4 Korean love-poems in fact are much more concerned with the night, above all midnight, than with the dawn. The Yi Dynasty (1392-1910) saw the development of two new forms, Ga Sa 'Song Words' and Zab Ga 'Popular Songs'. Ga Sa consisted of 8-syllable lines subdivided into groups of four syllables, though variations were permitted. They were more elevated in tone than Zab Ga. As if in harmony with the more popular sentiments '

Ibid. Anonymous (18th century?). Ibid. Anonymous (Yi Dynasty?). By Hwang Zin-i, a poetess of the early 16th century. She was a daughter of a noble family. A young man of her village died of unrequited love for her and his coffin would not move past her house during the funeral procession until she covered it with her jacket. The gossip this gave rise to prevented offers of marriage being made to her so that she became a dancing-girl, with the name My&ng W61 (Bright Moon). When she died she asked her family not to bury her in a grave but to throw her body outside the East Gate as a warning for having loved too many. But her family buried her by the roadside and so eased her spirit. The Governor Yi Bfig-Ho, who was also a poet, held a memorial service for her at the grave-side, but was severely criticised by the scholars of those parts and obliged to resign. Hwang's grave is still to be seen in Zangdan, near GSsdng (better known to the West as Kaesong). 3 4

128

KOREAN

expressed, in Zab Ga the rhythms are quite irregular, permitting all combinations of 2 3, 3 4, 4 3, 4 5, 5 4, and 5 5 syllables. The 'Song of Parting' (our No. 3) from the area of Seoul is an example of Zab Ga and will be recognised by European readers at once as folk song. The following twelve lines are taken from a Zab Ga of 455 lines collected in the Pyongyang area: They show more marked traces of learned influence than in the ordinary sort of European folk song: When the cuckoo cries with choking voice And the moon hangs low — At the sobbing of that bird How I long for my love! When dusk returns And the moon shines and blossoms fall — By the light of that bright moon How I long for my love! Come, boy, come, Look at the eastern sky! The dawn moon hangs low: Where has my dear love gone? All because of my love I am as if mad and drunk: I cannot forget for one moment — I must go in search of my beloved.5 The boy in the third strophe is the house-boy, who is in attendance on his master. Once again we find the dawn in association with a lonely and unhappy love. The impression conveyed by our examples that there is some stability in the use of imagery, is borne out by Korean poetry in general. The loneliness of a girl at dawn, whether she has spent the night alone or with her lover is reflected in the flight of the wild goose overhead (No. 3 and the Sizo 'The dawn is frosty..above). The croaking of the magpie at dawn is a good omen (see the Sizo 'He promised to come...'). The sobbing of the cuckoo (see the Zab Ga just quoted), like the chirping of the cricket in other poems, has echoed the sad mood of lonely lovers for generations. But the crowing of the cock as a sign that lovers must part is unusual, since his normal function is to awaken sad dreams in lonely lovers during the night. Nevertheless, as Song No. 2 shows, this motif is not entirely unknown. It also occurs in a developed form in the fourth strophe of the following modern folk song: 1. Plain-bean and red-bean Do not grow well: Camellia and castor-bean Flourish in their stead! s

2. Let us meet, let us meet, Both you and I, Beneath the shade Of the castor-bean.

From Folk Songs of Korea, edited by Sdng Gy6ng-Rin and Zang Sa Hun (1949).

KOREAN

3. When I climb the fence The dog may bark — If only a tiger Would kill that dog!

5. She promised to come out When I knocked on the fence: But she does not come, Though I've broken the gate!

4. When I stay with my love The cock may crow — If only a weasel Would kill that cock!

6. A northern room May yet prove sunny: Your coming to me Is far less likely.

129

7. Where the mountain is high The valley is deep; A small woman's heart Is like to be shallow.' Note: Names and other Korean words have been spelled in the Unified System of Romanization. In names, surnames come first, personal names follow. All the poems quoted have melodies to which they were sung to the accompaniment of instruments.7

• Each strophe is followed by a refrain. ' Those who wish to improve their acquaintance with modern Korean poetry are referred to my Anthology of Modern Poems in Korea (1948), in which the original texts are accompanied by my own translations, and also my recent publication A Pageant of Korean Poetry (1963).

130

KOREAN

Anonymous

18th century (?)

No. 1 sébé dal zògal zògui dasi ana nuun nimun

dungzan bul gumurò galze czang zòn nomò dudòn nimgwa

ì morai bbyóga gallidoendùl i zùlzùri isirya [39] The light of my candle / Was growing dim / When through the window / He stole to my room. II The dawn moon / Was setting fast / When on my couch / He embraced me again. // Could I forget him — / So dear to me? / Though my bones moulder / I'll have no regret.1 Anonymous

No. 2 gùridun nim mannan bamun zò dalga bude uzimara

post 1400 A.D. ne soré òbdosoni nal sèlzul nwi morùri

bam zungman ne urum sori gasum dabdabhaySra [40] In the night / When I meet my love — / Oh, the cock! / Please do not crow! // The day would know / Without your warning / When it should break, / And the dawn come. // Hearing your voice / 1 should be sad: / For day will dawn / Before its time.2 Anonymous [41]

CHORUS: GIRL: MAN: GIRL:

No. 3

20th century

Farewell, farewell! You and I are parting now. If you are going, when will you return? Tell me, please, when will you return? Sail a ship, sail a ship! On the blue waves of the boundless sea. Please don't go, don't go away, Don't leave me alone! I'm coming with you, I'm coming with you, I'll follow my love, I'm coming, too!

1 A Sizo from an anthology of songs Gogum Gagog (Songs Old and New), edited by G&sdng Yonwol-Ong (1765). • Sin Y6ng-Cz61, New Comments on Old Sizo (1948).

KOREAN

MAN: GIRL:

131

Farewell, my love, and live at peace. Have a care for yourself and live at peace. Come back, please come back again. Please come back in peace. The cold wind is blowing through the dawn frost, A wild goose is crying. If you fly past Seoul Fort, Please give my greetings to my love!3

* Söng Gyöng-Rin and Zang Sa-Hun, Folk Songs of Korea (1949). This Zab Ga or popular song was collected from the area of Seoul. It is available also as a gramophone record Polydor No. 19039-B, as sung by Yi Yöng-San-Hong and Yi Zin-bong to an accompaniment on the fig-flute by Gim Gye-Sön.

MONGOL by C. R. BAWDEN

{London)

Various attempts have been made to classify the Mongol song. Of these, one of the simplest was that of the western Mongols themselves who, according to the Russian Mongolist Vladimirtsov, recognised three categories, the aidam dun or song in elevated style, the lyrico-epic song; the shastir dun or song of religious, Buddhist content, and the shalig dun or light, satirical song or love-song. The latter may also be termed zabxai dun, and is the class into which the alba would fall. A more elaborate classification into nine main groups with subdivisions was set up recently by the Mongol scholar Rinchensambuu, who recognises a sub-group of love-songs within his first main division, which he calls 'lyrical songs'. Thus the alba does not appear to be recognised as a type of its own within Mongol literary scholarship. Poem No. 1 is the fullest version of the Mongol alba available. Of its eight stanzas the latter four correspond generally with the three and the four of the other versions, while the first half of the song appears to consist of a more or less conventional filling which lacks an essential connection with the main theme. Stylistically the two halves are distinct, the first two stanzas of the earlier part consisting to a large extent of Chinese words in Mongol syntax. This convention is a fairly common one in Mongol folk poetry, in no way peculiar to the alba. One may note for example a similar pattern in the opening lines of the song 'Jfiijuu Xot' (Chin-chou City): Jiijuu xotyn min' jintai torgoor xo Jintiiiinii bulang Salgaad oyoson yumaa xo. "The corner of the pillow is sewn withfiguredsilk from Chin-chou city.' There is no information as to how this or any other alba would be sung, though the present text is accompanied by a melodic line, and Mr. Haltod reproduced the tune familiar to himself while remembering the text. One may at least be sure that this is a song and not only a lyric, while the change of person in the refrain of the last two stanzas may suggest that it could be sung by two voices, as is frequently the case with the so-called 'conversation song' in Mongol folk literature. Poem No. 1 follows the familiar structural pattern of traditional Mongol poetry, in that it is built up of couplets or quatrains whose individual lines alliterate initially. At the same time there is frequent parallelism of expression and structure between stanzas. Occasionally, as will be seen, the fourth line of a stanza may alliterate not with its own predecessors but with the corresponding line of another stanza.

133

MONGOL

Transliteration systems The Chahar song (No. 1) was published in the old Mongol alphabet which is still in use in Inner Mongolia. A few concessions were made to modern spelling conventions, but in the main the traditional spelling was retained, and the song has been transcribed strictly in accordance with the recognised method as exemplified in Mostaert's Dictionnaire Ordos. This procedure has the disadvantage of rather obscuring the similarities with the other two poems, but it obviates the less acceptable alternative of normalising the text. The poem printed in Ulan Bator (No. 3) has been transcribed from the official Cyrillic alphabet, which is the same as the Russian with the addition of two letters here written as o and u. With the exception of ts, the scheme adopted here allows for a letter for letter transcription. The apostrophe represents the Cyrillic soft sign. Mr. Haltod wrote down his song (No. 2) in the Cyrillic script and it has been transcribed from his manuscript without change. His song was recollected before the other two texts were found, and hence there is no possibility of contamination. The peculiar nature of the first two stanzas of poem No. 1 as compared with the others may be emphasized by the following list of words, which are Chinese: Jin-Jeü : Chin-chou a city near Mukden. Jin-duwan: chin-tuan Jin-teü: chen-t'ou quwar: hua-erh

mm « s a

jin-lung: ba-qu: äangqai : äan-duwan : Sanjin:

chin-lung pai-hu Shanghai shan-tuan shan-tzu

Ô2&

mm.

Bibliography C. R. Bawden, "The Mongol Conversation-Song", in Aspects of Altaic Civilization (Bloomington and The Hague, 1963). G. Kara, "Notes sur le folklore mongol", Acta Orientalia Hungarica, XI, 1-3 (1960), pp. 271-91. J. R. Krueger, Poetical Passages in the Erdeni-yin Tobii (The Hague, 1961). N. N. Poppe, "Der Parallelismus in der epischen Dichtung der Mongolen", Uralaltaische Jahrbücher, 30, 3-4 (1958), pp. 195-228. A. Mostaert, Folklore Ordos (Peking, 1947). B. Vladimirtsov, Obraztsy Mongol'skoi Narodnoi Slovesnosti (Leningrad, 1926).

134

MONGOL

Anonymous (Inner Mongolia, Chahar)

No. 1 oi k5o suileng

Jin-Jeii qota-yin Jin duwan torya k8 jin-teii-yin kini quwar siu ko Jin lung ba qu qoyar-i JergefieJii bayiqu-bar oyoysan yum-a. ai da, ge ge mini ko. Sangqai qotan-u San duwan torya k8 Sanjin-u ger yum dee ko. Sayajayai bolod erbekei-yi-ban Jerge£eJii bayiqu-bar oyoysan yum-a ai da ge ge mini ko Aru-dayan jegiigsen tamakin qudai arban qoyar bii5e-tei ko ayar tngri-yin altan luu-yi toylaju bayiqu-bar oyoysan yum siu. ai da ge ge mini ko Qoyina-ban jegiigsen tamakin qudai ni qorin dorben biiCe-tei ko qoyitu ayulan-u buyu suyu qoyar-i toylaju bayiqu-bar oyoysan yum siu. ai da ge ge mini de ko Coqur mori Cini 5omuya-tai yum £inoa-yin konjile delgegesiitei ye ko Coqum sedkil dini iinen bol Colmon yarqunar mordanau da. ai da ge ge mini de ko tlriye mori Cini 6omuya-tai ko iinegen konjile delgegesiitei ko iinen sedkil 5ini bayibal iir Cayilyayad mordanau da ai da ge ge mini de ko Ayar-un salki salkilabal aru degere bayibaiu keyisdeg siu angqan-u kini sedkil bayibal alus-tu bayiba£u ayuljana siu. ai da siii leng mini de ko. Jibar 5u salki salkilabal Jabsar-tu bayibaCu keyisiine siu

c. 1958 A.D.

MONGOL

135

Jayaya iriigel ni bayibal jayitai bayibaCu ayuljana siu. ai da siii leng mini de ko. 1 [42] AH, SUILENG. Figured silk from Chin-chou city / forms the decoration of the pillow. I It is sewn with golden dragon / and white tiger, side by side. / Oh, my brother! // Shot silk from Shanghai / forms the sheath of the fan. / It is sewn with magpie / and butterfly, side by side. / Oh, my brother! // The tobacco-pouch worn on the back / has twelve ribbons. / It is sewn with the golden dragon / of the heavens at play. / Oh, my brother! // The tobaccopouch worn behind / has twenty-four ribbons. / It is sewn with the stag and hind / of the northern mountains at play. / Oh, my brother! // Your spotted horse is hobbled. / A wolf-skin covering is spread. / If your love is really true, / will you go only with the appearance of the morning star? / Oh, my brother! // Your young horse is hobbled. / A fox-skin covering is spread. / If your love is true, / will you go only when dawn has broken? / Oh my brother! // When the wind blows from the sky, / it blows though one is at the back of the hill. / If your first love holds, / we shall meet, though you are far away. / Oh my Suileng! // When the breeze blows, / it blows even in the gaps of the hills. / If it is our destiny / we shall meet, though we are far apart. / Oh my Suileng! Anonymous (Inner Mongolia, Chahar)

No. 2

1963

XONGOR SUILEN

Agaar tengerees salxin salxilabal ar deer baibal xiisne xd. amragiin setgel tin' iinenxeer yum bol uiirii n' tsailgaad mordooroi doo. ai xoo xongor Suilen xoo. Oree 1 mor' tin tsomootoi baina. iinegen xfinzol delgeetei xo. odrii n' tin' setgel iinenxeer yum bol uiirii n' tsailgaad mordooroi doo. ai xoo xongor Siiilen xoo. Tsoxor mor' cm' tsomootoi 1 baina. conon xonzol delgeetei xo. tsoxomynxon setgel iinenxeer yum bol tsolmon gargaad mordooroi doo. ai xoo xongor Siiilen x65. 2 [43] DEAR SUILEN. When the wind blows from the sky / it blows even though one is at the back of the hill. / If your love is true, / go only when dawn has broken. / Oh dear Suilen. // Your young horse is hobbled. / A fox-skin covering is spread. / If your own love is true, / go only when dawn has broken. / Oh dear Suilen. // Your spotted horse is hobbled. / A wolf-skin covering is spread. / If your love is truly real, / go only when the morning star has appeared. / Oh dear Suilen. 1 Caqar arad-un dayuu-nuyud (Chahar Folk-songs) (Huhehot, 1959). 8 Oral recitation. Collected from Mr. M, M. Haltod, a Chahar Mongol, in London,

136

MONGOL

Anonymous (The People's

No. 3

c. 1953-54.

Republic of Mongolia) TSOOXOR MOR'

Tsooxor mor' n' tsogiostoi Cortyn xdndiig tuulna daa xo. cuxam xiiii setgel yanzaaraa xoino, tsogisoor ocood uulzana daa xd. ai xoorxii Siilen ai. Oree mor' tsogiostoi, iinegen x8njil delgeestei, unenxiiii setgel yanzaaraa baibal, iiiir tsailgaad mordooroi. ai xddrxii Siilen ai. Bor lyanxuagiin tsetseg boroogoo iizeed sergene dee x88. bodoj gan'xarsan setgel n' xiiiigee iizeed sergene dee xoo. ai xQorxii Siilen ai. Sar lyanxuagiin tsetseg salxia iizeed sergene dee x86. Sanaj gan'xarsan setgel n' xiiiigee iizeed sergene dee x86. ai xQorxii Siilen ai.3 [44] THE SPOTTED HORSE. The spotted horse gallops. / It crosses the Chort depression. / My true love being just as it was, / 1 shall gallop to meet you. / Oh, poor Siilen. // The young horse gallops. / A fox-skin covering is spread. / If your true love is at it was, / go only when dawn has broken. / Oh, poor Siilen. // The dark lotus flower / sees the rain and revives. / My love, saddened with thinking, / sees my man and revives. / Oh, poor Siilen. // The yellow lotus flower / sees the wind and revives. / My love, saddened with brooding, / sees my man and revives. / Oh, poor Siilen.

'

Ardyn Amart Zoxiolyn Emxtgel

(Collection of Popular Oral Literature) (Ulan Bator, 1956).

TURKIC

I. BARABA TATAR (Compiled by A. T. HATTO)

The following highly stylised antiphonal alba is excerpted from a Baraba Tatar version of the well-known Central Asiatic epic-romance Qozy KörpöS. The hero, Qozy KörpöS, and his beloved, Bayan Sulü, like other famous couples in Turkic narrative poetry,1 were betrothed at birth by their fathers, Ak Kan and Kara Kan. But the course of true love does not run any more smoothly in Inner Asia than elsewhere. Ak Kan had a fatal fall from his horse on the day on which the children were born, and Kara Kan later rode away with all his camp, leaving behind Ak Kan's widow and son. In his tenth year, Qozy sets out as a young hero on his father's horse and equipped with his father's arms. After various adventures, Qozy finds Bayan and becomes her overstrong and clownish shepherd. Waking at night in her tent Bayan thinks that it must be daylight, such radiance is shed by Qozy's queue wound round with gold. Seeing her mistake, Bayan divines that the shepherd-boy must be her destined lover. She takes him to her on her bed, and there they sleep. At this point the prose breaks into the parallelistic verse of the alba quoted below, as so often in Central Asiatic narratives. Like the love of Romeo and Juliet, with whom they have been compared, that of Qozy and Bayan is swiftly cut short by their death, which in Bayan's case is inflicted by herself over the body of her slain lover.2 In the Kazakh (Radlov: 'Kirgiz') version of Qozy KörpöP, which is largely in verse, there is no alba after the lovers' night together, but merely the prosaic line: 'When they had got up and had their morning meal...' This fact, together with the highly formal structure of the alba in the Baraba Tatar version, suggests that the alba theme may have been otherwise known among these northern Turkic-speaking 1

The best known couple are Bamsi Bairek and Banu Chichek from the Oguz Turkic 'Book of Dede Korkut' (14th century). * From the German of V. V. Radlov, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens. IV. Theil. Die Mundarten der Barabiner, Taraer, Taboler und Tümenischen Tataren (St. Petersburg, 1872), pp. 12-26. » Cf. T. G. Winner, The Oral Art and Literature of the Kazakhs of Russian Central Asia (Durham, N.C., 1958), pp. 66ff. et passim.

138

TURKIC

clans. This valuable specimen was first noticed by the Russian comparativist V. M. Zhirmunskii, who gives it in Russian translation and places it in its appropriate setting among dawn songs drawn from a wide area.4

n. CHUVASH by G. F. CUSHING (London)

Chuvash is spoken by more than one and a quarter million folk who live in the autonomous republic of the same name and in its neighbourhood. It is a Turkic language, but a highly individual one, which bears all the traces of long connection with Finnic neighbouring languages; it is also believed to have descended from the Bolgar language spoken by the Bulgarians before they adopted Slavonic. Its vocabulary has had a strong influence on its Finnic neighbours, notably on Votyak, Cheremis and Mordvin, and a more distant connection can be traced back through Bolgar to Hungarian. A collection of Chuvash folk songs was published by the Hungarian scholar, Gyula Meszaros, at Budapest in 1912. It consists chiefly of brief lyric poems for various festivities, and love-songs. All show the characteristics of a well-established community. Two dawn songs appear, both of them connected with the institution of the spinnery, where the Chuvash girls spend the long winter evenings and are visited there by the boys of the village. This custom is also to be found among FinnoUgrian speakers from the Votyaks and Ziryenes to the Sz6kelys of Transylvania. In both songs, dawn is recognised as a time of parting; in the first of them the cock appears as the herald of dawn, as he does frequently in other songs relating to wedding feasts: Cock-a-doodle-do! Yellow cock; Until the yellow cock has crowed eight times, We will not go home.. .B Thus sing the guests at a feast, hoping that it may be prolonged. Since there is very little available evidence concerning the customs of this littleknown people, we are left with the fact of the existence of the dawn-song in Chuvash, in this brief, direct and simple form.

4

"K voprosu o literaturnykh otnosheniyakh vostoka i zapada", Vestnik leningradskogo umversiteta, No. 4 (1947), pp. 106f. 6 Gy. Meszaros, Csuvas nipkoltisi gyiijteminy (Budapest, 1912), p. 138, No. 49.

TURKIC

Anonymous

No. 1 Baraba Tatar (Terena)

139 c. 1870

(Bayan) Oranda koyilar mangra§ti Kozim Kiin tsikkannarga ujattim Kozim Eiiede torgaylar tsirla§ti Kozim Kiin tsikkannarga ujattim Kozim. (Qozy) Oranda koyilar mangra§sa Payanim Ats porulorgo a§ polzin Payanim Eiiede torgaylar tsirla§sa Payanim Ats kiygraklarga yin polzm Payanim Ay tsikpaklarda kiin tsiksin Payamm Tar koymnardan yan tsiksin Payamm.1 [45] (BAYAN) "Outside, the sheep are bleating, Qozy! / Till sunrise did I linger, Qozy! / T h e birds are twittering in the sky, Qozy! / Till morning have I lingered, Qozy!" / / (QOZY) 'If t h e sheep are bleating outside, Bayan! / M a y ravening wolves devour them, Bayan! / If the birds are twittering in the sky, Bayan! / M a y hungry hawks swallow them, Bayan! / M a y t h e sun come together with the m o o n , Bayan! / M a y my soul burst f r o m my breast, Bayan!' 2

Anonymous

No. 2 Chuvash

20th century

[46] Come, my dear, I'll escort you Till we reach the fork in the road. A cock will crow, dawn will break Ere we part.3 Anonymous

No. 3 Chuvash

20th century

[47] The lad comes out when dawn breaks, If he has found the favour of the girls. You well know the game after that You escort her, go home and lie down. 4

1

Transcribed in the Turkish Official Alphabet by Sir Gerard Clauson, K. C. M. G. from the Turkic original in: V. V. Radlov, Obraztsy narodnoi literatury Tjurkskikh piemen, IV (1872), pp. 15f. a Translated from the German of Radlov, Proben der Volkslitteratur der Türkstämme Süd-Sibiriens, IV (1872), p. 20 by A. T. Hatto. Apart from the Turkic text, the Kazakh forms of the lovers' names, Qozy and Bayan, have been retained throughout as better known. * Gy. Mdszäros, Csuvas nipköltisi gyüjteminy (Budapest, 1912), p. 110, No. 2. 4 Ibid., p. 114, No. 18.

INDIAN

I.

TAMIL

by A. L. BASHAM (London)

The oldest Indian literature in a surviving vernacular is that of Tamil. It is contained in the 'eight Anthologies', a large collection of martial and erotic poems.1 The date of these works is still a matter of debate, but it is possible that they were composed during the first three centuries of the Christian Era, and are therefore earlier than most of the Sanskrit verses in our collection. At the time of the composition of the anthologies the Tamils had a fully developed literary tradition, owing little to Aryan influence. Style, technique and prosody are very different from those of Sanskrit, and Sanskrit influence only becomes marked in later Tamil literature. Unlike the celestial deities of the Aryans, the gods of the early Tamils seem to have been wholly chthonic in character. The cult of earth-spirits and demons did not encourage interest in such phenomena as sunrise and sunset, of which the Aryan was very conscious. Clandestine love is a common theme of the Tamil poet, but dawn is rarely mentioned in this connection. An exhaustive study of the texts may reveal other specimens, but our beautiful verse (No. 1) is the only example of our theme that we have been able to discover in early Tamil literature. II.

SANSKRIT

by A. L. BASHAM

The dawn From the days of the earliest stratum of Aryan literature in India, the Rg Veda, the Indian poet has delighted in the sunrise. Among the early Aryans dawn was 1

No textbook on this literature exists in English. The reader is directed to P. T. S. Iyengar, History of the Tamils to 600 A.D. (Madras, 1929), which quotes from the poems, and to the early Tamil grammatical and literary work Tolkáppiyam Porul-atikáram, edited and very badly translated by E. S. Varadaraja Iyer, 2 vols. (Annamalai, 1948), which also gives many quotations.

Figure 4

Kama and sleeping woman

INDIAN

141

personified as a goddess, sometimes multiplied to an infinite number of goddesses, one for each day. U§as is the subject of some twenty hymns. Daily she drives her red kine (the morning clouds) across the Eastern sky. She wakes the sleepers to their various tasks. She looks down with bright eyes, and carefully tends all things. She is like a beautiful dancer. She exposes her fair breasts for all to see. She shines in the splendour of her lover, the sun. Ancient, yet new born, decked in fair raiment, she wastes away the life of man. 2 In later Hinduism the Goddess of Dawn was almost forgotten, and the theme was treated in a less generalized manner. In its later development the Indian mind acquired a passion for detail, and it was not the broader effects, but the lesser phenomena of dawn which most impressed the poet. As belief in the transmigration of souls became universal, and non-Aryan chthonic deities were accepted, and indeed ousted the heaven-gods of the Aryans, attention was drawn from the sky to the earth, and animals and plants were personified by the poet, rather than celestial phenomena. He still refers from time to time to the rising sun, and to the red sky behind the Eastern mountain, but he is more interested in the effect of the dawn upon men, animals and flowers. Thus Dawn is the time when the white water lily closes her petals, and the lotus opens to the rising sun. The breeze at the palace windows carries the fragrance of jasmine and sandal on clouds of yellow pollen. The cock crows, the doves coo, peacocks flap their wings on the housetops, horses whinny, and elephants clink their chains in the dust. The passionate love of birds, beasts and flowers is a special characteristic of Indian poetry. Nature, however, is rarely admired for her own sake, and the contemplation of nature but rarely arouses mystical feeling of the Wordsworthian type. 3 Sometimes, as in the famous dawn verses from Kalidasa's Sakuntala, nature provides a basis for observations of a moral character. 4 But usually she is viewed by the Indian poet in a framework of human emotion, or serves to frame human emotion. Natural phenomena of all kinds are widely employed by the Indian erotic poet to heighten the intensity of feeling expressed in his work. In this connection Dawn plays its part. Numerous Indian examples of the theme of the lovers' parting at dawn may be found (our Nos. 22-32), but it is not necessarily a time of farewells. Two other themes are frequently associated with it. Hinduism looks askance on love making in the hours of daylight; 5 but it is evident that on many of the poets of Ancient India religious taboos rested lightly. Hence dawn is sometimes thought of, not as the time of lovers' parting, but of their waking from 2

Cf. the Greek myth of Eos and Tithonos, which seems to express the same thought: for although Tithonos has been given immortality the misfortune that he was not given eternal youth makes him waste away at the side of his eternally youthful Dawn. See the Introduction to the Greek section, p. 255, and the General Survey, p. 69. Ed. * E.g. as in the Pali hymns attributed to the Buddhist elder MahSkassapa, trans. C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Psalms of the Early Buddhists, II (1913), p. 359 ff. * Compare the remarkable description of the seasons in Tulsi Das' Hindi Rdm-carit-mSnas, iv (tr. F. Growse, Allahabad, 1922). ' Manu, xi, 175. Vifriu, lxix, 9-10. Translations of these 'lawbooks' are contained in Sacred Books of the East, Nos. 25 and 7 (Oxford, 1886 and 1880).

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sleep and resuming their caresses (Nos. 14 and 15). The taboo was, however, more regularly observed in later years, and gives a certain ambiguity to some of our poems. It is possible that the cock is 'heard angrily by lovers' not because it is the herald of their separation, but merely because it warns them that they must soon cease their loving (No. 32). Moreover Ancient Indian society was polygamous, and hetasrae were numerous and respected. Hence Dawn was the time of the return of the errant husband to his wife, from the bed of her rival (Nos. 16-21). Not infrequent in Indian poetry is the scene in which the beloved upbraids her lover at dawn for his unfaithfulness. In addition to these three themes there are the doings of lovers as part of the general scene at dawn, and it is with verses on this topic that our selection begins (Nos. 2-13). Erotic conventions The ancient Indian erotic poet, while frankly voluptuous, had his own canons of good taste; he rarely pandered to mere prurience and lasciviousness by describing the more intimate details of erotic activity, and was wholly heterosexual in his outlook. In some of the later literature, especially that in the vernacular, the good taste of the classical poet was forgotten, but until the coming of the Muslims a certain degree of restraint is evident in almost all Indian erotic writing. At an early period, however, sexual technique was raised to the level of a fine art, or rather of a science, and a number of textbooks on erotics have survived, the most notable and earliest being the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana. The audience for which the Indian poet wrote was mainly to be found in the courts of kings and of their vassal sub-kings. Literature was also patronized by the wealthy and educated members of other sections of the community, and the caste system was never so rigid as to exclude members of the priestly and mercantile classes from association with the nobility, or from attendance at the festivals at which dramas were performed, and at the symposia at which poems were recited. The poet's audience was usually select, educated and wealthy. Among its activities making love was one of the chief. The Indian mind, with its passion for classification, early divided the legitimate activities of mankind under four heads: dharma, the pursuit of virtue; artha, the acquisition of wealth; and kama, erotic activity; the fourth category, mok$a, the attainment of salvation by penance and meditation, did not apply to the man of the world. The erotic life of the cultured Indian was full and varied, and the religious sanctions which limited it were not stringent, and were often liberally interpreted. Thus although the usual form of marriage was then as now religious and indissoluble, and was arranged by the parents of the bride and bridegroom, this did not preclude other relationships of a richly varied character. The priestly legalists enumerate eight types of marriage4 which include, besides four forms of religious marriage, such surprising items as the asura-vivaha, or marriage by purchase; the gandharva-vivaha or the voluntary and often clandestine union of a girl and her lover; •

E.g. Manu, iii, 20ff.

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the rakfasa-vivaha, or marriage by capture; and thepaisaca-vivaha, or the seduction of a girl who is asleep, drugged, drunk, or mentally deranged. Of these the first and last are generally reprobated, and some doubts exist as to whether any of the secular forms of marriage were permitted to brahmans, but the gandharva and rakfasa were certainly allowed to members of the warrior class. While monogamy was looked upon by many as the ideal, on the analogy of the divine hero Rama, who was constantly faithful to his devoted wife Slta, polygamy was usual with the nobility. Kings maintained large establishments of wives and concubines, and harem intrigue was a stock subject of Sanskrit drama. While most modern Indian authorities are anxious to establish that the status of women in Ancient India was far higher than it later became,7 this point may be overstressed. Theoretically a woman was perpetually in tutelage, either to her parents or to her husband. 8 The harems of the wealthy seem to have differed but little from their Muslim counterparts. Although women were not normally veiled in public, those of the higher classes were not allowed close contact with men other than their husbands or relatives. The evidence of contemporary poetry, drama and fiction, as well as that of the literature on erotics, shows that these rules were often broken; but the comparative inaccessibility of female companionship outside the circle of the family was attended by widespread prostitution. As in other ancient cultures the hetaera, although attacked by the moralists, had a definite status in society, and was often very wealthy and highly cultured. It is remarkable that the same conditions did not lead to the widespread practice of homosexualism, as might have been expected on Greek or Muslim analogy. Adultery with married women was invariably looked upon by the moralists as a deadly sin, and very harsh penalties are laid on the offenders, especially in the earlier lawbooks. 9 But there is ample evidence that it was not unknown among all sections of society, and that the offenders did not always suffer the dire punishments suggested for them by the jurists. In this cultural framework the Indian poet treated his erotic theme. His interest was usually physical. He admired the constancy and nobility of his heroine, but he was more interested in her physical appearance and her reactions to sexual excitement. She was not, however, a mere instrument for the satisfaction of her lover or husband, but a partner in passion. The erotic textbooks make much of the responsibility of the lover for ensuring his mistress's satisfaction. While the wife separated from her lord, one of the stock themes of Indian poetry, fiction and drama, does indeed long for her husband's mere presence, for the sound of his voice, and for his protecting arm, her greatest need is for his physical love. The preoccupation with feminine psychology is a very striking feature of Indian classical literature. India has produced few poetesses, and those few have usually 7

On this topic M. Winternitz, Die Frau in den Indischen Religionen (Leipzig, 1920); C. Bader, Women in Ancient India (London, 1925); A. S. Altekar, Women in Hindu Civilization (Benares, 1938); S. K. De, Treatment of Love in Sanskrit Literature (Calcutta, 1929). 8 Manu, v, 148, ix, 2 ff. 9 Manu, viii, 352ff.

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confined themselves to religious themes. But her poets seem to have taken an unparallelled delight in the imaginative depiction of women's feelings and states of mind. In no other ancient literature does the male poet perform this literary travestism so frequently or so successfully. Literature in Ancient India was a science as well as an art, limited by exact rules of content and form. Among the tasks performed by the Indian rhetorician was one shared with the eroticist, the thorough classification of women according to their character, type, class, age, and circumstances. Into one or more of such classes the chief female character of every poem, drama, or narrative was supposed to fall; the hero was similarly classified, but in less detail. These classifications are perhaps significant in giving some picture of Indian women in love - loyal, dependent, intensely passionate, with vivid emotions, prone to easy tears and laughter, rapidly pining away in the absence of their lords ; but easily angered and often less easily appeased. The feminine emotion of mâna, which we have usually translated 'anger', has no counterpart in the English language. In general speech the word meant 'pride', but in the erotic connection it implied a combination of injured pride, rage, caprice and pique, which often led to the prolonged estrangement of lovers. The love of women was usually constant, but that of the well-to-do man, with co-wives, concubines and hetaerae available at his whim, was never sure. For the Indian woman even marriage did not bring emotional security. Hence the return of the shamefaced husband or lover from the bed of the rival in the morning is a frequent subject of poetry. Lovers' quarrels do not always spring from this cause however. They are often looked upon as part of the love-play itself, and are perhaps an aspect of the sadism and masochism which are evident in Indian love-making, and which have led to the literary convention by which both sexes proudly display the tokens of their passion in the form of the marks of nails and teeth. The following list of the eight nâyikâ-bhedas or types of heroine is of interest. These stock situations are, according to Indian dramaturgy and poetics, those in which it is legitimate to describe the heroine. It is fortunate that the poet did not always adhere to them. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Profitapatika, whose husband or lover is absent on a journey. Kalahântaritâ, separated from him by a quarrel. Khan4itâ, betrayed. Abhisârikâ, going out at night to meet her lover in secret.10 Utkanfhitâ, anxious when her lover does not keep the tryst. Vipralabdhà, disappointed at her lover's neglect. Vâsakasajjâ, awaiting her lover in her room. Svâdhïnapatikâ, having a devoted husband or lover.11

To these we must add two further categories which are given by some later authorities : 10 11

The subject of some well known 17th-18th century miniatures. S. Lévi, Le Théâtre Indien (Paris, 1890), pp. 76-78.

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9. Pravatsyatpatika, she whose husband or lover is about to go away, and 10. Agatapatika, she whose husband or lover is about to return to her. The ninth category is particularly appropriate to our theme, since the Pravatsyatpatika is explicitly associated with dawn in the descriptions of her class.12 Sanskrit courtly poetry and the question of foreign influence As far as is known courtly literature in Sanskrit was not written earlier than the beginning of the Christian Era, first appearing in what seems to be an almost fully developed condition, with the works of the Buddhist poet A§vagho§a and the Girnar inscription of the Great Satrap Rudradaman (A.D. 150). In the Gupta Period (4th and 5th centuries A.D.) it produced the great poet Kalidasa, and it continued to be written until the Muslim invasion. Although the vernaculars were used more and more in literature after this event, Sanskrit poems following classical models are still occasionally composed. Courtly Sanskrit poetry usually belongs to one of two classes, the long poem or epic (kavya) and the single verse (pada, sometimes referred to as sukti). There is little poetry of middle length and such as there is often resolves itself into a series of verses on a common theme. Each verse is a poem in itself, the witty expression of a proverbial truth, or the concise description of an aspect of nature or of a poignant moment in human relationships. The long poems, often loosely termed epics, are usually characterised by a formlessness and prolixity which render them tedious to tastes developed on a literature owing much to the canons of Aristotle and the classical tradition. The single verses, on the other hand, are often miracles of conciseness, leaving much unsaid, to be filled in by the reader's imagination. They often remind us of the Japanese tanka or the Persian ruba'i. Certain similarities of theme in Sanskrit and Hellenic amatory epigrams and the knowledge that there were Hellenic kingdoms near enough to have influenced the Indians have prompted the question whether there could have been any Western influence on Sanskrit poetry. This question must be answered in the negative so far as it concerns the sort of poetry quoted in this section, even though it is agreed that the influence of Achaemenid Persia is to be seen in Mauryan art, and probably in the organization of the Mauryan Empire (4th and 3rd centuries B.C.). But in literature it is possible reasonably to suggest the influence of Greece only in the drama. Various interesting similarities have been noticed between the later Greek comedy and the Sanskrit drama. Beyond this we cannot go. In our opinion the temptation to trace any of the imagery of our poems to such classical sources as the Greek Anthology must be resisted. The earliest examples in our selection are the verses of Hala, which were probably written some four hundred years after the fall of the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, and which emanated from the Deccan, where Hellenic influences were even weaker than in the "

E.g. Bhafabhufana, 20, in G. A. Grierson, Satsaiyd of Bikari (Calcutta, 1896), p. 38.

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North. As to China, it is not remotely possible that Indian dawn poetry received any impetus from that quarter, since no clear evidence of Chinese influence on the India of the period exists. We believe that Sanskrit classical literature felt its strongest influences from within the sub-continent. Probably Tamil literature had worked out literary conventions, largely independent of Northern influence, even before the canons of courtly Sanskrit literature were finally codified. Prominent among the themes of early Tamil erotic poetry are the secret meeting of lover and beloved, and the pangs of the wife separated from her lord, themes which frequently recur in later Sanskrit literature. Hala, the Prakrit poet whose work contains the earliest erotic poetry of this type in an Aryan language, is traditionally said to have been a king of the Deccan. The area in which Dravidian languages were spoken was considerably larger two thousand years ago than it is today. In our view Dravidian influence on courtly Sanskrit literature is more probable than Greek. It may be suggested that even early Tamil was influenced in some measure by Greek models. This probability is extremely slight. The Yavanas are indeed mentioned in early Tamil literature, but only as merchants, sailors, or mercenaries. The mercenaries moreover are 'dumb', which probably implies that their speech was unintelligible to the Tamils. They may not have been Greeks at all, but Arabs, Egyptians, or even deserters from the Roman legions. Old Tamil contains no words of European origin which did not reach it through Sanskrit. The poems

The interest of Indian poets who wrote in Sanskrit about lovers and the dawn was not confined to dawn-partings, the leading theme of this book. We have therefore arranged the poems so that they lead up to this cardinal theme, beginning with the dawn scene. We have made no attempt to provide a counterpart in English terms of the aesthetic flavour of the originals, but have aimed at conveying their sense as consicely as possible. It is beyond our powers even to suggest the subtle rhythms and the emotional overtones of the Sanskrit verses. Nor must it be thought that these are word-for-word translations. The literal translation of Sanskrit is quite impossible without offering grave affront to the English language, as will be made clear by the Note on verse No. 10, on p. 164 below. Ancient Indian poetry employs a wide range of complicated quantitative metres, often with rhythms as subtle as those of the Indian drummer. As in European classical languages, syllables are classed as long either from the length of the inherent vowel, or from the fact that that vowel is followed by two consonants. In Sanskrit the vowels e and o are invariably long. The verse is nearly always divided into four quarters which are usually of equal length. For purposes of scansion the syllable at the end of a quarter may count as long, when it is in fact short.

INDIAN III.

147

HINDI

by A. L. BASHAM

Hindi literature begins in the Middle Ages, with devotional hymns and martial ballads.13 Later it was developed for courtly and erotic purposes, and the Sanskrit literary conventions adapted to it. At all times, however, it contained a strong popular element, and its greatest poets composed for, and are still appreciated by, a very wide public. Hindi poetry differs from Sanskrit in the regular use of rhyme and in its metres, which are usually based on syllabic instants, like the Sanskrit Arya. The Hindi poet allowed himself more metrical licence than the Sanskrit and irregularities are common. We quote a few verses from classical Hindi, describing the chief dawn themes of the Sanskrit convention (see Nos. 33-37).14 IV.

VAI$NAVA POETRY

by DEBEN BHATTACHARYA

Vaisnavism is a term used in Indian theology to denote the special cult of Vi$nu, the Great Preserver. Its principal forms concern the worship of Rama, whose deeds are immortalized in the Hindu epic, the Rdmayarta, but to an even greater extent, the worship of Kr§na who is also regarded as one of Visnu's incarnations. Kisna's passionate love-making with Radha, a milk-maid, was interpreted as a symbol of the mutual love of God and the soul and it was in this form that it not only came to dominate religious feeling in many parts of India but also to inspire a prolific poetry. 'This worship of Krishna in the Rajput period', Coomaraswamy has said, 'was no new element in Indian religion. The doctrine of bhakti, devotion, is already set forth in the Bhagavad Gita, probably some centuries before the birth of Christ. Vaishnavism was the chief faith of the Guptas. Early Vaishnavaism, however, consists mainly in the worship of the Vasudeva Krishna of the epics; the gestes of the child Krishna, and his relations with the milkmaids are first mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana and the Harivamsa, although it is clear that the child-Krishna stories were well known already before the Krishna era. The great work of the mediaeval Vaishnava revival, on the one hand, established the cult of Rama and glorified him as the model of a human king and, as developed by the great poets Jayadeva and Chandidas, emphasized the identification of Gopala Krishna with the older Vasudeva and brought into prominence the stories of Radha and the milkmaids, which are the symbols of Vaishnava mysticism and the main theme of Rajput art. Although this identification of a popular pastoral divinity with the Vasudeva of the epics cannot have been a sudden event, nevertheless the great development after the 11th century, of this 13

Little has been written in English on Hindi literature. Good outlines are: E. Greaves, A Sketch of Hindi Literature (Madras, 1919) and F. E. Keay, History of Hindi Literature (Calcutta, 1920). 14 In this section I am indebted to Dr. F. R. Allchin for several helpful suggestions. (A.L.B.)

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bhakta cult of Radha and Krishna - in some respects the most modern and most universal development of Indian religion - has all the force of a new revelation, compelling and inspiring a whole cycle of expression in poetry and painting, music and drama.' 15 Although the original centre of the new movement was Braj, the area adjoining Mathura in the modern State of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), it was in Bengal that the loves of Radha and Kr?na received some of their earliest expressions in vernacular poetry. Vidyapati, born in Darbhanga district, Bihar, in the latter part of the 14th century, acted as court poet to Siva Simha, then King of Mithila, and produced a host of lovesongs in the Maithili vernacular dealing allegorically with the soul's relation to God. A dawn poem by Vidyapati can be found on p. 62 of Durgadas Lahiri, Vai$nava Pada Laharl. His admirer, Chandidas (1403-1463), born in the Birbhum district of Bengal, carried his influence even further, reaching supreme heights both as a poet in Bengali and as a spiritual teacher (see our Nos. 38 and 39). Govindadas (1538-1614), born in the Burdwan district of Bengal, developed the same tradition, also employing Bengali as his medium of expression (See our No. 40). In Northern India, the same movement led to the composition of Hindi vernacular poetry, its greatest exponent in the mid-16th century being Sur Das (1483-1563) who, in Grierson's words, is 'considered to have exhausted all the possibilities of poetic art' (there are dawn poems by Sur Das on p. 475 of Sur Sagar, ed. Naval Kisor (1902), Nos. 13, 16, 17 and 18). Since the essence of the Radha-Kr§na story is impassioned romance, it was natural that Vai§nava poets should concentrate on the many situations with which lovers are confronted. It is not surprising, therefore, that here, or elsewhere in Indian poetry, the dawn makes its appearance not only as the enemy of ordinary lovers but as a signal for Kf$ria and Radha to part.

V.

POETRY OF THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES

(a) Ao Naga (The late Mr. J. P. Mills, the former Deputy-Commissioner of the Naga Hills, described the background of the remarkable Naga song (our No. 41) in the follwoing terms in his book. 14 Ed.) Love-songs are often sung by young bucks in the girls' dormitories. The man sings one verse and the girl replies with another. The example given below relates, in very obscure language, how a flying squirrel fell in love with a bird. The man begins, in the character of the squirrel, and the girl sings the bird's part in reply. 15 14

A. K. Coomaraswamy, Rajput Painting (London, 1916), I, 28. The Ao Nagas (1926), 330.

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The Squirrel Sings: ('From far Lungkungchang' etc. — our No. 41) The Bird Replies: Countless suitors have come to the house where I sleep, But in this lover only, handsome as a flower, Do mine eyes behold the ideal of my heart. Many come to the house where I sleep, But the joy of my eyes was not among them. My lover is like the finest bead on the necks of all the men of all the world. When my lover comes not to where I sleep, Ugly and hateful to my eyes is my chamber. (b) Gonds, Partitions and Baiga by VERRIER ELWINf

The first four of these poems (Nos. 42-45) are Karma songs sung during dances by the Gonds, Pardhans and Baigas of Madhya Pradesh; the fifth (No. 46) is a doha couplet sung by the Ahir cowherds. A sixth (No. 47) is a parody. The Karma songs consist of a hard core of the actual poem, but when they are sung they grow very long with repetitions, interpolations, tag-words and all manner of irrelevance intended to fit the words to the rhythm of the dance. The Karma festival is no longer observed among the tribes whose songs are the subject of this section, though a belief in the ceremonial value of the Karma dance persists, for in times of draught or calamity a priest may set a chain of Karma dances weaving round the country. The dance is no longer associated with the Karma or Karam tree, but many of the ceremonies described for the Uraon Karam festival17 can be paralleled in the Jawara festival of Mandla, and there are other vestiges that speak of a close affinity with the Uraon Karam in former times. Thus here the Karma dance and song have become detached from their ritual setting.18 This group of tribesmen has had a good deal of contact with the Hindus, yet it has not been a literary contact, and any Hindu poetry known to it has been either pious or obscene. My impression is that the folk-songs are almost entirely uninfluenced by outside literary models. The idea of the parting of lovers and of the dawn or the cock as their enemy is one that might easily arise frequently and independently. Among these tribesmen the dawn is definitely a time for parting, not for meeting. The dawn is not for them a very romantic moment. The reason is a practical one; the dawn is the one part of the day when everybody is about. While it is still dark boys have to be up seeing to the animals; as the light dawns the fields are covered with furtive figures seeking a little privacy for easement; the well is crowded with women; indoors babies are waking up and screaming, old women are kindling fires, others are 17

See section (c) Uraon, below p. 152. For a more detailed discussion of the Karma festival in this area see my Folk-songs of the Maikal Hills (1944), pp. 3ff. 18

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sweeping, husking grain, performing a dozen little chores. The stage is too crowded for love. And the tribesmen have a very strong sense of work. It is a rule of the Muria ghotul dormitory that the girls should be out of it before dawn. 'They leave early because they come laughing from the arms of their boys and feel shy.' But also 'a girl should be hard at work husking or grinding grain before her parents are up.' Long before dawn a Saora village echoes to the thud-thud of the pestles in every house.19 Meetings at the well are in the afternoon or at dusk; in the early morning there are too many women there and they are too busy. One or two references from the mythology may be of interest. In a Muria story, the hero Lingo makes the sun of wood and vivifies it by sacrificing his only son. The Sun, who is a man, drank a lot of the blood and that is why he is always red. The Moon, who is a woman, only drank a little and is always pale. The child's mother wept bitterly, but next morning when the Sun rose red into the sky, her husband said to her, 'There is your baby in the sky; do not weep, for you will always be able to look at him.'20 And a Bondo legend describes how the Sun wandered on earth in the form of a black bull; some Bondos caught it and tied it up. In the dormitory boys and girls played together till they wearied, but the morning never came. One of the girls gave a boy a mushroom, and when the boys at last went home and came to the place where the bull was tethered, the mushroom jumped to the ground, turned into an egg, the egg broke and a cock came out crowing. At the sound the bull jumped into the air, breaking the cord that held it, and the dawn came. All over the world birds broke from mushrooms as from eggs and sang to the dawn. Ever since the sun has risen at the voice of the cock. It raises its arms as it comes up from bathing in the eastern sea. The Saoras say that the Sun has a 'Flower, strong and beautiful', in his hair. (c) Uraon by W. G. ARCHER (London)

The songs of the Uraons or Khurukh of the Mandar, Mahuadanr, Gumla and Jashpurnagar areas of Chota Nagpur, some two hundred miles due west of the Ganges Delta, are distinguished by their sophisticated and in some measure surrealist technique, which to those who meet them for the first time seem surprising in their ritual or more purely 'social' settings in aboriginal Indian life. Many Uraon songs bear interpretation on several levels of meaning and reveal a sly sense of humour or joking gaiety. Such is the dawn song included in this collection (Indian, No. 49) whose "

10

See The Muria and their Ghotul (1947), p. 380. Myths of Middle India (1949), p. 63.

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different nature will emerge clearly on comparison with most of the dawn songs collected from other aboriginals in Middle and Eastern India. The song is from the wedding ritual. As I have recorded elsewhere,21 it refers to the sending of the girl's party ('releasing the cattle') to meet the party of the bridegroom. On the approach of the latter party to the girl's village there is a mimic fight, which resolves itself pleasantly enough into a dance. The peacock, the cock and the dew are references to the marriage pomp, the decorations in the house prior to the wedding, and to the excitement in the courtyard. But, as comparison with the symbolism of other songs shows, whether they be specifically Uraon, aboriginal Indian or Asiatic in general, the song is also to be interpreted on quite another level - that of a non-ritual love-song. The cock, the peacock and falling dew are symbols often associated with love and dawn in dawn songs, as recourse to the index to this book will show.22 The symbol of the 'cattle', meaning 'a girl' or 'girls' is more specifically tribal Indian and Uraon. 23 Thus the plain meaning is of a song in which a lie-abed son is told by his mother to get up and let out the cattle and he replies 'Wait till it is dawn'. But its erotic meaning, superimposed upon this plain meaning is 'Let the girl go, boy' ('release the brown cattle'24), 'Wait, mother, till I have had my way with her' ('let the peacock cry, let the cock crow, the dew fall'). It is to the participation of the mother and to the setting at dawn when all are up and doing that we owe the ironic flavour of the song at this level. The persistence of varied dawn imagery throughout the texture of the song would perhaps justify us in regarding it as originally a dawn love-song that has subsequently been imported into the wedding ritual because of its general applicability to a certain stage of the ceremonial (the departure of the girl's party), thus creating its third and now dominant level of meaning. Among Uraon songs the phrase 'in the morning' is of very frequent occurrence, a fact of considerable interest for our present purpose. But before this question can be examined with any prospect of a satisfactory conclusion something must first be said about Uraon festivals and dances. The Phagua festival occurs in March and is the Uraon equivalent of New Year's Eve. It marks the end of the marriage season and of the period of relaxation after the harvest. Branches of the cotton-tree are set up, wrapped in straw and offered some country bread and incense. They are then burned. The festival ends in dancing and drinking. Sarhul comes at the end of the same month, or early in April, when the Sal trees (Shorea robusta) put forth their luxurious blossoms. It is a vegatation and fecundity ceremony - a marriage of the earth with the sun on the assumption that the soil is 11

See The Blue Grove (1940), p. 126. Vide sub 'dawn dew', 'Signs and symbols, b) Birds'. 29 Cf. my The Dove and the Leopard (1948), No. 115, a Karam dance song quoted in full below. " For this meaning — 'cattle' - 'girl' or 'girls' see further The Blue Grove, No. 133 (a wedding song); The Dove and the Leopard (1948), No. 58 (a Sarhul dance-song).

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ready to be quickened. The Sal blossom is at once the visual symbol of fertility and the indispensable sign for Sarhul to begin. This is not the place to describe the ritual in detail,25 but it can be said that it involves a marriage in mime between sun and earth, the sacrifice of fowls to the Sun-god in the sacred grove, a ceremonial drenching and a feast on the sacrificial fowls. The proceedings end in general drinking and dancing in the Akhra or arena, which may go on all night and into the following day. The dancers dance heavily garlanded with Sal flowers, which they have brought back from the forest. The Karam festival comes in August, marking a period of relaxation between the arduous work of transplanting the paddy and the rigours of the harvest. The centre of the ritual consists in the cutting of three branches of a Karam-tree {Adina cordifolia, Hook) and their installation in the dancing-ground. The entry into the village of the Karam-Raja (as the branches are called) is accompanied by dancing which continues through the night. Next morning the branches are garlanded and the Karam legend is recited. Baskets of grain are offered to the branches, and ceremonially nurtured barley seedlings are distributed among boys and girls, who put the yellow blades in their hair. In addition to these festivals there are meetings of groups of villages for a common dance, called Jatra. Sarhul Jatras occur from March to June, Karam Jatras from September to October. They are social, not ritual occasions. A subsidiary type of Jatra mentioned prominently below is the Chirdi, which differs from the main Jatra only in the tune of its songs. Another type of social dance mentioned below is the Asari, which is danced in Asar in June and July. There are no major differences of form or content between the various groups of festival and social songs: they are identifiable only by their tune. A Sarhul song is sung to a Sarhul tune, a Karam song to a Karam tune. A poem is rigidly attached to its tune and a tune is rigidly attached to its dance. It is now possible to discuss the pharase 'in the morning' whose recurrence in Uraon poetry is such a notable feature. Of the five-hundred-and-ninety-two songs translated in my two books on Uraon poetry, sixty-five contain the phrase 'in the morning', sometimes with a further qualification (as: 'on the Sarhul morning'), but more generally without. Of these sixty-five instances fifty-one are quatrains with the 'in the morning' phrase invariably in the third line, that is, after the or (the opening movement of the dance) and marking the kirtana or reverse movement. One may surmise that this structural feature made its due contribution towards the stylisation of the 'in the morning' phrase. As to the remaining fourteen songs: in those of five lines the phrase occurs in the third or fourth line; in those of six, in the fourth or fifth line; in one song of eight lines it comes surprisingly in the second; and in another of two long lines it occurs in both. The distribution of the phrase among the various kinds of dances is as follows. One of the songs is sung to a Phagua dance; twenty are sung to Sarhul dances; two to Karam, three to Thariya Karam dances; no less than twenty-two to Chirdi; nine to "

See The Blue Grove, pp. 35ff. and Dove and Leopard, p. 21, for a fuller account.

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153

Jatra; six to Asarr, one to a pre-marriage dance and another to a Ropa cultivation dance. Thus among festival dances Sarhul is by far the most prominent of those with the 'in the morning' phrase. Among social dances Chirdi easily leads, and is followed by Jatras and Asari. An important feature of 'in the morning' songs is their close connection with bhejja dances, that is, dances of any type in which boys and girls go round interlinked in the pattern boy-girl-boy-girl-boy etc. Of twelve songs that explicitly mention the bhejja, seven have the 'in the morning' phrase. If we add two further songs which do not name the bhejja but evidently refer to it, we have fourteen songs, of which eight have 'in the morning'. One of these runs as follows: Girl, how pleasure-loving your mother To be dancing the bhejja till dawn How pleasure-loving in the morning To be dancing the bhejja till dawn." With regard to the occasions with which they are linked in the text of the poems, these fourteen bhejja songs show a similar distribution to that of the 'in the morning' songs : seven are Sarhul poems, five are Chirdi, one is a Kararn and one a Jatra poem. All of these songs referring to the bhejja are love-songs, some of them of a deliberately provocative or risqué type. In three of them a girl promises to dance the bhejja with a boy if he will make her a gift: jamun leaves for ear-plugs,27, a feather,28 flowers from the Life-and-death tree (a species of magnolia),29 implying a favour considerable enough for the boy to make the effort. As we saw above, the bhejja is an affair for the pleasure-loving: one may sulk when one husks rice, but one rushes to the bhejja.30 The claim 'What does it matter, if we hold each other's hands dancing the bhejja in the morning' is clearly an understatement.31 The oft-repeated information that a girl is dancing this dance till her clothes come down is nearer to the mark, at any rate so far as her wishes are concerned.32 The bhejja somehow involves a man's work: When the bhejja is danced you claim to be a man But you say you are too young to plough In the night you are a man But you're much too young to plough." It is clearly not for nothing that the phrase 'in the night' is pointedly inserted at the beginning of the kirtana, and the following two songs suggest an obvious reason: 26 87

» " "

81 33

Dove and Leopard, No. 230 (Jatra). Ibid., No. 33 (Sarhul). Ibid., No. 35 (Sarhul). Blue Grove, No. 12 (Sarhul). Ibid., No. 250 (Chirdi). Ibid., No. 258 (Chirdi). Blue Grove, No. 3. Dove and Leopard, No. 253 (Chirdi).

1-54

INDIAN

What a naughty world With the boys and girls dancing together Never trust a boy in the morning When the boys and girls are dancing together.84 A year ago he danced the bhejja with me But now he is ashamed Morning and he danced the bhejja with me But at night he is ashamed.85 The following Karam song is of especial interest to us since it uses phraseology similar to that of the dawn song included in the collection, and in a bhejja context: Brother The bhejja dance was too much for you The cattle are within In the morning you yielded to the bhejja And the cattle are within.88 This seems to mean that the excitement of the bhejja was too much for one young man, that on the approach of dawn he retired with a girl and made love to her (as often happens in life at a big dance) and so kept her from her household tasks, which begin at dawn ('the cattle are within') and failed to do his own morning tasks (such as letting out the real cattle). As another song depicts the situation: Take your hand off, juri My clothes are getting loose Let them get loose, juri, let them come down The time for dancing Is almost over.87 (Juri is used reciprocally between girl and boy friends.) We are, perhaps, now able to attempt a reconstruction of how the 'in the morning' phrase was evolved. It is at the Sarhul festival above all that dancing goes on through the night till dawn and after, the general sense of fun and abandon are at their height and a boy is more than ever inclined to retire to a quiet spot with his girl before the first light. In keeping with this we have three songs with the specific phrase 'on the Sarhul morning', though it must be remembered that 'Sarhul morning' was the morning of the ceremony itself, not the morning after the revels. Whether 'on the Sarhul morning' derives from 'in the morning' or the latter is derived from it cannot be said with any certainty: but it certainly looks as if 'on the Sarhul morning' were a casual adaptation of the erotic 'in the morning' to the more ceremonial requirements of the kirtana movement in songs of Sarhul day: 94

" "

87

Ibid., No. 34 (Sarhul). Ibid., No. 251 (Chirdi). Ibid., No. 115 (Karam). Ibid., No. 36 (Sarhul).

INDIAN

155

With an ear-ring and a silk cloth, brother You look like a god in the dawn On the Sarhul morning with a silk cloth Like a god you look in the dawn.38 Against this there is only one other song with a specific 'in the morning' reference: 'Come and dance the bhejja with me on the Jatra morning'. 39 The line of evolution may thus have been: from reference to the morning after the Sarhul dancing to that after other and more purely social dances (especially Chirdi), and hence from the erotic to more general contexts. The erotic associations of 'in the morning' will now perhaps be clear. Their primary origin is in the bhejja, with its mixed formation, and the opportunities it offered for wooing. Normally sunrise was the busiest and most public time in village life and little suited to love-making. Hence the ironical references in these festival and dance songs to lovers who have been detained from their domestic tasks beyond the hour of dawn. It was on such exceptional occasions that things turned out differently, the bhejja proved too much for one of the dancers and 'the cattle stayed within'.40 VI. DAWN MOTIFS IN INDIAN PAINTING by DOUGLAS BARRETT CLondon)

It is difficult to say when it became the practice in India to compose sets of verses designed to express in words the moods of the various ragas and raginls, on which Northern Indian music is based. Nor is it certain how early these ragmalas or Garlands of ragas, as they are called, were illustrated. The verses, the earliest of which in any extended form are found on surviving paintings, all have an erotic bias and are not likely to antedate the Vai?navite revival and the birth of vernacular literature of the end of the mediaeval period. Nor can any surviving ragmala paintings of North India be placed with any confidence before 1500 A. D., though a Bhairavi ragini in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which belongs to the so-called Chaurapancasika Group, may well date from the early years of the 16th century. In the Deccan the idea of giving pictorial expression to the raga may have originated at the luxurious court of Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1580-1627), whose musical compositions in several instances visualise the ragas in which they are written. A small group of raga paintings of superlative quality and quite distinctive Deccan style has survived from about 1580. However, once they were adopted, illustrations to ragmalas became one of the most popular motifs in the painting of Rajasthan. Mughal and later Deccan painting also provides a number of examples. The ragas are classified in various ways. One of the commonest is to group them according to the time of the day when it would be appropriate to play them. There are 38

Dove and Leopard, No. 8. Ibid., No. 256. 40 I am deeply indebted to the Editor, in collaboration with whom this contribution has been prepared. "

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INDIAN

two dawn ragas which pictorially give expression to a specifically dawn motif - the Vibhasa ragini and the Lalita ragiifi.

The illustrations to the Vibhasa ragiifi combine two themes - the renewal of passion and the parting of lovers at dawn. The first is implied in an example from an early ragmala set, related to the Chaurapancasika Group and painted probably in Southern Rajasthan.41 It is not likely to be later than 1560 A.D. The lover sits on his wife's bed, holding in his left hand the bow of Kama, the god of love. The bow is made of sugar-cane, with a bowstring of bees. A lotus-tipped arrow is held in his right hand. It is of course the bow-and-arrow which arouses and renews love-desire. A Vibhasa ragini from the earliest dated ragmala, painted in 1605 at Chawand in Mewar, also shows Kama with his bee-stringed bow about to waken a sleeping woman.42 (Fig. 4). In another painting from a ragmala in the collection of Dr. W. B. Manley, in so-called 'Provincial Mughal' style and to be dated 1610-20, Kama is touching his lover with a lotus-tipped arrow (Fig. 5). In a further example, also 'Provincial Mughal' of about 1640, the lover is fondling a woman, while holding a real bow and arrow in one hand.43 In a painting of the Malwa School, dating about 1700, the motif is given clearer expression.44 Here Kama aims his lotus-arrow at his sleeping wife to awaken her desire after the night's lovemaking. This picture illustrates its accompanying poem accurately. In one 18th-century Deccan painting Kama touches his sleeping wife with a real arrow.46 The second theme, the parting at dawn, is found in two early ragmala sets, which were painted, perhaps in Bundelkhand, in thefirsthalf of the 17th century46 (Frontispiece). In both cases the lovers, Kama and Rati, his wife, are represented on a bed in a palace. Kama aims a lotus-arrow from a bent lotus-bow at a cock, the herald of the dawn. Strangely enough the accompanying poems do not mention this motif, but emphasise rather the previous theme - the satiety of the lovers, Vibhasa lying on her couch. Mughal examples are rather prosaic beside the genuine passion of these pictures. In a picture47 by a Mughal artist soon after 1700 A.D. Kama, who is represented as a young Mughal prince, aims a lotus-arrow from a real bow. A later and rather dull picture, from the Deccan and of the first half of the 18th century, makes Kama aim a real arrow at the cock.48 Pictures of the Lalita ragiifl, from Malwa and the Deccan of the 18th century, illustrate a variant of this second theme. These show the lover leaving his mistress at dawn.49 She is grieved and resentful at his departure and tries to persuade him to remain. Afineearly example appears in Dr. W. B. Manley's ragmala (Fig. 6). Bundel41

W. Norman Brown, "Some Early RajasthanI Raga Paintings", J.I.S.O.A., XVI (1948), Plate III, bottom left. 42 Gopi Krishna Kanoria, "An Early Dated RajasthanI Ragamala", J.I.S.O.A., XIX (1952-3). 4S Karl Khandalawala, "Leaves from Rajasthan", Marg, IV, no. 3 (1950), fig. 17. 44 O. C. Gangoly, Ragas and Raginis (Calcutta, 1934), vol. 2, pi. LXXXVII, fig. A. 45 Ibid., pi. LXXXVI, fig. B. " Ibid., pis. LXXXV and LXXXVI, fig. A. 4 ' Ibid., pi. LXXXVII, fig. D. 48 Ibid., pi. LXXXVII, fig. C. 49 Ibid., pi. XXXVI, figs. A, B and C.

INDIAN

157

khand pictures of this ragirii, dating from the first half of the 17th century, present a less pleasant ingredient in the experience of love.50 Here the lover is shown returning at dawn to his mistress after having spent the night with another woman. VII. THE CLASSICAL INDIAN DAWN MODES by ARNOLD BAKEt

The fact that one finds albas all over the world, beloved by peoples as far apart as, for instance, the Japanese and the Britons of the 16th century, shows that they have more than a merely literary importance. This form of poetry must appeal to some basic feeling, it must have a general appeal that is primarily emotional. It is this emotional quality which explains the presence of albas in the system of classical Indian music - a finely shaded classification of emotions as expressed in an established order of intervals and notes. In essence this system is not different from the Western system of ecclesiastical modes and it is very closely akin to the modes of the ancient Greeks, as Plato describes them, attributing a different ethos to each of them and a far-reaching power to mould the human character for better or for worse. The mediaeval Western system of modes never went as far as this; but, before examining the Indian development of the ethos of the modes, we may well recall our own 15th century Latin doggerel verse, attributed to Adam of Fulda, which correctly formulates their contemporary character and indicates what sentiment each of them conveyed best: Omnibus est primus, sed alter est tristibus aptus Tertius iratus, quartus dicitur fieri blandus Quintum da laetis, sextus pietate probatus Septimus est iuvenum sed postremus sapientum The first mode suits all; the second is appropriate to those who grieve; the third is full of ire; the fourth is to be made friendly; the fifth give to those who are glad; the sixth suits devotion; the seventh belongs to youth and the last is proper to the wise. In India we see that a similar specification of the modal principle is carried to an extreme in the final development of the system of the North Indian ragas and raginis, especially after the merging of Indian and Persian elements at the court of the Moghuls. From the original seven modes - the jatis of the earliest texts - a host of variations have been derived by means of combination and permutation, and they have assumed an individual character and power of expression. Each of these derived modes, slightly but perceptibly different from all its relatives, is felt as an expression of a peculiar shade of emotion. Hence the name raga, derived from a root which means 'to colour'. It conveys the idea of colour, emotion and charm at the same time. It became an established convention that notes in a fixed succession were a vehicle of particular emotions and created an atmosphere akin to certain times of day or night or to certain seasons, and furthermore suggested masculine or feminine qualities. 60

Ibid., pi. XXXVII, figs. A and B.

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INDIAN

This last idiosyncrasy explains the differentiation into masuline ragas and feminine raginis. It is natural that among the whole range of emotions attributed to these ragas and ragirtis one should find the expression of sadness at separation and parting. What could symbolise that sorrow better than an image of lovers parting at daybreak? Here literature and even painting enter the field of music: in the later stages of the development of the North Indian classical music the emotion and atmosphere of the ragas became so clearly defined that they could be described in poetry and depicted in graceful miniatures. jRaga-pictures are innumerable, either with or without accompanying verse (see pp. 155 if., above). Although there is no unanimity, and different schools attribute different sentiments and hours to ragas of the same name, we find that, in general, two ragas, Lalita and Vibhasa, are singled out for the expression of the sadness of lovers parting at dawn. In a 17th century text, the Mirror of Music (Sangitadarpaoa), the author, Damodara, depicts Lalita in the following lines: atha lalitaragiiji: praphullasaptacchadamalyadhari yuva ca gaurollasalocana&ri vinihsaran daivavaiat prabhate yasyafr patih sa lalita pradi${a (now follows the ragini Lalita: Lalita is portrayed as a young woman, wearing a garland of fully blown saptacchada flowers, a Goddess Sri in beauty, with brightly shining eyes, whose Lord leaves her at daybreak through the cruelty of Fate.) Vibhasa is said to consist of the same notes and to be in every way parallel to Lalita. A manuscript in the India Office Library (Johnson Album 39) contains the above lines with a miniature accurately depicting the scene in question. Even in our days, Vibhasa and Lalita (or, by their modern names, Bibhas and Lalit or Lalat) are still connected with the hour of daybreak. The sequence of Lalat's notes, with an augmented second at the beginning, contrasting with an augmented fourth, gives it a haunting and wistful character, well in accordance with the sadness of parting lovers. Fox Strangways, The Music of Hindostan (1914), Raga-chart, opp. p. 151, gives the following skeleton scheme of the notes of Lalat (No. 42) as used in Gwalior:

•

1,11

" II

Bibhas, as he gives it (No. 2), is indeed similar, but leaves out the fourth and the seventh degree altogether. It is a remarkable feature of Indian culture that music, literature and painting should be so intermingled. In music we have this literary and pictorial personification

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of purely emotional impulses and in literature, on the other hand, we find already in early Sanskrit and Prakrit writings references to the science of music and images drawn from it, that can be understood only if one knows the musical terminology. This is a tendency that has survived through the ages and is found even in modern poems. Bibhas and Lalit and their subtle connection with the moment of daybreak are not forgotten, and without knowledge of this whole world of imagination where music and fleeting time are unbreakably interwoven, the following poem of Rabindranath Tagore would be unintelligible: Once, I know not by which fruit of merit, O Beautiful, I, a flower of the woods, found myself in the garland round Thy neck. At that moment, at the break of day, the first tender light seemed beautiful to the sleep-broken eyes of the earth and the lute of new life sounded in Bibhas and Lalit on water and land. Now, in this tired day's close, in the faded light, in the birds' sleeping song in the utter exhaustion, if, at last, this flower drops to the earth, — ever after you let it be blown by the evening breeze, across the darkness. Let it not be withered in dust upon dust from moment to moment.

The melody of this song has no affinity with the ragas mentioned in it, and there is a subtle change in the meaning of these ragas. They no longer portray the sadness of parting, but convey the message of the new light and the awakening of the breaking day. This sadness Tagore attributes to another raga - or rather ragini - which did not carry that particular feeling in older times, viz. the ragini Bhairavi. It is true that even in older times she belonged to the very early morning, but there she was depicted more austerely, while bringing offerings to the terrible God Bhairava at daybreak. This change of meaning is, however, well understandable, because Bhairavi, as sung in our days, certainly creates an inescapable impression of tender sadness. It is our ecclesiastical Phrygian, the ancient Greek Dorian mode (Fox Strangways, loc. cit., No. 32):

lilt ^ Uo l>o " °

U

"I

The insistence on the interval of the minor sixth in the development of melodies in Bhairavi is a powerful means of creating this wistful atmosphere. Tagore's attributing the sadness of parting to Bhairavi is consequently fully understandable. He says: In the early morning's light sings Bhairavi of parting's pain — Bring thy Flute, O Poet, in the early morning's light sings Bhairavi of parting's pain.

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INDIAN

This is as clear an echo of the dawn poem of lovers' parting as one could wish, a form beloved in India, evoking the picture of Radha and Kj$na as they take leave of one another with the first rays of the rising sun.

INDIAN Anonymous

N o . 1 Tamil

161 early centuries

A.D.

(?)

Kuk-ku-v enradu kô/i-y ad a« edir tu4k' enr' a r f en ruya nenjam ; t ô d ô y kâdalra-p pirikkum va} p ô l viagarai vand' a«râl ewa-v ê. 1 [48] Kuk-kû, the cock crows. My pure heart fills with sudden fear. Like a sword the dawn has come to separate me from my lord, whose shoulders mine have pressed.

I. THE DAWN SCENE Anonymous

N o . 2 Prakrit

c. 200-450

A.D.

Paccusa-mauhavaliparimalana-samusasanta-vattanam kamalana raani-virame jia-loa-siri m a h a m m a h a l . 2 [49] At the end night of the lotus in triumphant beauty spreads her fragrance far and wide, and sighs as her leaves are touched by the rays of the rising sun. 8

Kalidasa*

N o . 3 Sanskrit

5th century

A.D.

Dirghl-kurvan pa{u mada-kalam kujitam sarasanam, pratyuse§u sphutita-kamaF-amoda-maitri-kasayah, yatra strlnam harati surata-glanim ang' anukulah Sipra vatah, priyatama iva prarthana catukarah.' 5 1

Kuruntogai, 157. * Hala, Sattasai, v. 583. The Sattasai (Seven Hundred) (Das Saptasdtakam des Hala, ed. with German translation by A. Weber, Leipzig, 1881), is a collection of single verses ascribed to a King Hala, of the Satavahana dynasty, which reigned in the Deccan for some 300 years from c. 50 B.C. onwards. Hala's authorship of the verses is not now widely accepted, and modern authorities believe that the author wrote between A.D. 200 and 450 (A. B. Keith, A History of Sanskrit Literature, Oxford, 1928, pp. 223-226). The verses are in a Prakrit, based on an ancient vernacular, but by no means an unformed or uncultured dialect. Numerous Prakrits were used in Ancient India for literary purposes, religious writing, and royal inscriptions, and early became formalised. The metre of the example is Arya. See also Nos. 14 and 22. 3 This poem is interpreted in an erotic sense and is said by the commentators to be spoken by a friend to awaken a girl who has spent the night with her lover. 4 It is generally agreed that Kalidasa, who wrote in the 5th century A.D., was the greatest of Sanskrit poets; and much of his work possesses a universal appeal which transcends the poetic conventions of his country and time, so that his greatness can be recognised, though imperfectly, even in translation. His surviving works consist of three plays, the most famous of which is the well known Sakuntala, two epics, and two shorter poems, together with a few verses doubtfully attributed to him. Among his lesser works Meghaduta (the Cloud-Messenger) is the most beautiful. It has been several times translated, the best effort being that of A. Ryder in Sakuntala and other writings of KUlidasa (Everyman ed., 1912). See also No. 23. (The Srrigara-tilaka, from which our No. 24 is taken, is only very doubtfully ascribed to Kalidasa.) 6 Meghaduta, v. 31. Ed. E. Hultzsch (London, 1911). The Meghaduta is a poem of some hundred

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[50] ... Where, in the twilight of dawn, the wind from the (River) Sipra carries afar the shrill melodious cry of the cranes. From its friendship with full-blown lotuses it is fragrant with their scent. Pleasing to the limbs, like a coaxing lover it dispels the weariness of women who have spent the night in passion.®

Kalldasa

No. 4 Sanskrit

5th century A.D.

Tasmin kale nayana-salilam yo§itam khan