I remember, sir, that some quarter of a century ago, you were interested in the popular songs of our English country-folk, and so may possibly think gleanings in this field still worthy of notice. In that belief, I send this note of some “singing-matches,” which, by a lucky chance, I was able to attend last week in West Berks. The matches in question were for both men and women, a prize of half a crown being offered in each case. The occasion was the village “veast,” or annual commemoration of the dedication of the parish church, still the immemorial day of gathering and social reunion in every hamlet of this out-of-the-way district. I was glad to find the old word still in use, for as a Wessex man it would have been an unpleasant shock to me to find the “veast” superseded by a “festival,” habitation, or other modern gathering. In some respects, however, I must own that the character of the “veast” has changed; these singing-matches, for instance, being a complete novelty to me. There used to be singing enough after the sports, as the sun went down, and choruses, rollicking and sentimental, came rolling out of the publicans’ booths—for the most part of dubious character—but singing-matches for prizes I never remember. I suppose the craze for competitive examination in every department of life may account for this new development; anyhow, there were the matches to come off—so the bills assured us—in the village schoolroom, of all places, which was thrown open for this purpose, and for dancing, at sunset. Hither, then, I repaired from the vicar’s fields, where the sports had been held, in the wake of a number of rustic couples and toffee-sucking children. The school is a lofty room, fifty feet long, with a smaller class-room as transept at the upper end, along which ran a temporary platform. Upon this the Farringdon Blue-Ribbon Band, in neat uniforms, were already playing a vigorous polka. Presently this first dance ended, the band stood back, and the three judges coming to the front, announced the terms of the competition, the men to begin, and a dance to be interpolated after every two songs, every singer, one at a time, to come up on the platform. There was no hesitation amongst the singers, the first of whom stepped up at once, and so the matches went on, two songs and a dance alternately, until all who cared to compete had sung. Then, at about 9 P.M., the prizes were awarded, and I left, the dancing going on merrily for another two hours.

I was amused by the award of the men’s prize to the singer of a vociferously applauded ditty, entitled “The Time o’ Day,” for it showed that the keenest zest of the Wessex rustic is still, as it was thirty years ago, to get a rise out of—or, in modern slang, to score off—“thaay varmers.” It began:—

A straanger wunst in WorcestershÈer,

A gen’lman he professed,

He lived by takin’ o’ people in,

He wuz so nicely dressed.

Wi’ my tol-de-rol, etc.

This stranger, having a gold chain round his neck, swaggers in the farmers’ room on market-day, till—

He zets un in a big arm-cheer,

And, bein’ precious deep,

Sticks out his legs, drows back his arms,

And “gammots” off to sleep.

The farmers canvas him, and doubt if he has any watch to his chain. His friend, “by them not understood,” pulls out the chain, shows a piece of wood at the end, and puts it back. The stranger wakes; the farmers ask him “the time o’ day”; he excuses himself, on the plea that last night, having taken a glass too much, he did not wind up his watch. At this—

The varmers said, and did protest,

Ez sure ez we’re alive,

Thet thee dost not possess a watch

Of pounds we’ll bet thee vive.

The stranger covers the bets, pulls out a piece of wood, touches a spring, and shows a watch inside:—

‘Bout vifty pounds thaay varmers lost,

Which in course thaay hed to paay,

And the bwoys run arter’em down the street,

Wi’ “Gee us the time O’ daay.”

Wi’ my tol-de-rol, etc.

I did not, however, concur in the award myself. I should have given the prize for a love-song, a sort of rustic rendering of “Phyllis is my only Joy,” the chorus of which ran:—

For ef you would, I’m sure you could

Jest let a feller know;

Ef it strikes you as it likes you,

Answer yes or no.

The judges, however, followed, if (two being “varmers”) they did not thoroughly sympathise with, the obvious feeling of the crowded room. The patriotic songs, I noticed, had quite changed their character. They never were of the vulgar jingo kind in Wessex, but there used to be much of the old Dibdin and tow-row,-row ring about them. “The Poor Little Soldier Boy” may be taken as a specimen of the new style. His father dies of wounds; he ’lists; comes home; is discharged; wanders starving, till, opposite a fine gate, he sinks down, asking the unknown inmates how they will like to find him, “dead at their door in the morn.” At this crisis a lady appears, who takes him in and provides for him for life. The only lines I carried away were from a song even more pacific in tone than “The Poor Little Soldier Boy.” They ran:—

Ef I wur King o’ France,

Or, better, Pope o’ Rome,

I’d hev no fightin’ men abroad,

Nor weepin’ maids at home.

But there was an approach to “waving the flag” amongst the women, one of whom, a strapping damsel, sang:—

We’ve got the strength of will,

And old England’s England still,

And every other nation knows it—“rather”!

which word “rather” ended every verse of a somewhat vulgar ditty. She did not get the prize, nor did the matron whom I fixed on as the winner, who sang without a hitch a monotonous and, I began to think, never-ending ballad on the rivalries of “young SamuÈl” and one “Barnewell” for the graces of an undecided young woman. The attention with which this somewhat dreary narrative was listened to deceived me, for the prize went, without public protest, to a young woman of whose song I could not catch a line, though I could just gather that it was feebly sentimental. My impression is that it was her bright eyes, and pretty face and figure, that carried it with the judges, rather than her singing. If I am right, it will neither be the first nor last time that the prizes in this world fall to tes beaux yeux.

The school faces the upper end of the village green, and I left it so crowded that it was a wonder how the dancers could get along at all with their polkas and handkerchief dances, the latter a kind of country dance, which were the only ones in vogue. When I got out, I saw lighted booths at the other end of the green, and went down to inspect. It was a melancholy sight.

There was the publican’s dancing-booth without a soul in it. One swing only was occupied in the neighbouring acrobatic apparatus, and the round-about was motionless. The gipsies were there, ready and eager to tell fortunes, and with a well-lighted alley for throwing at cocoa-nuts with bowls rather larger than cricket-balls—the most modern and popular substitute, I am told, for skittles. There they were, but not a customer in sight, the only human being but myself being the solitary county policeman, who patrolled the green with most conscientious regularity, only slackening his pace for a moment or two as he passed under the bright open windows of the schoolroom, from which the merry dance-music came streaming out into the moonlight. I could almost find it in my heart to pity the publican and gipsies, so overwhelming did their defeat seem, for not a glass of beer had been allowed all day in the vicar’s fields, where the cricket-match had been played and all the races run, on milk, tea, or aerated waters. The whole stock of these last beverages, supplied from the “Hope Coffee Room,” which has faced the public-house on the village green now for about three years, was drunk out before the dancing ended and the school closed on “veast” night, to the exceeding joy of the vicar’s niece and her lieutenants, two bright Cornish damsels, handy, devoted, and ardent teetotalers. These three have been fighting the publicans since 1886, when they started the “Hope Coffee Room,” supplied with bread, butter, and cakes from the vicarage, and aerated drinks and light literature, all, I take it, at something under cost price, though this the three ardent damsels will by no means admit. The vicar, who is no teetotaler himself, shrugs his shoulders laughingly, plays his fiddle, pays the bills, and lets them have their own way, with an occasional protest that some night he shall have his barn and ricks burnt. There is, however, no real danger of this, as he has lived with and for his poor for more than thirty years with scarcely one Sunday’s break, and gipsy or publican would get short shrift who damaged him or anything that is his. I found him quite ready to admit the great improvement which is apparent in the “veast,” as in many other phases of rustic life, though he cannot get over, or look with anything but dislike and distrust at, the cramming and examining system, which, as he mourns, embitters the only time in the lives of his poor children which used to be really happy, when they could play about on the village green and in the lanes regardless of Inspector and Government grant. Nor am I sure that he does not look with regret at the disappearance of cudgel-playing and wrestling out of the programme of the yearly “Veast-Sports.” Cricket, fine game as it is, does hot bring out quite the same qualities. No doubt there were now and then bad hurts in those sports, and fights afterwards; but these came from beer, and might happen just as easily over cricket. So he muses, and I rather sympathise. As has been well sung by the ould gamester:—

Who’s vor a bout O’ vrendly plaay,

As never should to anger move,

Sech spworts be only meant for thaay

As likes their mazzards broke for love.

But I should be sorry to believe that there are fewer youngsters to-day in the West country who “likes their mazzards broke for love” than there used to be half a century ago.