A new and different world is entered when we follow the folk-poet upon the wrestling-ground of Death and Love. If I have judged rightly, there were songs of death before there were any other love songs than those of the nightingale; but the folk-poet was still young when he learnt to sing of love, and the love poet found out early that his lyre was incomplete without the string of death. In all folk-poetry can be plainly heard that music of love and death which may be said almost to have been the dominant note that sounded through the literature of the ages of romance. Sometimes the victory is given to death, sometimes to love; in one song love, while yielding, conquers. Folk-poetry has not anything more instinct with the quality of intensity than is this "Last Request" of a Greek robber-lover--
When thou shalt hear that I am ill, O my well-beloved! he said, O come to me, and quickly come, Or thou wilt find me dead. And when that thou hast reached the house, And the great gates passed through, Then, O my well-beloved, the braids Of thy bright hair undo. And to my mother say straightway, Tell me, where is your son? My son is lying on his bed In his chamber all alone. Then mount the stairs, O my well-beloved, And come your lover anigh, And smooth my pillow that I may Raise me a little high, And hold my head up in thy hands Till flies away my soul. And when thou seest the priest arrive, And dress him in his stole, Then place, my well-beloved, a kiss On my lips pale and cold; And when four youths shall lift me up, And on their shoulders hold, Then shalt thou, O my well-beloved, Cast at them many a stone. And when they reach thy neighbourhood And by thy house pass on, Then, O my well-beloved, thy hair, Thy golden tresses cut; And when they reach the church's gate, And there my coffin put, Then as the hen her feathers plucks, So pluck thy hair for me. And when my dirges all are done, And lights extinguished be, Then shall my heart, O well-beloved, Still be possessed of thee.
We hardly notice the adventitious part of it--the ancient custom of tearing off the hair, the strange stone-casting at the youths who represent Charon; our attention is absorbed by what is the essence of the song: passion which has burned itself into pure fire. Greek folk-poetry shows a blending together of southern emotions with an imaginative fervour, a prophetic power that is rather of the East than of the South. No Tuscan ploughman, for instance, could seize the idea of the Greek folk-poet of possessing his living love in death. If the Tuscan thinks of a union in the grave, it can only be attained by the one who remains joining the one who is gone--