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.Coleridge writes to Thomas Longman on 27 April 1809 that I must remainhere [Greta Hall] and at Penrith, till the rst number of The Friend has been sentoff.29 Though his letters do not record it, it is possible that he encountered the hat-wearing boys on a trip to Penrith in search of his missing paper, which he believedwould be delivered via the town.The alternative date is much less likely.Coleridgearrived at Greta Hall in the rst week of May 1810, having been at the Wordsworthshome, Allan Bank, for some time.Mark Reed supposes that he probably left AllanBank around 2 or 3 May.30 Dorothy Wordsworth mentions on 11 May that Coleridgeleft them above a week ago , implying either 1, 2 or 3 May.Southey con rms thisin a letter to John Rickman (1 Aug 1810): Coleridge [& ] has been quartered heresince the beginning of May.31 In order for Coleridge to take a walk with Southey onMay Day, he would have had to leave Allan Bank in April, and all evidence pointsto this not being the case.Still, there is no evidence that the encounter did not takeplace, so the importance of genuine authenticity as a marker of the common spherecannot be ruled out.The poets encounter with the boys, just at the moment that they were discussingthe hats, may seem implausibly convenient, but there is little evidence to con rm orreject the accuracy of the episode.Wordsworth may imply, in the note, that the existenceof the May Day festival in the Lake District, albeit in reduced form, connects theboys more closely with the shepherds of his present than with the literary shepherdsof the classical past.It is possible, too, that he deems the authenticity of this custom29 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1807 1814,ed.by Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p.761.30 Mark L.Reed, Wordsworth: The Chronology of the Middle Years 1800 1815(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975), p.452.31 Robert Southey, New Letters of Robert Southey, ed.by Kenneth Curry, 2 vols (NewYork: Columbia University Press: 1965), I, 573. 36 The Romantics and the May Day Traditionto be important for his delineation of the close relationship between children and thenatural world.The boys observance of the custom and the strong associations witha speci c location and local plants indicates that they are also rooted in the place.Finally, as part of the second volume of Lyrical Ballads, The Idle Shepherd-Boysshares the collection s purpose of recording rural and personal incidents with animaginative colouring.Wordsworth s principal object is to choose incidents andsituations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as waspossible, in a selection of language really used by men.32 Authenticity is possiblyemphasized merely in order to af rm the coherence of the volume.Therefore, thewhole volume contributes to the project (antiquarian or otherwise) of delineating thecommon sphere in opposition to the bourgeois public sphere.As I mentioned in my introduction, literary contexts are as important as historicalones when discussing the origins of folkloric references in literature.There areseveral conceivable literary sources for the poem.The shepherd boys play sycamorepipes and sit in the sun neglecting their ock like their classical forbears, and thepoem draws on the classical-pastoral motif of the joyful and easeful life of theshepherd, which, as Blake s Songs of Innocence exempli es, is also, by this time,an important part of the English pastoral.Additionally, the neglectful shepherds ofSpenser s May eclogue (in The Shepheardes Calender [1579]) may have in uencedWordsworth s portrait of the Shepherd boys.Wordsworth acknowledges Spenser asa source for May Day customs in The Prelude (1805/50).The May eclogue of TheShepheardes Calender (1579) shares much with the descriptions of May Day in TheIdle Shepherd-Boys , the Intimations Ode and The Prelude:I sawe a shole of shepeheards outgoe,With singing, and shouting, and iolly chere:Before them yode a lusty Tabrere,That to the many a Horne-pype playd,Whereto they dauncen, eche one with his mayd.To see those folkes make such iouysaunce,Made my heart after the pype to daunce.Tho to the greene Wood they speeden hem all,To fetchen home May with their musicall:And home they bringen in a royall throne,Crowned as king: and his Queene attoneWas Lady Flora, on whom did attendA fayre ocke of Faeries, and a fresh bendOf louely Nymphs.(O that I were there,To helpen the laydes their Maybush beare) [& ].33Spenser and Wordsworth emphasize the freedom and happiness of the festival.Joyfulsinging, shouting and piping, seen in The Idle Shepherd-Boys , is also part of theMay Eclogue.Spenser s pipes and tabor make an appearance in the Intimations Ode,32 Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, p.59.33 Edmund Spenser, The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, The MinorPoems, ed.by Edwin Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Frederick Morgan Padelford,and Ray Heffner, 2 vols (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1943 47), I, 47. Precious rites and customs 37while Wordsworth s maids , like Spenser s, bring in the maybush in The Prelude.The links with the pastoral tradition further temper the radicalism of The IdleShepherd-Boys , which, as have we have seen, rather tempers the con ict betweenthe common sphere and the bourgeois public sphere.Chaucer s The Knight s Tale, which contains two May Day scenes, is a likelysource for the busy thrush in The Idle Shepherd-Boys , and may suggest furtherliterary elements of this poem.Chaucer s bisy larke 34 honours May in the secondof these scenes, during which Arcite makes a garland of woodbine and hawthornfor his head: To maken hym a gerland of the greves, / Were it of wodebynde orhawethorn leves (ll.1507 8).In the rst scene, Emily gathers owers to make agarland: She gadereth oures, party white and rede, / To make a subtil gerland forhire hede (ll.1054 5).Wordsworth, who was a great admirer of Chaucer, may havebeen inspired by this work.Coleridge s brief comment on the The Idle Shepherd-Boys in Biographia Literaria (1817) notes the literariness of the epithet busy , andis dismissive of the green coronal on the grounds that it was a literary descriptionof the type that Wordsworth had professed in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads that hewould avoid:Would any but a poet at least could any one without being conscious that he hadexpressed himself with noticeable vivacity have described a bird singing loud by, Thethrush is busy in the wood Or have spoken of boys with a string of club-moss round theirrusty hats, as the boys with their green coronal? Or have translated a beautiful May-dayinto Both earth and sky keep jubilee? 35 Busy is, nevertheless, the adjective that Southey nonchalantly uses to describebirds in a letter of 1832.36 Coleridge takes issue with the diction of Wordsworth spoem, but does not question the accuracy of the scene [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Coleridge writes to Thomas Longman on 27 April 1809 that I must remainhere [Greta Hall] and at Penrith, till the rst number of The Friend has been sentoff.29 Though his letters do not record it, it is possible that he encountered the hat-wearing boys on a trip to Penrith in search of his missing paper, which he believedwould be delivered via the town.The alternative date is much less likely.Coleridgearrived at Greta Hall in the rst week of May 1810, having been at the Wordsworthshome, Allan Bank, for some time.Mark Reed supposes that he probably left AllanBank around 2 or 3 May.30 Dorothy Wordsworth mentions on 11 May that Coleridgeleft them above a week ago , implying either 1, 2 or 3 May.Southey con rms thisin a letter to John Rickman (1 Aug 1810): Coleridge [& ] has been quartered heresince the beginning of May.31 In order for Coleridge to take a walk with Southey onMay Day, he would have had to leave Allan Bank in April, and all evidence pointsto this not being the case.Still, there is no evidence that the encounter did not takeplace, so the importance of genuine authenticity as a marker of the common spherecannot be ruled out.The poets encounter with the boys, just at the moment that they were discussingthe hats, may seem implausibly convenient, but there is little evidence to con rm orreject the accuracy of the episode.Wordsworth may imply, in the note, that the existenceof the May Day festival in the Lake District, albeit in reduced form, connects theboys more closely with the shepherds of his present than with the literary shepherdsof the classical past.It is possible, too, that he deems the authenticity of this custom29 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1807 1814,ed.by Earl Leslie Griggs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p.761.30 Mark L.Reed, Wordsworth: The Chronology of the Middle Years 1800 1815(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975), p.452.31 Robert Southey, New Letters of Robert Southey, ed.by Kenneth Curry, 2 vols (NewYork: Columbia University Press: 1965), I, 573. 36 The Romantics and the May Day Traditionto be important for his delineation of the close relationship between children and thenatural world.The boys observance of the custom and the strong associations witha speci c location and local plants indicates that they are also rooted in the place.Finally, as part of the second volume of Lyrical Ballads, The Idle Shepherd-Boysshares the collection s purpose of recording rural and personal incidents with animaginative colouring.Wordsworth s principal object is to choose incidents andsituations from common life, and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as waspossible, in a selection of language really used by men.32 Authenticity is possiblyemphasized merely in order to af rm the coherence of the volume.Therefore, thewhole volume contributes to the project (antiquarian or otherwise) of delineating thecommon sphere in opposition to the bourgeois public sphere.As I mentioned in my introduction, literary contexts are as important as historicalones when discussing the origins of folkloric references in literature.There areseveral conceivable literary sources for the poem.The shepherd boys play sycamorepipes and sit in the sun neglecting their ock like their classical forbears, and thepoem draws on the classical-pastoral motif of the joyful and easeful life of theshepherd, which, as Blake s Songs of Innocence exempli es, is also, by this time,an important part of the English pastoral.Additionally, the neglectful shepherds ofSpenser s May eclogue (in The Shepheardes Calender [1579]) may have in uencedWordsworth s portrait of the Shepherd boys.Wordsworth acknowledges Spenser asa source for May Day customs in The Prelude (1805/50).The May eclogue of TheShepheardes Calender (1579) shares much with the descriptions of May Day in TheIdle Shepherd-Boys , the Intimations Ode and The Prelude:I sawe a shole of shepeheards outgoe,With singing, and shouting, and iolly chere:Before them yode a lusty Tabrere,That to the many a Horne-pype playd,Whereto they dauncen, eche one with his mayd.To see those folkes make such iouysaunce,Made my heart after the pype to daunce.Tho to the greene Wood they speeden hem all,To fetchen home May with their musicall:And home they bringen in a royall throne,Crowned as king: and his Queene attoneWas Lady Flora, on whom did attendA fayre ocke of Faeries, and a fresh bendOf louely Nymphs.(O that I were there,To helpen the laydes their Maybush beare) [& ].33Spenser and Wordsworth emphasize the freedom and happiness of the festival.Joyfulsinging, shouting and piping, seen in The Idle Shepherd-Boys , is also part of theMay Eclogue.Spenser s pipes and tabor make an appearance in the Intimations Ode,32 Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, p.59.33 Edmund Spenser, The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, The MinorPoems, ed.by Edwin Greenlaw, Charles Grosvenor Osgood, Frederick Morgan Padelford,and Ray Heffner, 2 vols (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1943 47), I, 47. Precious rites and customs 37while Wordsworth s maids , like Spenser s, bring in the maybush in The Prelude.The links with the pastoral tradition further temper the radicalism of The IdleShepherd-Boys , which, as have we have seen, rather tempers the con ict betweenthe common sphere and the bourgeois public sphere.Chaucer s The Knight s Tale, which contains two May Day scenes, is a likelysource for the busy thrush in The Idle Shepherd-Boys , and may suggest furtherliterary elements of this poem.Chaucer s bisy larke 34 honours May in the secondof these scenes, during which Arcite makes a garland of woodbine and hawthornfor his head: To maken hym a gerland of the greves, / Were it of wodebynde orhawethorn leves (ll.1507 8).In the rst scene, Emily gathers owers to make agarland: She gadereth oures, party white and rede, / To make a subtil gerland forhire hede (ll.1054 5).Wordsworth, who was a great admirer of Chaucer, may havebeen inspired by this work.Coleridge s brief comment on the The Idle Shepherd-Boys in Biographia Literaria (1817) notes the literariness of the epithet busy , andis dismissive of the green coronal on the grounds that it was a literary descriptionof the type that Wordsworth had professed in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads that hewould avoid:Would any but a poet at least could any one without being conscious that he hadexpressed himself with noticeable vivacity have described a bird singing loud by, Thethrush is busy in the wood Or have spoken of boys with a string of club-moss round theirrusty hats, as the boys with their green coronal? Or have translated a beautiful May-dayinto Both earth and sky keep jubilee? 35 Busy is, nevertheless, the adjective that Southey nonchalantly uses to describebirds in a letter of 1832.36 Coleridge takes issue with the diction of Wordsworth spoem, but does not question the accuracy of the scene [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]