Read Ebook: That Marvel—The Movie A Glance at Its Past Its Promising Present and Its Significant Future by Van Zile Edward S Edward Sims Hays Will H Will Harrison Author Of Introduction Etc Pyle Howard Illustrator

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The Hunting of the Cheviot 1 The Battle of Otterburn 16 Johnie Armstrong 30 The Braes of Yarrow 34 The Twa Brothers 37 The Outlyer Bold 40 Mary Hamilton 44 Kinmont Willie 49 The Laird o' Logie 58 Captain Car 62 Sir Patrick Spence 68 Flodden Field 71 Dick o' the Cow 75 Sir Hugh in the Grime's Downfall 89 The Death of Parcy Reed 93 Bewick and Grahame 101 The Fire of Frendraught 112 Geordie 118 The Baron of Brackley 122 The Gipsy Laddie 129 Bessy Bell and Mary Gray 133 Sir James the Rose 135 Clyde's Water 140 Katharine Jaffray 145 Lizie Lindsay 148 The Gardener 153 John o' the Side 156 Jamie Douglas 164 Waly, waly gin love be bonny 168 The Heir of Linne 170 Earl Bothwell 177 Durham Field 181 The Battle of Harlaw 194 The Laird of Knottington 200 The Whummil Bore 204 Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight 206

Appendix-- the Jolly Juggler 211 Index of Titles 217 Index of First Lines 219

PREFACE Although a certain number of the ballads in this volume belong to England as much as to Scotland, the greater number are so intimately connected with Scottish history and tradition, that it would have been rash for a Southron to have ventured across the border unaided. It is therefore more than a pleasure to record my thanks to my friend Mr. A. Francis Steuart of Edinburgh, to whom I have submitted the proofs of these ballads. His extensive and peculiar knowledge of Scottish history and genealogy has been of the greatest service throughout.

I must also thank Mr. C. G. Tennant for assistance with the map given as frontispiece; and my unknown friend, Messrs. Constable's reader, has supplied valuable help in detail.

The labour of reducing to modern spelling several ballads from the seventeenth-century orthography of the Percy Folio is compensated, I hope, by the quaint and spirited result. These lively ballads are now presented for the first time in this popular form.

F. S.

BALLADS IN THE THIRD SERIES

I have hesitated to use the term 'historical' in choosing a general title for the ballads in this volume, although, if the word can be applied to any popular ballads, it would be applied with most justification to a large number of these ballads of Scottish and Border tradition. 'Some ballads are historical, or at least are founded on actual occurrences. In such cases, we have a manifest point of departure for our chronological investigation. The ballad is likely to have sprung up shortly after the event, and to represent the common rumor of the time. Accuracy is not to be expected, and indeed too great historical fidelity in detail is rather a ground of suspicion than a certificate of the genuinely popular character of the piece.... Two cautionary observations are necessary. Since history repeats itself, the possibility and even the probability must be entertained that every now and then a ballad which had been in circulation for some time was adapted to the circumstances of a recent occurrence, and has come down to us only in such an adaptation. It is also far from improbable that many ballads which appear to have no definite localization or historical antecedents may be founded on fact, since one of the marked tendencies of popular narrative poetry is to alter or eliminate specific names of persons and places in the course of oral tradition.'

Warned by these wise words, we may, perhaps, select the following ballads from the present volume as 'historical, or at least founded on actual occurrences.'

In the general arrangement, however, the above classes have been mixed, in order that the reader may browse as he pleases.

THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT

The notable deed of Witherington has many parallels. All will remember the warrior who

'... when his legs were smitten off He fought upon his stumps.'

Tradition tells an identical story of 'fair maiden Lilliard' at the Battle of Ancrum Muir in 1545. Seneca mentions the feat. It occurs in the Percy Folio, Sir Graysteel fighting on one leg. Johnie Armstrong and Sir Andrew Barton both retire to 'bleed awhile' after being transfixed through the body. Finally, in an early saga, King Starkathr fights on after his head is cut off.

THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT

... ... ...

, to say that we have come to the test of our civilization. The world has been passing--is to-day passing--through a great crisis. The conduct of war itself is not more difficult than the solution of the problems which necessarily follow.

In other words, the human race since 1914 has been going through unprecedented experiences which of necessity furnish material for the teller of romances, the builder of plots, the novelist, the dramatist, the scenario-writer, richer, more varied, more illuminating than has been hitherto vouchsafed to imaginative genius. But, as Virgil once grumbled, "the mountains were in labor and brought forth a little mouse." Science is going forward to-day from one startling triumph to another, the creative imaginations of its greatest minds rising to adequate control of the new and splendid opportunities recent progress has brought to them. But Art, especially that field of it reserved to the origination of dramatic tales, seems to be suffering under a blight that forces it to give birth either to monstrosities or to weaklings, and to clothe its worthless offspring in garments fashioned to delude the weak-minded into believing that what is offensive to common-sense and good taste is necessarily a child of genius. The screen, with fame and fortune to bestow upon the teller of tales, is forced to become a ghoul haunting old graveyards at night because the living are unworthy of a great opportunity, because the fictionist of to-day goes far afield in quest of strange gods instead of worshipping at the eternal and inspiring altars which gave inspiration to the master-romancers of the past.

The situation confronting the photoplay producer at this moment, as outlined above, bids fair to become worse rather than better, unless some radical solution of the problem dealing with the constant renewal of worthy dramatic material for the screen can be found. The most disreputable type of movie drama has fallen into a permanent condition of innocuous desuetude, in so far, at least, as the vast majority of picture theatres are concerned. It has been replaced by photoplays of a much higher order, until to-day the screen is engaged in giving to the public splendid presentations of great masterpieces of fiction and drama entitling it to approval and sympathetic encouragement. But you can't eat your cake and have it too. You can't feed an audience of several millions daily with the cream of the world's imaginative literature without shortly resorting to skimmed milk and eventually coming to the end of your lacteal resources.

The point toward which we have been driving is this: The movie, with its stupendous resources of capital, its enterprising and ambitious personnel, its right to believe, through its experiences of a quarter of a century, that no obstacle can check its triumphant progress, is like an army that can conquer the world only on the condition that its commissariat solves the problem of food-supply. It is possible, of course, that when the screen has fully mastered the technique involved in color reproduction and the synchronization of voice and action the photoplays now attracting the movie public may receive a new lease of life. We who have enjoyed, for example, "The Count of Monte Cristo" on the screen, despite the fact that neither color, sound nor perspective assisted the development of Dumas's absorbing story, would be inclined to give it our attention again when Edmond Dantes is no longer clad in black-and-white and has found his voice. But it is best to let the marvels of the future take care of themselves. For the present, we must confine ourselves to the screen as it is, and as it seems likely to remain for an indefinite time to come.

However, there must come a crisis in the future, under present conditions, when the movie producers will be hampered by a lack of screen material unless they have been far-sighted enough to provide against this contingency. There are among them forward-looking exploiters of the latest story-telling medium who have formulated, in rather a vague and general way, a possible solution of the problem confronting them. They are encouraging writers possessing imagination and originality to take part in the development of a new form of the dramaturgic art which makes direct rather than indirect use of the screen. In other words, the movie displays a growing tendency to demand from creative minds its own special requirements; to turn, so to speak, away from the libraries to the librettists. Eventually, it is safe to assert, there will come a day when scenario-writers will not spend a large part of their time listening to echoes for inspiration but will beget screen plays from internal instead of external impulses. In a not distant future, it is reasonable to predict, the movie will, of dire necessity, develop its own type of dramatic story-tellers whose fecundity may make Mark Twain's assertion, quoted above, seem more than ever humorous rather than accurate. The movie must do this or run out eventually of screen material, for the dead tale-tellers have little more to offer it, and contemporary novelists have not, from the picture producers' standpoint, risen to a great opportunity.

Of course, the future of the movie, no matter how glorious it may be, must be, of necessity, circumscribed, as are fiction and the drama, by the basic limitations applying to human passions. Love, hatred, loyalty, jealousy, ambition, generosity, cupidity, philanthropy, selfishness, and the other dominating motives impelling men and women to beget the raw material of drama will not be increased in number because the screen has developed a new method for telling tales to a story-loving race. While the widely-accepted generalization that human nature never changes may not be true, it can not be questioned that the scenario-writer of the future will be forced to deal with the same manifestations of Man's psychic make-up which engaged the attention of AEschylus, Sophocles, Moli?re, Shakespeare, and the lesser dramatists. But as the nations to-day are striving to find a new way to pay old debts, so is the screen seeking a new way to present the eternal dramatic clash of old passions. As the kinetoscope thirty years ago begot a novel form of amusement, so is its successor, the movie screen, bringing into being a new type of dramatic technique. The scenario-writer is something besides a combination of story-teller and playwright. He is experimenting in a youthful artistic medium, whose resources and possibilities are as yet only partially revealed, and he has become a pioneer in a realm that belongs to a kind of specialist bearing resemblance to both the novelist and dramatist but differing from them in ways peculiarly his own.

The future welfare of the screen, in so far as it is confined to the amusement field, depends largely upon how stimulating to men and women possessing creative imagination this new method of tale-telling, rapidly developing its own technique, may prove to be. Will the movie produce its own Hugos, Sardous, Stevensons, Barries,--perhaps, its Shakespeare--who, fascinated by the most democratic method yet devised for genius to appeal to the masses, shall eschew the old methods for telling new tales and reach immortality by means of the photoplay scenario? If you who have read the preceding chapters of this book, believe, as does the writer, that the only universal language yet devised by Man is the most important contribution to the spiritual resources of the race that has been made for centuries, you will be inclined to hope that scenario-writing for the screen may become an occupation worthy, in succeeding generations, of the exclusive devotion of many imaginative creators.

THE MOVIE AND THE CONTINUITY WRITER

WAS it Brander Matthews, Henry Van Dyke, Richard Burton or Clayton Hamilton who asserted that any given novel must be placed in the category of either the Impossible, the Improbable or the Inevitable? Whoever it was, he helped to clarify the thinking of any writer who may find himself dealing with the topic of screen tales and tale-tellers, of the movie drama and the continuity writer. Every art has its own special sins of omission and commission. The poet who tells a story in verse may take liberties denied to the novelist relating the same story. The continuity writer who places this tale upon the screen enjoys certain prerogatives denied to either the poet or the novelist, but he is also bound by limitations and restrictions inherent in the medium through which he is working as a raconteur.

The above is asserted under a full realization of the fact that for years the story-telling films tried to the breaking-point the patience of their more enlightened supporters by frequently sacrificing the Inevitable to the Expedient, allowing the logic of events to go to the bow-wows because a reel must be cut, or a movie star exploited, or a scene over-emphasized for the sake of its advertising value. Lincoln asserted that you can't fool all the people all the time, but at one period it seemed as if the screen were stubbornly endeavoring to perform this miracle. A picture-play, whatsoever might have been its origin, succumbed, as a rule, to a tendency to underrate the general intelligence, the power of memory, and the knowledge of life and human nature possessed by the average movie audience.

But times have changed. Continuity--that is, the spinal-column of a picture-play,--manages, for the most part, to keep the cervical, dorsal and lumbar vertebrae of the narrative in a normal juxtaposition, with the result that dramatic monstrosities are gradually disappearing from the screen. It is still possible to fool some of the people all the time, but it no longer pays, so far as movie audiences are concerned, to throw common-sense into the discard when the screen essays to tell a dramatic story. Recently in a small city within a hundred miles of New York the proprietor of a motion-picture theatre spoke to me of a great change that he had observed of late in the attitude of his audiences toward the silent drama.

They won't stand for many things they overlooked a short time ago. They demand both logic and accuracy in our pictures. South Sea scenes must be taken in the South Seas and African wild beasts must be filmed in their native habitat or our patrons revolt. At the present rate of progress, the next generation, through the aid of the screen, will become so worldly-wise that even county fairs will be made safe for the farmer.

There is much that is worth serious consideration in the above quoted opinion of one whose professional welfare depends upon the keenness of his judgment regarding the trend of public opinion in connection with the screen. Somewhat quaintly he gives expression to the conviction that the movie and its clientele react upon each other and that the general tendency of this mutual action and reaction has been toward the elevation of the screen and the enlightenment of its patrons. In this elevation of the screen the continuity writer has, of course, played a leading part. The time has gone by when he could recklessly substitute the Impossible or the Improbable for the Inevitable and retain his professional standing. That he has been guilty of sins of omission and commission, has shown at times a lack of imagination, and has frequently failed to conform to the axiom that a story, no matter through what medium it is told, must, to be effective, preserve to the end the element of suspense is undoubtedly true. The fact is that the ideal continuity writer is, as is the poet, born not made. The technique of scenario writing can be acquired by anybody with average intelligence but to employ it for the highest possible purposes of the screen is to show the possession of something akin to genius. Such being the case, the law of the survival of the fittest, working out in the studios, has decreed that though many are called to continuity work but few are chosen in the end to lead the film drama toward the heights to which it is destined to attain.

Suspense! Ah, there's the rub! To tell a dramatic story by means of pictures to a miscellaneous collection of movie fans, wise in the niceties of this new method of narration, in such a way that the interest of the on-lookers is won at the outset, maintained throughout succeeding scenes, and intensified as the climax is reached, is to accomplish a feat requiring a combination of technical skill and imaginative inspiration that places a real triumph of the continuity writer's art high upon the list of worth-while creative achievements.

That such a large percentage of picture-plays have failed to satisfy the demand of audiences for drama that stresses the Inevitable, conforms to the logic underlying real life, and preserves to the final screen-curtain the suspense that it is the mission of dramaturgic art to beget is not strange, therefore, when we take into consideration the natural and acquired powers demanded of the ideal continuity writer. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the scenario-maker has been, and will continue to be, blamed for shortcomings of the screen that cannot be justly laid at his door. He is more or less at the mercy of the director and the film-cutter, a victim frequently of exigencies against which his devotion to the underlying principles of dramatic exposition cannot prevail. A picture play that may be effectively complete when presented in a metropolitan theatre may be so eviscerated for provincial use that the continuity writer, lauded in the cities, is often forced to undergo unjustified suburban censure. But, as is suggested in another chapter, the comparatively new art of the continuity writer is bound eventually to overcome its earlier handicaps and, in its bestowal upon the race of a novel medium through which creative genius can manifest itself, will beget a type of super-scenario-maker to which the screen's future splendid achievements must be, of necessity, largely due.

The meaning of life Man doesn't know. Art is, and always has been, Man's testimony to the fact that he believes that life has a meaning and that his quest for that meaning is not destined to be forever futile. Recently the race came into possession of what seemed to be at first a new toy, not to be taken too seriously, but worthy, as it presently appeared, of development as a most fascinating addition to our recreational resources. But of late the public has begun to realize vaguely that the screen is becoming something of more vital importance to mankind than merely a plaything that serves only as a time-killer. The fact to which the provincial manager above quoted called my attention, namely, that movie audiences are constantly emphasizing their demand for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth possesses a significance that is entitled to the most earnest consideration. Is it possible that Man has come finally into possession of an art-form enabling him to come nearer to solving the riddle of the Sphinx we call Life than has been hitherto possible?

THE MOVIE IMPROVES ITS MORALS

This change in the mental attitude of the average American toward what may be called the real perspective of current events, a change that has had an effect upon the screen as a peripatetic journalist by making it constantly more cosmopolitan, has not as yet revolutionized its activities in its earlier and more important r?le as a photoplay producer. As a medium for drama the screen is only just beginning to break away from the influences that controlled it when it first set out on its career as a pioneer in a new art, namely, the silent presentation of plays and stories. It is still necessary for us who enjoy a photoplay of real merit to exercise care at the entrance to a movie theatre lest we be confronted presently by a screen drama unworthy the attention of intelligent observers. Why this deplorable situation continues to exist it is worth our while to consider.

There are those among the erudite who assert that the oldest of the arts is Poetry. Like Lord Byron, mankind "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." Homer and his brother bards, Latin, Teutonic, Norse, twanged their lyres, harshly or majestically, as the case might be, in glorification of only two themes, namely, War and Love. And so was it later on with the troubadours and minnesingers, they harped and sang the splendors and the mysteries of combat and of passion. Long ago was Man's belligerency set to word-music and the martial hero owes to the poets the false and misleading radiance that throughout the ages has surrounded his name and deeds. And when they sang of love it was the love of a Lochinvar for a maiden not of a Lincoln for a people.

The youngest of the arts, like the oldest, has confined itself practically to war and love. But the screen drama has been more reprehensible than poetry in that, in its youth, it has chosen to glorify the kind of warfare that is least worthy of public exploitation, namely, the eternal conflict that goes on between the lawless and the law-abiding, between the crook and the constable, between the underworld and the upper. Realizing that the scenario-writer, like the playwright, must base a dramatic story upon some kind of clash or combat, our photoplay producers for nearly a quarter of a century have permitted the screen to concern itself too often with a crude type of melodrama that was untrue to life and offensive to good taste, obtaining the clash essential to its being by the same methods employed by the dime-novelists of fifty years ago.

And as the screen depicted, in its quest for drama, a type of ignoble, petty warfare, so did it indulge in a debasing use of the passion of love in its early efforts to make financial hay while the camera clicked. The rake and the vampire, the seducer and the siren, the vicious and their victims deified in the movies official sociological statistics and gradually led a large percentage of the public toward the belief, subconscious, perhaps, that the respectable element in our communities is wholly negligible, that the world is made up almost entirely of the pursuers and the pursued, with illicit love as the motive force. The Eighteenth Amendment to our Federal Constitution informed an amazed generation that we Americans are strongly influenced by an inherited puritanical strain; but while, as a nation, we were adopting Prohibition, we were flocking daily by the millions to gaze at photoplays sufficiently shocking to draw our forefathers protesting from their graves. Consistency is not a jewel possessed, as has been repeatedly proved since Cromwellian days, by the Puritan. When, in our beloved country, he gave up winking at the bar-tender he betook himself to the movies and winked at the bar-sinister. But his conscience troubled him, and presently he began to talk to his fellow-Roundheads about the shortcomings of the screen. The Puritans had triumphed recently over the saloon. Would it not be possible for them, they asked each other, to eliminate presently from the movie the debasing features that have disgraced its youth?

But where does liberty end and license begin? At what point does free speech change into unlawful utterances? How many, and how drastic, should be our sumptuary laws? Where lies the golden mean between ultra-socialistic paternalism and that extreme of individualism for which the anarchists strive? These queries, all of which exercise a disquieting influence upon our national life, are of the same class to which the problem now confronting the producers of photoplays belongs. That the screen must repent and reform, must see to it that its maturity is less censurable than its youth, is a proposition accepted by both the producers and the public. But where shall the scenario-writer draw the line in his effort to make the second quarter-century of the movie less reprehensible than its first? It is a question hard to answer, but there is one illuminating fact that is gradually having its influence upon the output of the studios, namely, that a clean and decent photoplay is more likely to become a financial success than one which appeals to the baser passions of the public.

In this regard, history is but repeating itself. The most successful American plays, from the box-office standpoint, have been, for several generations past, those which eschewed the licentious and the immoral. And, by the same token, it is safe to predict that the movie fans of this country will continue to prefer Douglas Fairbanks in "Robin Hood" to Nazimova in Oscar Wilde's "Salome." Leaving ethics wholly out of the discussion, and placing the problem strictly upon a business and financial basis, there seems to be overwhelming evidence to the effect that an investment in clean pictures is safer than in soiled.

Of course, the regeneration of the photoplay must be, of necessity, a slow process. We must look facts and figures in the face and admit at the outset that the millions of Americans who daily attend movie theatres are not, on the average, highly intellectual, nor over-prudish as critics. They pay their money to the box-office to be amused, not instructed nor uplifted, to get recreation rather than rescue. A stream cannot rise higher than its source, nor can a picture-play win success if it soars above the head and heart of the average movie fan. Until recently, the producers, as a class, underrated the intelligence of that head and the responsiveness of that heart to the highest that is in mankind's complicated make-up. One of them said to me recently that that cross-section of our American civilization represented by the young men drafted for the World War had proved, as statistics showed, that the percentage of illiteracy in this country is so great that a movie-manager who produced a really high order of photoplays was surely destined to "go broke." That his rivals in the screen drama have successfully controverted his proposition by replacing, to their own advantage, the old salacious and nonsensical picture plays by screen dramas of a much higher type he would not acknowledge. His mind is of that pessimistic kind that despairs of the republic--and of civilization as a whole--because Tom, Dick and Harry, Fritz, Tony and Ivanovitch for a whole generation patronized unprotestingly the sort of mixed sentimental slush and moron-made melodrama which he, and his kind, served out to them. He failed wholly to realize that, despite the high percentage of illiteracy in the United States--nay, on account of it--it was his sacred duty to endeavor to raise the average of intelligence in our country instead of sending out photoplays that dragged it down to a lower level.

And "the play's the thing!" as Shakespeare remarked long ago. The screen idol, like the old matinee idol, has been exploited and advertised and flattered, foisted upon an easily-misguided public, at the expense of the drama itself; and more than one short-sighted producer has lived to regret the day when he hitched his wagon, containing all his worldly goods, to a movie star instead of trusting his welfare to his scenario-writers. That there is light in the darkness a close observer of the present tendencies of the screen, so far as drama is concerned, must admit, but it will be a long time before photoplay producers as a class grasp the underlying and immensely illuminating fact, broadly applicable to both the screen and the stage, that, while Booths and Barrymores come and go, Shakespeare goes on forever. In the last analysis, the screen and the stage are media for the telling of dramatic stories and their well-being, in the long run, depends not upon shooting-stars but upon planetary playwrights.

In approaching the conclusion of the first half of this series of articles which has given, inadequately and sketchily, a bird's-eye view of the past and present of the movie as a purveyor of amusement, the writer finds himself turning to other fields of endeavor in which the screen is pushing forward as a pioneer with the hope in his heart, amounting to a certainty, that the screen drama in America is upon the threshold of a great and glorious future. Revolutionary changes in the photo-drama are being brought about by methods arousing intense scientific and technical interest. It has seemed best to postpone their consideration until later on, when we turn from the studios to the laboratories, from the scenario-writer to the surgeon, from the movie hero to the captain of industry in our effort to visualize the wide and growing field that the screen is conquering for its own. And the realm of movie endeavor into which we are now about to enter is, to my mind, of greater interest and significance than that which we have been hitherto investigating. Mankind's toys do not possess for us the fundamental importance of our tools and our test-tubes.

THE MOVIE MAKETH--WHAT KIND OF A MAN?

BEFORE going on to a discussion of the utilitarian as contrasted with the recreational functions of the movie, it seems advisable to consider for a moment a type of screen presentation that is both entertaining and educational, fascinating the observer by its dramatic presentation of the adventurous spirit that has forever urged mankind to dare the perils of the outlands while, at the same time, it preserves for posterity phases of wild life that may conceivably become obsolete in the near future. "Nanook of the North," depicting, as it does, the primitive but heroic existence of an Eskimo endeavoring to find shelter and sustenance for his family in the Arctic regions is an outstanding achievement in this bifunctional form of screen-picture. If, as Stefansson asserts, the far North is destined eventually to lure to its cold but stimulating embrace a much higher civilization than has hitherto existed near the Pole, Nanook and his kind are fated to succumb, despite the sterling qualities they have displayed in overcoming the handicaps of their cruel environment, to adventurous pioneers from the South, bringing with them a greater menace to the Eskimos than that with which old Boreas has vainly threatened them for ages.

Belatedly, but with thrilling efficiency, the camera is giving to us and to our descendants pictures of savage and half-savage life against which the irresistible power of the regnant races of the earth has issued a decree of annihilation. The polar seas, the islands of the Pacific, the deserts, mountain-tops, jungles, are shown to us on the screen as they are to-day, as if this generation were frantically endeavoring to assure itself that this romantic planet of ours is not really doomed to become eventually as prosaic and uninteresting as Main Street.

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