represents. The purple stripes of martyrdom upon the Shepherd's tunic; the sheep dyed as with the death wounds of confessors; the gladiator who stands beside the herdsman, holding the palm and crowned with the crown of victors; the Cæsar-Christ (of perhaps less remote years) divined as Pastor only by the flock who surround their imperial deity, royal in His robe and mien, and only by implication guardian of those herded sheep-such images carry us far from the simplicities, the homeliness, the spontaneity of primitive Gospel realism. So, too, the mystic Lamb, who from the fourth century onwards became a prominent feature in ecclesiastical decoration, wrought in gold, ornamented with precious gems, surmounted by the sacred monogram, is wholly dissociated from any reminiscence of field and meadow and pasture. Its history in art is a curious one. The Concilium quinisextum,' in the seventh century, prohibited its use by a canon which forbade the Lämmerbilder,' and ordained that 'die menschliche 'Gestalt Christi . . . von jetzt an in den Bildern anstatt 'des alten Lammes, errichtet, ausgehauen und gemalt werde.'† But despite of councils and canons the Agnus Dei remained enthroned, sharing with the crucifix of later origin the highest place of honour amongst the symbols of Christian worship-a Lamb, jewelled and wrought with precious metals or painted with all the glories and splendours of mediæval invention, the Lamb of the visions seen by saints and artists of Patmos, the Lamb, infinitely divine and infinitely unpastoral, of Van Eyck's 'Adoration.' It is in its relation to the Nativity theme that Christian art, more especially the song-art of those peasants whose lives were lived in closest intimacy with earth and toil and poverty, returned to the sentiment of true pastoralism. The mysticism and the homely literalism of childhood met in the pages of illuminated Missals,‡ and in the verses of countless, countless Noëls. Both picture and song are, it is true, preoccupied with the central Figures, and all that they signify to the eye of faith. For both picture and song, for painter and rhymer, the pastoral element is but an adjunct to a divine drama, and if they dwell on it, it is by a mere happy instinct, an intuitive appropriation of its human sympathies *Kraus: Von da beginnen die Darstellungen des Agnus Dei.' Kraus's Kanon der Synode.' + Buchmalerei, of which the origin is traced to the fourth century, lasted on into the Renaissance period. Kraus. in the service of religion. Pastoralism to the artiststhemselves often monks painting for ecclesiastics-may have presented itself too much in the light of an everyday occupation to be easily reconciled with their embodiments of sacred ideals, and the shepherds with whose 'annunciation' the folk-songs are busied, are relegated by the painters to those little side-scenes of the stage where minor episodes of the principal subject were depicted. The oxen and the ass are rarely omitted from the dramatis persona of the Holy Night, yet over these lowly personalities the veil of symbolism is thrown to serve as an apologia for their prominence-Jew and Gentile are, we are told, figured thereby. Here and there, no doubt, the sentiment of the Missal runs parallel with the Noël, as in the 'Bedford' Missal, where on a steep grass slope one couple, amid the grazing sheep, lift their heads attentive to the unfamiliar voice of the celestial apparition of whose presence the herdsman, his hat slung from his neck, seems still wholly unaware. But as a whole it is to the song-makers we owe the preservation of the memories of shepherd-life in the Miracle-Play of Bethlehem. And so far were such memories incorporated with peasant imagination that to the end of the eighteenth century in some districts in France the midnight Christmas Mass was known in popular parlance as 'La Messe des Bergers,' while with processions of bergers and bergères, the sound of pipes and musettes, the addition to the congregation of sheep or lambs, the vivid pastoralism of the chanted verse was accentuated and enhanced. Moreover, to this day its echoes linger round the painted, brocaded effigies, seen through the dim gauze screen by the light of uncertain lamps and flickering tapers, where the Shed is erected in every Catholic church and chapel, and the Crèche with its Nativity environment-relic of the Mystery-Play of earlier days is still to the believing worshipper not a 'Representation,' but a verisimilitude. The antiquity of these customs may be questioned. The Noëls extant may be of hybrid origin, inventions of priests not of peasants, the product of known authorship not the anonymous offspring of genuine folk-art. Yet, allowing for criticism, may we not believe that the modern usages are based upon antecedent observances reaching into a far past, and that it is the peasant sentiment of remote centuries these new Noëls have reclothed and assimilated, a sentiment * *J. J. Tiersot. in whose expression ('souls are not Spanish') the poor of all nations meet and are at one. Whatever their ancestry, in truth, may be, their charm of gaiety and grace is irrefutable. 'Laissez paître vos bêtes, Par monts et par vaux, J'ai ouï chanter le rossignol So runs one Noël popular in French midlands, where the nightingale-the love-messenger of the chanson de galanterie-is enlisted in another service. A Gascogne song is not less characteristic of the interpenetrating of the religious and pastoral sentiment: 'Pasteurs, Pastourelles Y courent tous De Jésus si doux. Il est dans la Crèche, Dans le ciel les anges Or, to take another example, before the revolution in religious feeling had banished the light-hearted notes from religious worship, the Weihnachtslied preserved in the Cantiques de Strasbourg' (1697) belongs equally to the Kindergarten of the Christian creed: 'O Jesulein zart, Das Kripplein ist hart. . Nichts hinderen soll. . Ochs, Esel und Schaaf Or, to revert to the Pastor bonus' theme, verse makes amends for the pastoralism art discarded. From the symbolic pastoralism of the catacombs to the Arcadian pastoralism of the Renaissance is a far cry. Nevertheless a closer study of literature discloses many a link connecting the pastoral art associated with religious faith and the pastoral sentiment attached to the dolce far niente of mundane open-air life. In Spain the pastoral convention seems from early days to have lent itself equally as a formula to both religious and secular usages. The Egloga, composed for representation at church festivals, was apt to combine both, and in the Colloquies' and Autos dealing with the News from Bethlehem may be found subject matter of singularly extraneous import. In one Christmas Representacione* the four shepherds, impersonations of the Evangelists, preface the more sacred portion of the dialogue with a discussion on the poetic art, St. Matthew rebuking St. John (Juan de la Enzina refers to himself in the character of the Apostle) for works not 'worth a straw,' while St. John, defending his inventions, states that in pastorals he admits no rival 'as will appear 'the following May'; at which point in the argument St. Mark intervenes, announcing the Birth of Christ. Nor is the sort of mad dance' executed by patriarchs in another Christmas Representation, and accompanied by a song concerning Cassandra the Sibyl, more suggestive of devotional feeling, if the translation does it justice: 'She is wild, she is wild : She is fair as the flowers, But while in Spain and elsewhere the pastoral formula was adapted to all sorts and conditions of inventions, it must be remembered that stage properties † do not create a sentiment, that the crook does not make the shepherd, and neither four shepherds nor forty ensure the atmosphere and emotion which change the pastoral convention into the true pastoral. Moreover it is no easy matter to define the essential quality the art of a Watteau shares with that of a Segantini, which the authors of false Gospels share with those of artificial Arcadias, which exists in folk-songs unreckoned, but which the art-songs of Spanish grandees and French culturepoets possess likewise in no disputable measure. To pastoral art belong, says M. de la Sizeranne, personages, circumstances, episodes, history ignores and philosophy passes by; to it he assigns the sentiments, emotions, and passions des infiniment petits.' But even more circum *By Juan de la Enzina, born 1468. See Ticknor. + Cervantes asserts that, shortly before his day, four crooks, four smocks, four beards and false locks formed the staple of the itinerant manager's wardrobe. See Ticknor. scribed, the sentiments, emotions, passions, should be those, and those only, which the life of herdsmen would spontaneously induce, and with them are only admissible the dreams, the visions, the idealisations, which may be conceived of as the blossom and fruit of such open-air lives. In peasant Bergeries folk-song has embodied the daily experiences of the hour and the lingering tradition of past memories. Pastoral art-song, at its best, is the embodiment of imaginative realisation, at its worst, of superficial imitation of the same traditions and experiences. Nor is it possible to say where the sentiment both represent, a sentiment serene, gay, and light as thistledown, is most at home. The theme, the landscape-Pater's analysis of the landscape school of Giorgione gives one such green background to perfection *-is the same in its unvaried monotony. Berger and bergère, pastoureau and pastourelle, await each other for ever under the shadow of pine, elm, thorn-tree or willow, of laurel, myrtle, or olive. Always we have the sense of the vert bocage, where leaves stir above and lovers whisper below. Always it is morning, morning at its first and freshest hour. Always the lovers drive their flocks across shallow fording-places to pasturages washed by running streams; somewhere not far off is the sheepcote, and, often near at hand, the village. The sheepbells tinkle, and, according to a folk-song of modern Greece,† the shepherds pipe slumber-songs to tree and flower. The shepherdess sits under the white coif (which plays a prominent part in many widely spread chansons) or decked with other headgear, and spins her thread as she, herself guarded by her dog, guards her sheep from the wolf, and her other treasures-Little pipe of mine, little pail of mine, little wether, little flocks-from predatory enemies of other species. Then there comes the recurrent episode. 'Le Passant,' be he gentilhomme, soldier, hunter, king, pays, usually in vain, his addresses to the bergère. He recounts, usually untruthfully, the tale of her true love's perfidy. He offers robes de soie et de bourlan," jewels, golden chains, pages, according to his means and estate. And she, sometimes with mockery, sometimes in sober earnestness, declines all proffers, and if here and there it is a refusal which acquiesces, more often it is in all seriousness and sincerity that she declares her preference for capeline et 'houlette' in comparison with silk attire. In the intervals *The Renaissance. 6 + L. Garnett, Greek Folk-songs.' |