THE BOOKMAN'S JOURNAL

& PRINT COLLECTOR

London, England

13 May 1921

(page 51)

THE SOUL OF SUSSEX.

[ . . . ]

But Sussex poets are not just content with writing poetry. A gallant little band of friends have dug themselves in (with a printing press) at Steyning, in Sussex, and have hoisted the sign of the "Vine Press"—long life to it! Here they are going to build verses, and with the help of some sturdy ex-soldiers they hope to set an example in good literary work and to be the forerunners of a neo-Elizabethan literary revival. The "Vine Press" has already turned out two most attractive and gorgeously-printed books—one, Lillygay, an anthology of anonymous [By Victor B. Neuburg] poems, and the other a book of Sussex poems. Lillygay is a benediction of a book—a book eternal—and in its pages the reader may re-capture lost May Days and lost pay-days. Some of the incomplete songs in this book have set themselves to the broken staves of romance, and come back to us as topographical facts and vestures of the soul. They are ballads which represent the very essence of tradition. Their charm is within and their meaning incommunicable.

In the prologue to one of the "Vine Press" books of ballads we find this interesting passage "The rainbow and the waterfall, the waving tree and the flaming sword are one with man, and these songs are the songs of his soul." When I read this I recalled the words of an old Sussex shepherd I met at the Lamb Inn on Sewers Bridge, near Pevensey. He argued always that the inner things of life couldn't be talked about in cold blood, and summed up in the following speech "As for all this beating the devil round a gooseberry-bush about the big things of life, there's nowt in it, you take my word for that! You may argle-bargle (argue) about 'em all the night, but to no profit. S'pos'n there be a soul in your body; can Parson tell 'e aught about it? Of course he don't, an' he won't know any more about it than you and me till he is put to bed with a shovel. You can't go on talking about the big things; you can only put them into songs. The little things for pipes and ale and argument, but the big things for songs, that's what I sez! Put 'em in songs!"

Some of the songs in Lillygay are rather primitive, and there are people who might be "shocked" by their racy character. But to the man of understanding these ballads are the legacies of the Sussex dead, "twelve coffin deep"—the dead who clutch hold of one at every turn and whisper:

One with our random fields we grow.

Among others we have that singular and terrible religious ballad, A Lyke-Wake Dirge, and the remarkable coarse and clever song of Sick Dick:

The ale at the Lion is bright and old,

With a colley-walley-walley-walley-walley-walley-wobbles;

And that's what made Dick overbold,

And Dick was sick all over the cobbles.

The book would make an admirable selection for anyone who thought of taking to the road and becoming a professional ballad-singer at inns and country celebrations. A most inviting idea—in summer!