Propositions towards an interpretation of William Golder’s New Zealand Minstrelsy
1. Creating a National Literature
Golder saw the development of a national literature as an integral aspect of the formation of New Zealand as a modern nation. The New Zealand Minstrelsy offers a distinctive approach to satisfying this need, one deeply informed by Golder’s social and cultural origins in the Scottish Lowlands.
Important cultural/historical factors include: Scots’ experience of internal colonisation by the English; a cultural nationalism in based in Calvinist protestantism, the intellectual movement in the later eighteenth century of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the reframing of oral traditions (both the Lowlands ballads and Gaelic oral traditions of the clan culture of the Highlands under the bardic mantle of Ossian) as crucial elements of Scottish cultural difference and the foundation of Scottish national literature and culture.
The period in which William Golder developed his conception of himself as a poet, the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, was one of rapid social, economic and cultural change in the Scottish Lowlands. These changes are marked biographically, in his occupations of agricultural labourer, weaver, primary school teacher, poet and settler.
1.1 The New Zealand Minstrelsy — structure and contents
There is a consistent pattern in the arrangement of poems, which is repeated in the later volumes. The poems are arranged in a sequence beginning at the poet’s present location and concluding at a remote location which can only be recollected or known imaginatively. The most common form of this pattern is that of a mental movement from the present towards the future (prospect) or the past (retrospect).
The poems written since arrival in New Zealand come first, and the first poem is set in the Hutt Valley beside the Erratonga (now Hutt) River. Of the thirty three poems using a diversity of speakers and stanza forms which follow, all but four are provided with Scottish tunes and their subjects are various aspects of settler work, social relations, domestic life and Christian faith, with emigration as a dominant theme. Those without tunes include one sonnet, one epigram, a blank verse memorial to a friend who has died, and the celebratory ode written as the emigrant ship approached New Zealand. The five religious poems which are collected together at the end of the group place the preceding poems in a context which points to the future and reframes the emigrant’s journey as the Christian’s journey through life.
The single most important sign of Golder’s self-conscious relocating of himself and his poetic work in New Zealand is the first poem in the volume, “Erratonga”, which affirms both a continuity of pastoral sentiment and convention and the displacement of Scottish by New Zealand locations, here marked decisively by the Maori name. Just as Scotland could be distinguished poetically from England through settings, place names and linguistic differences, so can New Zealand; the new land is not wholly silent.
1.2 Poetry and the nation
In his preface to The New Zealand Minstrelsy, Golder explains why he decided to publish this volume:
in appearing again as an author, it is not, I confess, without some slight hope that this little attempt in the matter of song may tend not only to add to the literature of our Colony, thereby extracting some of the sweets which lie hid among the many asperities of colonial life; but also to endear our adopted country the more to the bosom of the bonâ fide settler; as such, in days of yore, has often induced a people to take hold of their country, by not only inspiring them with a spirit of patriotic magnanimity, but also in making them the more connected as a people in the eyes of others.
The New Zealand Minstrelsy refers directly to only one other writer, the Scottish poet, essayist and educator James Beattie (1735–1803), through an epigraph drawn from his poem, The Minstrel or, The Progress of Genius (1771–1774). But its format reflects other contemporary publications of Scottish poetry, like James Hogg’s early ballad collection, The Forest Minstrel (1810). The importance of such collections in the formation of Scottish cultural nationalism in the early nineteenth century, drawing from and building upon the poetry of Robert Burns and earlier writers in the Scottish vernacular movement, is widely acknowledged.
Song writing and performance linked popular and high cultures in Scotland at this time. The constant feature is the tune, the link with community, custom and tradition; it is the words which can be rewritten to permit the inclusion of other experiences within the already known structure of the tune. Golder makes this point himself in a note attached to the first of the religious songs in The New Zealand Minstrelsy, while emphasising that the subject of the song has a moral relation to the music:
As in music there are many tunes, though unconnected with words, expressive of much feeling, corresponding with the several sympathies existing in the soul of man, so have I taken the liberty of shewing, how they can be improved by applying some to subjects of a sacred nature.
Such a conception of poetic composition places that which is already known and shared by a community, the tune, ahead of the invention of the poet. But Golder also proposes that a familiar tune, representing a particular emotional quality in human nature, will be “improved” when it is performed with new, “sacred” words. This work of the poet enables improvement in society to occur exactly because it inserts a better content into an already known, communally shared form. Such writing becomes of national significance, in these terms, when it is adopted widely as the preferred wording for a tune which is itself already generally known and performed by people at all levels of society. While oral transmission traditionally achieves this result for popular song, Golder’s inventions in song form are recorded and disseminated in print; he makes use, that is, of a communications technology which has only recently become available to members of the working class and by means of which they can contribute to the ongoing production of a national culture.
Golder’s aim in The New Zealand Minstrelsy to contribute to the establishment of a national literature is based on the proposition that the value of poetry is to be judged by the extent to which it can represent (reflect and shape) the distinctive and shared qualities of a people, a national community, in words and forms able to appeal equally to all of its members. It might be assumed from Golder’s statement of aim that his conviction that the creation of a national literature in and for New Zealand was both possible and necessary was based on the personal, social and cultural value he attributed to Scottish poetry as the substance of his national literature, in contrast to the valuation of poets according to a scale of greatness of literary achievement. A democratic conception of poetry, in other words.
What evidently mattered most to Golder in the broad spectrum of social situations was the bond of love and affection between two people, whether as a heterosexual couple or as friends, which includes same sex and sibling relationships. Many poems in The New Zealand Minstrelsy tell of loss. The larger public or political context, typically war or separation through emigration, is simply presented as a given; what is noticed is the effect of such events, usually cruel, on the lives and feelings of specific people.
Each poem is a little narrative, the speaker in some poems being an observer of a social event and in others one of the participants, male or female. What constitutes the poem is an immediately imaginable event or situation and a trajectory through a crisis, the import of which is registered morally and emotionally. The language is plain and direct, consistent with the immediacy and typicality of the situation and setting.
Golder affirmed the monarchy throughout his life, writing occasional poems on important royal events. Their constant point was to reaffirm the need for moral and intellectual leadership, the special role of those in high office to nurture and advance the foundations of British (but also human) civilisation.
1.3 Poetry and the Future of the Nation
The most unusual poem in The New Zealand Minstrelsy is the one which Golder wrote shortly before arriving in New Zealand, “Stanzas, Written while on the Voyage out to New Zealand on Board the ‘Bengal Merchant’, January 14, 1840.” It is a celebratory ode, strongly endorsing the aims and purposes of the Wakefield plan for the settlement of New Zealand and envisaging the nation’s future as an agent of civilised development in the Pacific. It is also structured as a moment in perception which is particularly resonant for Golder, that of a moment in present time which is also the intersection of past and future. Its imperial context is Britannia’s presence “in every quarter of this active world” as the agent of civilization through “humanity”, that is, Christian and secular knowledge which replaces war, superstition and the waste productivity of nature with peace, industry, commerce and abundance. The poem’s imagined scene is social, the meeting of two peoples: the New Zealanders, included among the “savage nations, which inherit/The sea-girt isles, which long obscurely lay/Beyond [Britannia’s] former ken”; and the Britons, who are coming to “adopt your country as our home”. In his imaginary address to the New Zealanders, Golder begins, “Fear not, New Zealander! we do not come/With hostile feelings, but with all good will . . ./No faithless friendship offer we for gain”. In a note to the words, “Oh happy plan!— ingenuously devised!”, Golder underlines his confidence in the Wakefield plan and demonstrates why Maori have good reason to fear the arrival of the settlers: “the Wakefield method of purchasing territory for colonization; then bestowing part of the land for the benefit of the natives [replaces] taking the land by force, and exterminating its inhabitants, as has often been done by other nations in former years.”
His invitation to Maori, to “Bid Briton”s welcome”, can be easily dismissed as wishful thinking expressive of his anxiety that the New Zealanders may not read the settlers’ intentions in the way Golder wants them to; but he can also be understood to offer a conception of New Zealand in the future as a socially, morally, economically, and intellectually advanced nation, the benefits of which all of its people will share as they build it together in friendship, a fundamental relationship for Golder.
At the moment of arrival in New Zealand Golder’s mind is focussed on the imminence of the settlers’ encounter with a new land and a different people, and he locates that moment in the larger context of civilization (moral, scientific, democratic and Christian) and human progress.
Summary
Golder would not expect a case to be made for him as a uniquely significant founder of New Zealand literature and culture, but he would be gratified by the commemorative recognition that his work articulates a model of citizenship and nationality which remains at the core of what continues to evolve as “New Zealand culture”, specifically in that dimension signified by the term Pakeha and the formation of a distinctive variant of English. It is not modesty, but a democratic conception of society and the role of the creative, knowledgable and virtuous individual in its progressive improvement, which governs his self-conception and the claims he makes about the value of both his poetry and his physical labour in the conversion of the New Zealand wilderness for inclusive sociable and humane purposes.
A national literature will create a shared idea of that nation in the minds of its people by articulating what is common in experience and purpose, and by critiquing behaviour and ideas which compromise the creation of that nation. A national poet will write songs for people to sing together, poems which promote true values by satirising individuals and common types of behaviour, and poems envisaging the future which, by binding together imagination and the realm of ideas, can inspire the progressive enactment of the idea of the nation through individual and collective effort in a specific time and place.
2. Becoming a Poet
Golder might be able to become a poet/minstrel as the result of giving expression to an innate ability, but socially he knew himself to be a member of the labouring class. Recent studies of poetry written by Golder’s contemporaries in the Scottish Lowlands, and specifically in the Glasgow area, have introduced the terms “local poet” and “artisan poet” to categorise the writers of a distinctive body of poetry which was printed locally, often by subscription, which represented the thinking and culture of labouring and working classes in this period of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, and which drew upon vernacular and popular poetic forms and traditions in the process of articulating a social and political critique.
The first half of the nineteenth century, preceding the development of a stronger national press, provided a unique opportunity for such poets to get into print. But just as publishing was able to develop a national market and wider distribution of its products because of increasing literacy, so the written language in print became a national language.
Golder acknowledges these developments in the predominance of English as the language of his published poetry, and in his adoption of what are clearly standardised ways of presenting a poem or song on the page. But he is also writing in a new locality, New Zealand, in which the link between dialect and region is not firmly established, a locality in which different cultures and dialects mingle and ultimately produce a hybrid version of the standard imperial language as one mark of the difference of the new nation among the various nations of the British empire. In so far as his poems are written to be read, they fulfil this standardising function of print; in so far as they are available to be performed, they can circulate in the regionally inflected versions of English spoken by the representatives of the different British nations settling in New Zealand. As the artistic voice of a group, British settlers in New Zealand, Golder demonstrates the complex interaction between notions of cultural region and cultural nation which are so significant in the early nineteenth century in Scotland, and on which are grounded a conception of the local poet as the means by which the nation finds its distinctive voice.
There is also a strong case to be made for Golder’s intellectual milieu as being that of the “popular enlightenment”, one of the leaders of which was Rev Thomas Dick, author of such frequently republished works as The Christian Philosopher (1824) and Philosophy of a Future State (1827), which were marked by a powerful enthusiasm for new scientific knowledge, its technological applications, and their demonstration of the progressive unfolding of God’s benevolent design for the universe. Dick has also been attributed with the conception of the Mechanics Institutes as a powerful instrument for the improvement of society by self-education through literacy and access to modern knowledge, both secular and religious.
2.1 The Career of the Poet
Golder’s conception of a national literature is not defined by a list of great works; nor is his conception of the poet defined by membership in the canon of great poets. His observations on the former point in the Preface to The New Zealand Minstrelsy underline how every aspect of settlers’ physical and social circumstances enforce the transitional nature of settler identity as it is grounded in conceptions of nationality:
this little attempt in the matter of song may tend not only to add to the literature of our Colony, thereby extracting some of the sweets which lie hid among the many asperities of colonial life; but also to endear our adopted country the more to the bosom of the bonâ fide settler; as such, in days of yore, has often induced a people to take hold of their country, by not only inspiring them with a spirit of patriotic magnanimity, but also in making them the more connected as a people in the eyes of others. For instances of which, I need not here refer the intelligent reader to the ancient history of any other nation than the one to which he as an individual may belong.
Golder’s conception of the minstrel/bard is directly attributable to James Beattie’s poem, The Minstrel or, The Progress of Genius (1771–1774) which is quoted as the title-page epigraph to The New Zealand Minstrelsy:
Him who ne’er listened to the voice of praise,
The silence of neglect can ne’er appal. (I, ii)
The work of the poet in this account has nothing to do with the traditional link between poetic accomplishment and fame, but everything to do with the role of poetry in the enhancement of humanity in every part of a society.
What is remarkable about the link affirmed by the epigraph between Beattie’s poem and Golder’s is that it is not restricted to a moral issue about fame and social standing, but that Golder’s life and productivity as a poet is an exact performance of the model elaborated by Beattie and the principles on which it is founded. The poem spoke to all the principal components of Golder’s personal and intellectual circumstances, and provided an integrated narrative identity grounded in a coherent and purposeful set of relations between self and society, nature and culture, social status and inner qualities of mind and feeling, freedom and authority, human disorder and providential design, personal improvement and social progress, humane learning and scientific progress.
The poem defines a model of individual poetic development beginning with an innate capacity for responding with delight and sympathy to nature and humanity and progressing in literary skill as a result of long-term application. The young poet, Edwin, is brought up by loving parents as a shepherd in a remote rural environment; they emphasise simplicity of living, charitable relations with others, and religious belief as the foundations of a true life, in contrast to the unrelenting pursuit of power and wealth which characterises the public world. Edwin’s mother introduces him to poetry and music by singing ballads and telling traditional stories. By this means, and through his daily experience of the natural world, he discovers his love for and abilities in poetry and music; it is the purpose of the poem’s second book to tell of his further education by the Hermit, a man who has lived at the court and has rejected its corrupting values. This teaching in history and philosophy builds on the knowledge derived from his parents, entrenches the view that the materialism of society is the source of its degeneracy, and provides powerful arguments for a poetry which encourages the improvement of society by linking under divine governance conceptions of virtuous action and the free nation with science, art and industry.
Like the Hermit, and like those promoting the “popular enlightenment”, Golder believed in the mutually informing relation of scientific and religious knowledge, and in the advancing of civilisation through the amelioration of all human life and the achievement of the good society by the application of knowledge — scientific, moral and religious — by each individual.
Beattie locates the minstrel among the generality of the people rather than among the privileged at the top of the social hierarchy; that the minstrel is a local voice able to speak to the whole society through all its localities rather than from the metropolitan centre points to a fundamentally democratic conception of the poet.
Further confirmation of the importance of Beattie’s poem and Golder’s interpretation of it is to be found in Golder’s pre-New Zealand but reprinted and hence reaffirmed poem, “Stanzas, To a Young Poet”, which is, like Beattie’s poem, written in Spenserian stanzas.
“Stanzas, To a Young Poet” quotes the first two lines of Beattie’s poem as an epigraph:
Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar!
These lines position Beattie’s poem, as do the lines used on the title page of The New Zealand Minstrelsy, in such a way that the entry into the account of the character of the true minstrel is through consideration of the problem of how worth is measured in society. One version of the poet’s career is figured out in the image of “Fame’s proud temple”, accessible only with great difficulty, the highly attractive goal of public recognition and reward, the focus of social valuation; the other is that of the “soul sublime” who “In life’s low vale remote has pined alone,/Then dropt into the grave, unpitied and unknown!” (I.i).
“Stanzas, To a Young Poet” affirms Beattie’s conception of the poet as a person achieving self-knowledge in communion with nature and through moral learning, a vocation discovered in youth through the experience of a sympathetic and imaginative identification with nature. Such a discovery is not a function of learning or social position, but the realisation of an innate capability to be a poet which is improved through practice and the acquisition of true knowledge about the natural, social and spiritual worlds.
Summary
The New Zealand Minstrelsy is offered as a contribution to a democratic beginning, both as a memorial to the first years of settlement and as a representation of the primary features of ordinary life and work. By employing a linguistic register which declines literary resonance and tradition and affirms both everyday language and a version of written English which is shaped by the codes of referentiality, perspecuity and rationality, Golder establishes the terms of a poetic career which maintains continuities with his Scottish cultural and intellectual origins while marking out the parameters for the formation of a distinctive language and literature in the new nation. As a poet of a locality, Wellington, which is just beginning the process of transformation from wilderness to civilisation, his career is itself an expression of that transitional state of affairs in the relations between nature and society.
