Additional Notes
The Jvng PoemsAs noted at several places in TOA and in our Additional Note to the Shr poems in general, the Jvng Poems (Shr 75-95) were a problem those who wanted to interpret the Shr as a repertoire of positive moral examples. The problem with some of the Jvng poems is not that they present vice and then disapprove of it. That would be OK; the morally sensitive reader might be persuaded to share in the disapproval. Instead, these poems exemplify vice and then revel in it. At LY *15:11 (p137) we quoted Shr 87:
If you love me tenderly,
Lift your robe and cross the Dzvn;
If you love me not at all,
Are you then the only one?
The craziest of crazy lads, is all you are!
If you love me tenderly,
Lift your robe and cross the Wai;
If you love me not at all,
Are you then the only guy?
Next to it is Shr 86, whose heroine is just as impervious to moralizing interpretation. Her guy has dropped her, but is she feeling sad and sleepless? Not a bit:
Yonder crazy lad, ah
Won't consent to meet, huh?
Yonder crazy lad, ah
Won't consent with me to share a bite, huh?
It is perhaps a little hard to see how the cultivation of modest virtue in the girl, or her admiration of conspicuous virtue in the guy, comes into this at all strongly. To meet this lack, songs more acceptable to suburban morality were later added to the Jvng section. And thus it is that, alongside the original group of ten lascivious and depraved Jvng poems, there now stand ten sober and respectable Jvng poems. The new poems are affectionate and caring. They are responsible and civic-minded. They are there to make life easier for the schoolroom interpreters and virtue teachers. Need it be said that it was not these morally admirable new poems, but the lascivious and depraved older poems, that have continued to fascinate readers of the Shr, over the centuries?
There is a way to determine winners and losers in such contests. Which of the Jvng poems, the depraved or the proper ones, did the Shr compilers themselves like better? To the ten depraved and the ten proper Jvng poems, an exactly balanced set, there was later added a twenty-first Jvng poem. This was Shr 95, the last of the Jvng group. To which side will it add its deciding vote, the depraved poems or the proper poems? This is rather an exciting question. We proceed to answer it.
Shr 95 is an affectionate literary evocation of Shr 85, with its Dzvn and Wai river setting. Shr 85 was youthful in its indiscretions. By contrast, Shr 95 is adult - in its more sophisticated indiscretions. Here it is:
The Dzvn and eke the Wai
Are now at floodtime height, ah
The gallants and the girls
With sweetgrass are bedight, ah
A girl says "Have you seen the sight?
A gallant says "I have indeed,
But shall we see again the sight?
The Dzvn and eke the Wai
Are flowing very clear, ah
The gallants and the girls
In multitudes appear, ah
A girl says, "Have you seen the sight?
A gallant says "I have indeed,
But shall we see again the sight?
In all seriousness, one does see the problem as it presented itself to the moral interpreters of the Shr. How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen the Dzvn and the Wai?
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