| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
IX. MISCELLANEOUS |
481 |
||
|
In Merry Drollery, 1661, 132 the song is entitled A cup of old stingo, and closes with
' Let's drink the barrel to the dregs For the Mault-man comes a Munday.'
In the ninth edition of the Dancing Master, 1695, the title of the tune was altered from Stingo to Cold and raw, by which it has since been known. The date of the change approximates to that of the anecdote of Hawkins, and the song performed by Mrs. Hunt was probably A new Scotch Song, which first appeared in Come Amoris, or the companion of Love, 1688, and became so popular that the old title of the tune was abandoned for Cold and raw. According to Chappell {Popular Music, page 306), this new Scotch song was written by Tom Durfey. The following first stanza is taken from Pills to purge melancholy, 1719, ii. 167:—
' Cold and raw the North did blow, When come riding over a knough, Bleak in the morning early; I met with a farmer's daughter;
All the trees were hid in snow, Rosie cheeks and bonny brow, Dagl'd by winter yearly: Goodfaithmademymouthtowater.'
It may be remarked that the next following song in Durfey is entitled ' A new Song to the Scotch tune of Cold and Raw? In a Collection of old Ballads, 1723—the first of its kind in England—the song is reprinted with the title The, Northern Ditty ; or the Scotchman outwitted. In a note, the ballad is said to be traditionally assigned to the time of James I of England, which controverts the statement of Chappell.
The tune Stingo in the seventeenth century was also known as The country lass, .and numerous ballads were written for the music and printed as broadsides.
The famous revolutionary song of 16S8—Lilliburlero—was first printed to be snng to Cold and raw, but it had to give place very quickly to the tune now associated with it.
So much for the English source. The earliest record of the tune I can find in Scotland is in McGibbon's Scots Tunes, 1755,17, with the title Up in the morning early, from which it may be inferred that it was then known and sung to verses in Herd MS., the chorus of which is :—
'Up i' the morning, up i' the morning Up i' the morning early, Up i' the morning 's no for me And I canna get up so early.'
The music is also in the Caledonian Pocket Companion, xii. ;, with the same title as in McGibbon. No such song is named in the Tea-Table Miscellany,. nor in any printed Scottish song-book of the eighteenth century. This melody is an example of the difficulty of ascertaining the origin of folk music. Chappell's test was a very sImple one and suited his purpose exactly. Where the earliest record of the music was found there was the origin. He rejected all circumstantial evidence, and in this way practically excluded all Scottish tune prior to the year 1700—the date of the first printed collection of Scottish music. The many references to the peculiarity of Scottish music by Shakespeare, Dryden, Pepys, and other writers of the seventeenth century counted for nothing, and the inrush of Scottish tunes into England in the wake of James I was disregarded. As early as 1688 the tune Cold and raw was designated a Northern or Scotch tune, and by the Queen, in 1691, as an old Scottish Ballad, yet the music was not printed in Scotland before 1755 nor the words before Burns.
No. 322. KTo cold approach, no altered mien. Scots Musical Museum, 1792, N0.J40. MS. in which Burns directs how the music is to be set is in the British Museum. Further information is as follows: ' This song composed by a Miss Cranstoun. It wanted four lines to make all the stanzas suit the
ii |
|||