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xiv |
Foreword |
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O, Bally, come back from the echoing shore! cease for a season the public to bore with your infamous rhymes and your stupid complaint, for you know you are claiming to be what you ain't. O, drivel no more, don't snuffle, don't weep — hang up your lyre, Ball, I 'LL rock YOU to sleep ! "
The absurdity of this thing did more to settle Ball's mal-claim than all kinds of argument could have done.
In one or two cases the original setting of words has given place to the music of some modern composer, because of the peculiar fitness of the new music. For such a reason the setting of the Rev. Hobart B. Whitney's music to the world-old song — " Sleep, Baby, Sleep " — is given. In this instance Mr. Whitney's music has precedence over many other melodies made for the words.
" The Nipper's Lullaby " deserves to stand beside Dibdin's songs; the Chevalier songs have made art-history, as Dibdin's did.
In a letter written by Mrs. T. B. Gerow of Atchison, Kansas, while the Cuban War was on, she wrote of a " Hot Time in the Old Town."
" Whatever the war may add to the country that the country does n't want, it has added a new military nonsense song — this ' Hot Time ' song! It will go down to history with ' Slap Bang' and ' Dixie,' 'Lilli Burlero' and ' Yankee Doodle.' I hope its origin will not be lost to history as is * Yankee Doodle's ': when this country makes a classic it deserves the credit. ' Hot Time ' is first of all a Roosevelt song. It is sung out here on every conceivable occasion and it is only a question of time when the Salvationers adopt it. It has certainly come to stay — so let the war go on." |
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