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24 A CENTURY OF BALLADS
states that " The Frog Galliard " is almost the only instance to be found in the Elizabethan period of a popular ballad tune known to be from the hand of a celebrated composer.
From about this period dates Thomas Morley's setting of Shakespeare's " It was a lover and his lass," from As You Like It, though Morley perhaps belongs more strictly to the sixteenth century than the seventeenth. There seems to be considerable doubt as to the date of his death, which is placed by some in 1604.
"The Jolly, Jolly Breeze," a fairly well-known song of that day, was composed by John Eccles, who in the early part of the seventeenth century published a collection of nearly a hundred songs, none of which seem to have survived the lapse of time.
One of the oldest, if not actually the oldest, "patriotic" songs of the type which we now associate with that name is "When the King enjoys his own again." It probably dates from the end of Charles I's reign, was sung by the Cavaliers against the Roundheads, and later all over England at the Restoration. "A song that has helped to make history," says Ritson, "it is the most famous and popular air ever heard of in this country. Invented to support the declining interests of Charles I, it served afterwards with more success to keep up the spirits of the Cava- |
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