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BALLADS OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 27
known, is the famous " In the Season of the Year," with its familiar chorus :—
Oh, it's my delight On a shiny night
In the season of the year.
The words were set to a fine old English melody, and the song "has been sung," says Chappell, "by several hundred voices together at the harvest homes of George IV."
One of the most popular songs of a jovial type in the seventeenth century was the ballad entitled "The Delights of the Bottle," composed by Matthew Lock, who flourished from 1632 to 1677. This song is now lost in obscurity, but another of Lock's still lives, namely, " My Lodging is on the Cold Ground," though it is probable that the tune as at present known is a different one to Lock's original setting.
Another immensely popular "drinking" song of the period was Jeremy Savile's "Here's a Health unto His Majesty." Perhaps it is hardly fair to put it under the category of drinking songs, it is really more than that, and was a popular patriotic song in the reign of Charles II. Savile wrote it originally as a three-part song. Beyond his four-part song "The Waits," usually sung at the meetings of the Madrigal Society and similar bodies, little is now remembered of Savile's other compositions. |
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