Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1
Ancient Songs, Ballads, & Dance Tunes, Sheet Music & Lyrics - online book
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ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
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" Tub Hunt is up." Among the favorites of Henry the Eighth, Puttenham notices " one Gray, ■what good estimation did he grow unto with the same King Henry, and afterwards -with the Duke of Somerset, Protectour, for making certaine merry ballades, ■whereof one chiefly was, The hunte is up, the hunte is up." Perhaps it was the same William Gray who wrote a ballad on the downfall of Thomas Lord Cromwell in 1540, to which there are several rejoinders in the library of the Society of Antiquaries. The tune The Hunt is up was known as early as 1537, when information was sent to the Council against one John Hogon, who had offended against the proclamation of 1533, which was issued to suppress " fond books, ballads, rhimes, and other lewd treatises in the English tongue," by singing, " with a crowd or a fyddyll," a political song to that tune. Some of the words are inserted in the information, but they were taken down from recitation, and are not given as verse (see Collier's Shakespeare, i., p. eclxxxviii.) In the Complaint of Scotland, 1549, The Hunt is up is mentioned as a tune for dancing, for which, from its lively character, it seems peculiarly suited ; and Mr. Collier has a MS. which contains a song called " The Kinges Hunt is upp," which may be the very one written by Gray, since " Harry our King" is twice mentioned in it, and a religious parody as old as the reign of Henry VIII. is in precisely the same measure. The following is the song :— |
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The east is bright with morning light,
And darkness it is fled, And the merie home wakes up the morne
To leave his idle bed. |
The horses snort to be at the sport, The dogges are running free,
The woddes rejoyce at the mery noise Of hey tantara tee ree !
The snnne is glad to see us clad
All in our lustie greene, And smiles in the skye as he riseth hye,
To see and to be seene. |
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Beholde the skyes with golden dyes
Are glowing all around, The grasse is greene, andso are the treene,
All laughing at the sound. |
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Awake, all men, I say agen, Be mery as you maye,
For Harry our Kinge is gone hunting, To bring his deere to baye. |
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