Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1

Ancient Songs, Ballads, & Dance Tunes, Sheet Music & Lyrics - online book

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66
ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC.
Though that you do it is no boot, Although they cut me to the root, Next year again I will be seen To bud my branches fresh and green.
And you, fair maid, can not do so, For 'when your beauty once does go,' Then will it never more be seen, As I with my branches can grow green.
The Maid with that began to blush, And turn'd her from the hawthorn bush ; She thought herself so fair and clean, Her beauty still would ever grow green.
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But after this never I could hear Of this fair maiden any where, That ever she was in forest seen To talk again with the hawthorn green.
The above will be found in Ritson's Ancient Songs, in Evans' Collection of Old Ballads (vol. i., p. 342, 1810), and in Peele's Works, vol. ii., p. 256, edited by Dyce. It is included in the last named work, because in the MS. the name of "G. Peele" is appended to the song, but by a.comparatively modern hand. The Bev. Alexander Dyce does not believe Peele to have been the author, and Ritson, who copied from the same manuscript, does not mention his name.
SHALL I GO WALK THE WOODS SO WILD ?
This is mentioned in the Life of Sir Peter Carew as one of the Freemen's Songs, ■which he used to sing -with Henry "VlLL—(See page 52). It must have enjoyed an extensive and long-continued popularity, for there are three different arrange­ments of it in Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book, all by Byrde; it is in Lady Neville's Virginal Book; in Pammelia (1609) it is one of the three tunes that could be sung together ; and it is in The Dancing Master, from the first edition, in 1650, to that of 1690. In the edition of 1650, it is called Greenwood, and in some of the later copies, Greenwood, or The Huntsman.
There 'were probably different -words to the tunc, because in the Life of Sir Peter Carew it is called " As I walked the woods so wild;" in Lady Neville's Virginal Book, " Will you walk the -woods so wild ?" and in Pammelia, " Shall I go ivalk" &c.