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ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
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The husbandman all day goeth to plough, And when he comes home he serveth his sow ; Ck.—He moileth and toileth all the long year,— How can he be merry and make good cheer ?
The serving-man waiteth from street to street, Either blowing his nails or beating his feet; Ck.—Yet all that serves for, four angels" a year, Impossible 'tis that he make good cheer.
Who liveth so merry and maketh such sport As those that be of the poorest sort ? Ck.—The poorest sort, wheresoever they be,
They gather together by one, two, and three.
And every man will spend his penny, ") ,.
What makes such a shot among a great many.j .'
TO-MOKROW THE FOX WILL COME TO TOWN, ok TRENCHMORE.
In Tlie Dancing Master this tune is called Trenchmore. In Deuteromelia it is one of the King Henry's Mirth or Freemen's Songs, under the name of " Tomorrow the fox will come to town."
In a Morality, by William Bulleyn, called A Dialogue both pleasant and piety-full, wherein is a goodly regimen against the fever pestilence, &c, 1564, a minstrel is thus described: "There is one lately come into the hall, in a green Kendal coat, with yellow hose; a beard of the same colour, only upon the upper lip; a russet hat, with a great plume of strange feathers; and a brave scarf about his neck; in cut buskins. He is playing at the trea trippe with our host's son; he playeth trick upon the gittern, daunces Trenchmore and Heie de Qie, and telleth news from Terra Florida."
Taylor, the water-poet, in A Merry Wherry-ferry Voyage, says: " Heigh, to the tune of Trenchmore I could write The valiant men of Cromer's Bad affright;" .
and in A Navy of Land Ships, 1627, " Nimble-heel'd mariners, like so many dancers, capering a morisco [morris dance], or Trenchmore of forty miles long, to the tune of ' Dusty, my dear,' ' Dirty, come thou to me,' ' Dun out of the mire,' or ' I wail in woe and plunge in pain:' all these dances have no other music." Deloney, in his History of the gentle craft, 1598, says: "like one dancing the Trenchmore, he stamp'd up and down the yard, holding his hips in his hands."
Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621, says that mankind are at no period of their lives insensible to dancing. "Who can withstand it? be we young or old, though our teeth shake in our heads like Virginal Jacks, or stand parallel asunder like the arches of a bridge,—there is no remedy: we must dance Trenchmore over tables, chairs, and stools." The following amusing description is from Selden's Table Talk:
" The court of England ia much alterU At a solemn dancing, first you had the grave measures, then the corantoe3 and the galliards, and this kept up with ceremony; and at length to Trenchmore and the Cushion Dance: then all the company dances,
* The angel was a gold coin worth about ten shillings, so named from having the representation of an angel upon it. |
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