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84 ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
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He'll steal the cock out from his flock, He'll steal the duck out of the hrook,
Keep, keep, keep, keep, keep ; Keep, keep, &c.;
He'll steal the cock e'en from his flock, He'll steal the duck out of the brook,
O keep you all well there. O keep you all well there.
I must desire you, &c. I must desire you, &c.
He'll steal the hen out of the pen, He'll steal the lamb e'en from his dam,
Keep, keep, &c.; Keep, keep, &c.;
He'll steal the hen out of the pen, He'll steal the lamb e'en from his dam,
O keep you all well there. O keep you all well there.
I must desire you, &c. I must desire you, &c.
THE SHAKING OF THE SHEET, on THE DANCE OF DEATH.
This is frequently mentioned by "writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both as a country dance and as a ballad tune. In the recently-discovered play of Misogonus, produced about 1560,a The Shaking of the Sheets, The Vicar of St. Fools, and The Catching of Quails, are mentioned as country dances.6 There is a manuscript copy of the ballad in the British Museum (Add. MSS. No. 15,225), in -which it is ascribed to Thomas Hill; and printed copies, in black letter, are to be found in the Roxburghe Collection (i., 499), and in that of Anthony a "Wood, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (vol. 401., f. 60). In 1568-9, it was entered at Stationers' Hall to John Awdelay (see Collier's Extracts, vol. i., p. 195).
Dance after my pipe, which is the second title of the ballad, seems to have been a proverbial expression. In Ben Jonson's Every man out of his humour, Saviolina says: "Nay, I cannot stay to dance after your pipe." In Vox Borealis, 1641,—"I would teach them to sing another song, and make them dance after my pipe, ere I had done with them." And in Middleton's The World Lost at Tennis,—"If I should dance after your pipe I should soon dance to the devil;" and so in many other instances.
In The Meeting of Crallants at an Ordinary, the host, describing a young man who died of the plague, in London, in 1603, says: "But this youngster daunced the shaking of one sheete within a few daies after " (Percy Soc. Reprint, p. 20) ; and in A West-country Jigg, or a Trenchmore Cralliard, verse 5 : " The piper he struck up, And merrily he did play The Shaking of the Sheets, And eke The Irish Hay." The tune is also mentioned in Lilly's Pappe with a Hatchet, 1589; in Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, 1579; by Rowley, Middleton, Taylor the water-poet, Marston, Massinger, Heywood, Dekker, Shirley, &c, &c.
There are two tunes under this name, the one in William Ballet's Lute Book, which is the same as printed by Sir John Hawkins in his History of Music (vol. 2, p. 934, 8vo. edit.); the other, and in all probability the more popular one, is contained in numerous publications,0 from The Dancing Master of 1650-51, to The Vocal Enchantress of 1783.
* See Collier's Hiitory of Early Dramatic Poetry, v. 2, • The tune of The Catching of Quail' is also in The Dans' *M. ci„g Matter.
k Sometimes it is called The Night Piece, or TheShaking of the Sheeti. |
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