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PROM IIENRY VII. TO MARY. |
91 |
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LUSTY GALLANT.
This tune, which was extremely popular in former times, is to be found in William Ballet's Lute Book. It resembles "Now foot it as I do, Tom, boy, Tom," which is one of three country dances, arranged to be sung together as a round, in Pammelia.
Nicholas Breton mentions Old Lusty Gallant as a dance tune in his Works of
a Young Wit, 1577: ....."by chance,
Our banquet done, we had our music by, And then, you know, the youth must needs go dance, First galliards—then larousse, and heidegy— Old Lusty Gallant—Alljlomers of the broom; And then a hall, for dancers must have room ;" and Elderton, wrote, " a proper new balad in praise of my Ladie Marques, whose death is bewailed," to the tune of New Lusty Gallant. A copy of that ballad is in the possession of Mr. George Daniel, of Canonbury; but I assume it to have been intended for another air, because there are seven lines in each stanza. The following is the first:—
" Ladies, I thinke you marvell that I writ no mery report to you : And what is the cause I court it not So merye as I was wont to dooe ? Alas! I let you understand It is no newes for me to me to show The fairest flower of my garland."
If sung to this tune, the last line of each stanza would require repetition.
Nashe, in his Terrors of the Night, 1594, says, " After all they danced Lusty Gallant, and a drunken Danish levalto or two."
There is a song beginning, " Fain would I have a pretie thing to give unto my ladie" (to the tune of Lusty Gallant), in A Handefull of Pleasant Delites, and although that volume is not known to have been printed before 1584, it seems to have been entered at Stationers' Hall as early as 1565-6. Fain would I, &c, must have been written, and have attained popularity, either in or before the year 1566, because, in 1566-7, a moralization, called Fain would I have a godly thing to sheiv unto my lady, was entered, and in MSS. Ashmole" 48, fol. 120, is a ballad of Troilus and Qreseida, beginning—
" When Troilus dwelt in Troy town, A man of noble fame-a"— to the tune of Fain would I find some pretty thing, &c, so that, from the popularity of the ballad, the tune had become known by its name also.
I have not found any song ealled Lusty Gallant: perhaps it is referred to in Massinger's play, The Picture, where Ferdinand says:
• Mr. W. H. Black, in his Catalogue of tlie Ashmolean tains Chevy Chacc). Mr. Halliwell has printed the ballad MSS., describes this volume as " written in the middle of of Troilus and Creseida, in the volume containing The the sixteenth century "—(it is the manuscript which con- Marriage of Wit and Wisdom, for the Shakespeare Society. |
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