| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
|
||
|
150 ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC. |
||
|
|
||
|
Bishop Earle, in his Micosmographj, 1628, in giving the character of a Pot-poet, says, " He is a man now much employed in commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard. His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market to a vile tune, and a worse throat; whilst the poor country wench melts, like her butter, to hear them. And these are the stories of some men of Tyburn, or A strange monster out of Germany." One of these ballads of " strange monsters out of Germany " will be found in the Bagford and in the Pepys Collection (ii. 66), " to the tune of All you that love good fellows." It is entitled "Pride's fall: or a warning for all English women by the example of a strange monster born late in Germany, by a merchant's proud wife of Geneva." The ballad, evidently a production of the reign of James I.,* is perhaps the one alluded to by Bishop Earle.
There are other ballads about London apprentices; one of "The honors achieved in Fraunce and Spayne by four prentises of London," was entered to John Danter, in 1592. " Well, my dear countrymen, What-d'ye-lacJcs" (as apprentices were frequently called, from their usual mode of inviting custom), "I'll have you chronicled, and all to be praised, and sung in sonnets, and bawled in new brave ballads, that all tongues shall troul you in scecula seculorum."—Beaumont and Fletcher's JPhihster.
One of the ballads to the tunc of " the worthy London prentice" relates to a very old superstition, and will recall to us the "Out, damned spot!" in Macbeth. It is entitled the " True relation of Susan Higges, dwelling in Ris-borow, a towne in Buckinghamshire, and how she lived twenty years by robbing on the high wayes, yet unsuspected of all that knew her; till at last coming to Messeldon, and there robbing and murdering a woman, which woman knew her, and standing by her while she gave three groanes, she spat three drops of blood in her face, which never could be washt out, by which she was knowne, and executed for the aforesaid murder, at the assises in Lent at Brickhill." A copy is in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 424; also in Evans' Old Ballads, i. 203 (1810).
I have not found any song or ballad commencing " All you that love good fellows," although so frequently quoted as a tune; but there are several "All you that are" and "All you that be good fellows," which, from similarity of metre, I assume to be intended for the same air.
In a chap-book called " The arraigning and indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, knight; newly composed by a well-wisher to Sir John, and all that love him," are two songs, "All you that are good fellows,", and "All you that be good fellows," " to the tune of Sir John Barleycorn, ovJack of all trades" Lowndes speaks of this tract as printed for T. Passenger in 1675, and of the author as Thomas Robins; but there are Aldermary and Bow Church-yard editions of later date.
Another "All you that are good fellows" is here printed to the shorter copy of the tune. It is from a little black-letter volume (in Wood's library, Ashmolean Museum) entitled " Good and true, fresh and new Christmas Carols," &c, printed by E. P. for Francis Coles, dwelling in the Old Bailey, 1642. It is one
* See Fairholt's Satirical Songs and Poems on Costume, p. 107; printed for the Percy Society. |
||
|
|
||