Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1

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

Home Main Menu Singing & Playing Order & Order Info Support Search Easter Hymns



Share page  Visit Us On FB

Previous Contents Next
160
ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC.
The ballad of The blind Beggar -will be found in Percy's Heliques, book ii., series 2; in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 10; and in Dixon's Songs of the Peasantry of England. It is still kept in print in Seven Dials, and sung about the country, but to the following tune.
COCK LOEREL, on COOK LAWEEL. This tune is in the Choice Collection of 180 Loyal Songs, &c. (3rd edit. 1685), and in Pills to purge Melancholy, as well as in every edition of Tlie Dancing Master, from 1650 to 1725. In The Dancing Master it is called An old man is a bed full of bones, from a song, of which four lines are quoted in Rowley's A Match at Midnight, act i., sc. 1., and one in Shirley's The Constant Maid, act ii., sc. 2., where the usurer's niece sings it.
The song of Cook Lorrel is in Ben Jonson's masque, The Q-ipsies metamor­phosed. Copies are also in the Pepys Collection of Ballads ; in Dr. Percy's folio MS., p. 182;a and, with music, in Pills to purge Melancholy. It is a satire upon rogues and knaves of all classes supposed to be doomed to perdition. Cook Lorrel, a notorious rogue, invites his Satanic Majesty into the Peak in Derby­shire to dinner; and he, somewhat inconvenienced by the roughness of the road, commences by feasting on the most delicate sinner :
" His stomach was queasie (for, riding there coach'd, The jogging had caused some crudities rise); To help it he called for a Puritan poach'd,
That used to turn up the eggs of his eyes, &c."
* See Br. Dibdin's Decameron, vol. 3.