Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1

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

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■REIGNS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.
273
The most popular song to this tune was—
" Come, follow, follow me, Ye fairy elves that be," &c. It is the first in a tract entitled " A Description of the King and Queene of Fayries, their habit, fare, abode, pompe, and state: being very delightful to the sense, and full of mirth. London: printed for Eichard Harper, and are to be sold at his shop at the Hospitall Gate, 1635;" and the song was to be " sung like to the Spanish Gripsie."
The first stanza is here printed to the tune. The song will be found entire in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, or Ritson's English Songs. Lightly, and in moderate time.
THE FRIAB IN THE WELL.
In Anthony Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington (written in 1597), where Little John expresses his doubts of the success of the play; saying—            " Methinks I see no jests of Robin Hood;
No merry Morrices of Friar Tuck; No pleasant skippings up and down the wood; No hunting songs," &c. The Friar answers, that "merry jests" have been shewn before, such as— " How the Friar fell into the well, For love of Jenny, that fair, bonny belle," &c. The title of this ballad is "The Fryer well fitted; or— A pretty jest that once befell; How a maid put a Fryer to cool in a well: to a merry tune."