Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1

Share page


	REiaNS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.	319
	THE FAIREST NYMPH THE VALLEYS. This, like In sad and ashy weeds (p. 202), or like Fear no more the heat of the sun, in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, is a sort of dirge, a mourning or funeral song. The copy in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 330, is entitled " The Obsequy of Faire Phillida: with the Shepherds' and Nymphs' Lamentation for her losse. To a new court tune." The music is contained in a MS. volume of virginal music transcribed by Sir John Hawkins, and in Starter's Friesche Lust-Hof, 1634, under its English name. In the library of the British Museum there is a copy of " Psalmes or Songs of Sion, turned into the language and set to the tunes of a Strange Land, by "VV[illiam] Spatyer], intended for Christmas Carols, and fitted to divers of the most noted and common, but solemne tunes, every where in this land familiarly used and knowne." 1642. Upon this copy a former possessor had written the names of the tunes to which they were designed to be sung. These are, The fairest Nymph the valleys ; All in a garden green; Bara Faustus' Dreame; Crimson velvet; What if a day, or a month, or a year? Fair Angel of England; Dulcina; Wokingham; and Jane Shore.*