Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 1

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

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	350	ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC.
	There are numberless songs and ballads to the tune, under one or other of its names. Political songs will be found in the collections written against the Rump Parliament; in those of the time of James II.; and again in "A Collection of State Songs, &c, that -have^been published since the Rebellion, and sung in the several mug-houses in the cities of London and Westminster" (1716). One of Shenstone.'s ballads, The Gossiping, is to the tune of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, and is printed in his works, Oxford, 1737. Again, in Tlie Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, 1789, there are several; and the tune is in common use at the present day. Dr. Rimbault, in his Musical Illustrations to Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, prints- from a MS. of the latter part of the seventeenth century, which agrees with the copy in Watts' Musical Miscellany. Other copies will be found in Tlie Beggars' Opera, third edit., 1729; Tlie Village Opera, 1729; Penelope, 1728; The Fashionable Lady, 1730; The Lover Ms own Rival, 1736; The Boarding-School, or The Sham Captain, 1733; The Devil to pay, 1731; Tlie Oxford Act; Tlie Sturdy Beggars ; Love and Revenge; The Jew decoy'd; &c. I have printed two copies of the tune ; the first being the commonly received version, and the second taken from Watts' Musical Miscellany. These diifer materially, but intermediate versions will be found in The Beggars' Opera, and some other of the above-mentioned works. Both The King and the Abbot, and The King and the Bishop, are in the catalogue of ballads, printed by Thackeray, in the reign of Charles II. The copy of the former in the Bagford Collection is entitled " King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, to the tune of The King and Lord Abbot." The story, upon which these ballads are founded, can be traced back to the fifteenth century.