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THE COMMONWEALTH, 435 |
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again; and even the great orator of the party, in that celebrated harangue (which furnished the present laureat with the subject of one of his happiest and finest poems), was always thought to have alluded to it in his remarkable quotation from Virgil— 'Carmina turn melius cum venerit ipse canemus !' "
Martin Parker probably wrote his song to the tune of Marry me, marry me, quoih the bonny lass, for the air is to be found under that name in the Skene Manuscript (time of Charles I.); and the song was evidently one familiar at the time. The following lines are quoted in Brome's play, The Northern Lass, act iv., sc. 4 (4to., 1632) :—
" Constance. Marry me, marry me, quoth the bonny lass, And when will you begin ? Widow. As for thy wedding, lass, we'll do well enough, In spight o' the best of thy kin."
In the third volume of The Dancing Master, the tune is entitled The Restoration of King Charles.
The words of When the King enjoys his own again, are in the Roxburghe Collection of Ballads, iii. 256; in Mr. Payne Collier's Collection; in The Loyal Garland, containing Choice Songs and Sonnets of our late Revolution, London, 1671, and fifth edit., 1686 (Reprinted by the Percy Society); in A Collection of Loyal Songs, 1750; in Ritson's Ancient Songs ; &c.
Among the almost numberless songs and ballads that were sung to the tune, I will only cite the following:— .
1. " The World turn'd upside down," 1646. King's Pamphlets, No. 4, fol:
2. " A new ballad called A Review of the Rebellion, in three parts. To the tune of When the King enjoyes his rights againe," dated June 15, 1647. See King's Pamphlets, vol. v., fol., and Wright's Political Ballads, p. 13.
3. " The last news from France; being a true relation of the escape of the King of Scots from Worcester to London, and from London to France; who was conveyed away by a young gentleman in woman's apparel; the King of Scots attending on this supposed gentlewoman in manner of a serving-man. The tune is When the King injoyes, frc" Printed by W. Thackeray, T. Passenger, and W. Whitwood. Rox. Collection, iii. 54. It commences thus:—
" All you that do desire to know His Highness away,
What is become of the King of Scots, And from all dangers set him free, I unto you will truly show, In woman's attire,
After the flight of Northern rats. As reason did require,
'Twas I did convey And the King himself did wait on me."
4. "The Glory of these Nations; Or King and People's Happiness: Being * brief relation of King Charles's royall progresse from Dover to London, how the Lord Generall and the Lord Mayor, with all the nobility and gentry of' the land, brought him thorow the famous city of London to his Pallace at Westminster, the 29 of May last, being his Majesties birth-day, to the great comfort . of his loyall subjects. The tune is When the King enjoys his own again." This is one of six ballads of the time of Charles II., found in the lining of an old
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