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482 CATCHES AND OTHER PART-MUSIC. |
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watchmen, and others of the same class, singing catches, rounds, and roundelays, in the sixteenth century (pp. 108 to 110), but the custom may be traced to a more remote period.
In 1453, Sir John Norman, being the first Lord Mayor of London who " brake that auncient and olde continued custome of riding with greate pompe unto Westminster, to take his charge," choosing rather to be rowed thither by water, " the watermen made of him a roundell or song, to his great praise, the which began,— Rowe the bote, Norman,
Rowe to thy Lemman." For this we have the authority of a contemporary, Robert Fabyan, who was Sheriff of London in 1493-4. But the very " roundel " seems to have been in Playford's possession in 1658, when he printed an enlarged edition of Hilton's Catch that catch can, because " Row the boat, Norman," is one of the rounds in the index to that collection. It was omitted in the body of the work, and another substituted (if I may judge by the only two copies I have seen) ; but, in 1672, Playford printed "Row the boat, Whittmgton," in a collection of a.similar nature, entitled The Musical Companion. Sir Richard Whittington was Lord Mayor of London long before Sir John Norman, and I have little doubt of the name having been altered because Whittington was then the popular Lord Mayor of history, and the story of his cat universally known. There were many ballads about him, like " Sir Richard Whifetington's Advancement," &c.; and one of the tradesmen's tokens in the Beaufoy Collection, of the year 1657, is of " J. M. M., at Whittington's Cat" in Long Lane. Peter Short, a printseller, who died of the plague in 1665, having obtained an old engraved plate of Sir Richard, with his 'right hand resting on a skull, transformed the skull into a cat, to make the print accord with the popular tradition.
This round seems to have been intended to imitate the merry ringing of the church bells on Lord Mayor's day; it is of the simplest construction, and of but six bars. As a musical curiosity, it is subjoined,— In three parts.
Row the boat, Whittington, thou wor-thy ci - ti-zen, Lord Mayor of London. [Row the boat, Norman, row, row to thy le-man, thouLordMayor of London.]
Let the first voice begin, and sing it through several times, not stopping at the end but recommencing immediately. The second to do exactly the same, but to commence after the first has sung two bars; and the third in like manner after the second. If sung merrily with three equal voices (or more to each part), it will have an agreeable effect, like the following two bars constantly recurring, but with an interchange of voices:—
These popular rounds, catches, and canons, seem to have been first collected for |
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