Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 2

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	REIGN OF CHARLES II. 525



	MY LODGING IT IS ON THE COLD GROUND. This is a song in the play of The Rivals (an alteration of Fletcher's Two Nolle Kinsmen), the performance of which Pepys witnessed twice, "at the Duke's house," in the year 1664; but which acquired its principal celebrity in or about 1667, when Moll Davis and Betterton performed the principal characters. Downes, who was prompter at the theatre, from 1662 to 1706, thus speaks of it: " The Rivals, a play, wrote by Sir William Davenant: having a very fine interlude in it, of vocal and instrumental music, mixt with very diverting dances. . . . All the women's parts admirably acted; chiefly Cel[an]ia, a shepherdess, being mad for love; especially in singing several wild and mad son^s, My lodging it is on the cold ground, &c. She performed that so charmingly, that, not long after, it raised her from her bed on the cold ground to a Bed Royal." Roscius Anglicanus, edit. 1781, p. 32. Downes does not here mention the representative of Celania, but the name of Mrs. Davis is found in the printed