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REIGN OF CHARLES II. 545 |
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and he gives a song to the hornpipe tune, which was to be accompanied on the bagpipe.
Under an engraving of Hale, the Derbyshire piper, by Sutton NichoIIs, are the music of his hornpipe and the following lines:— .
" Before three monarchs I my skill did prove Of many lords and knights had I the love ; There's no musician e'er did know the peer Of Hale the Piper in fair Darby-shire. The consequence in part you here may know, Pray look upon his Hornpipe here below."
Quoted from Daniel's Merry England. In " Old Meg of Herefordshire for a Mayd Marian, and Hereford town for a Morris Dance," 1609, the especial credit for hornpipes is given to Lancashire. " The Court of Kings for stately Measures; the city for light heels and nimble footing; the country for shuffling dances " [jigs ?] ; " Western men for gambols; Middlesex men for tricks above ground; Essex men for the Hay; Lancashire for Hornpipes; Worcestershire for bagpipes; but Herefordshire for a Morris-dance, puts down not only all Kent, but very near (if one had line enough to measure it) three quarters of Christendom." Michael Drayton, in his Polyolbion, also says—
" The neat Lancastrian nymphs, for beauty that excell, That, for the Hornpipe round, do bear away the bell;" and again—"Ye lustie lasses, then, in Lancashire that dwell, For beautie that are sayd to beare away the bell, Your countries Hornpipe yee so minsingly that tread," &c. Hornpipes were not then danced only by one or two persons, as now; Drayton, above, speaks of the " hornpipe round." So George Peele, in his Arraignment of Paris, 1584—
" The round in a circle our sportance must be, Hold hands in a hornpipe, all gallant in glee;" and again Drayton—
" So blyth and bonny now the lads and lasses are, And ever as anon the bagpipe up doth blow, Cast in a gallant Round, about the hearth they goe, And at each pause they kisse : was never seene such rule, In any place but heere, at Boon-fire, or at Yeule ; And every village smokes at Wakes with lusty cheere, Then, Hey, they cry, for Lun, and Hey for Lancashire." Spenser, also, in his Pastorals, mentions the hornpipe as a dance for many persons— " Before them yode a lustie tabrere,
That to the many a home pype playd, Whereto they dauncen, eche one with his mayd ; To see these folks make so jovisaunce, Made my heart after the pype to daunce." I suppose the manner of dancing the hornpipe in Lancashire differed, in some way, from that of other counties; because in one of the bills of public enter- |
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