Popular Music Of The Olden Time Vol 2

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

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	RETQN OF CHARLES II. TO WILLIAM III.                              583
	song of Harvest Home; sung to a new tune much in request:" and the second part, " An Answer to Harvest Home: a true character of such countrymen who glory in cheating the vicar, and prefer bag-pudding and dumpling before religion and learning." " Tell them of going to Church to pray, They'd rather hear Eobin the Piper play : . . . Their hungry appetite to suffice, Bag-pudding and dumpling they idolize. . . . Likewise, by the laws of this potent land, They in the pillory ought to stand." These were issued by printers who were contemporaries of Dryden and Purcell, for we find copies in the Roxburghe and other collections, printed by Brooksby, Deacon, Blare, and Back. (Rox. ii. 82, Halliwell No. 54, &c.) The first part has been reprinted in Festive Songs, by W. Sandys, F.S.A., and hi both editions of Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England.
	« We've cheated the parson, we'll cheat him again; For why should the Vicar have one in ten ? One in ten ; one in ten ; &c. For staying while dinner is cold and hot, And pudding and dumpling are burnt to th' pot? Burnt to pot; burnt to pot; &c. We'll drink off our liquor while we can stand, And hey for the honour of Old England! Old England; Old England; " &c. After a time, the first part of the above tune was discarded, and the second joined on to the nursery tune of Boys and Girls, come out to play. It is found in that form in the ballad-opera of Polly, 1729, under the name of We've cheated the Parson, and in the third volume of The Dancing Master, under that of " Girls and Boys, come out to play: the new way." The " old way" was to repeat the first strain with a little variation, or to take it a fifth higher.