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BRANSLE, TRENCHMORE, LUSTY GALLANT, ETC. 769
tenant par la main et se donnant un branle continuel et concerts', avec des pas conve-nables, selon la difference des air qu'on joue alors. Les Branles consistent en trois pas et un pied-joint qni se font en quatre mesures, ou conps d'archet, qu'on disoit autrefois battement de tambourin. Quand ils sont repet^s deux fois, ce sont des Branles doubles; au commencement on danse des Branles simples, et puis le Branle gui, par deux mesures ternaires, et il est ainsi appelle' parce qu'on a toujour un pied en l'air." Thoinot Arbeau gives " Les Branles du Poictu, qui se dansent par mesure ternaire, ea allant toujours a gauche," also " Branles d'Ecosse et de Bretagne: on appelle ceuxci le Triory." He also tells us that " Les danses aux chansons sont des esp&ces de Branles."
Here we have it clearly laid down that the Bransle de Poictu, or Bransle double, is in triple time, and so by Morley, in his Introduction, 1597 and 1611; therefore, the name of Bransle de Poictu is improperly given to " We be three poor Mariners," in the Skene Manuscript, unless it be in the sense of " une danse a. chanson."
p. 83. Trenchmore.—This is mentioned in Holinshed's Description of Ireland, c. 2 : " And trulie they suit a Divine as well as for an ass to twang Quipassa on a harpe or gitterne, or for an ape to friske Trenchmoore in a pair of buskins and a doublet." In Pilh to purge Melancholy, i. 51, 1699, the song, " Willy, prithee go to bed, for thou wilt have a drowsy head," is to a version of Trenchmore.
p. 87. Quoth John to Joan.—The version of the words printed with the tune is by D'Urfey. See his New Collection of Songs and Poems, 8vo., 168S, p. 48. The old ballad of " John wooinge of Jone" was entered at Stationers' Hall in January, 1591-2.
Puttenham, in his Art of English Poesie, quotes a song " in our interlude called The Wooer, where the country clown came and wooed a young maid of the city, and being agrieved to come so oft and not have his answer, said to the old nurse very impatiently :
Wooer. ' Iche pray you, good mother, tell our young dame, Whence I am come, and what is my name; I cannot come a-wooing every day. (Quoth the Nurse.) They be lubbers, not lovers, that so use to say.'"
The copy of " I cannot come every day to woo" in the Pepys Collection (iii. 134) consists of fourteen stanzas.
p. 91. Lusty Gallant.—There is a "proper dittie" to this tune in the Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1578, and many more ballads were sung to it than I have space to enumerate. Holinshed, in his Chronicles of England, i. 290, speaks of lusty gallant as a newly devised colour: "I might here name a sort of hues devised for the nonce, wherewith to please fantastical heads." Among these are " pease-porridge-tawney, popinjay-blue, lusty-gallant, the devil in the hedge, and such like."
p. 102. The Lute.—There are several other derivations proposed for the word, " lute." Gerbert says from la ut, and considers the name to have been given to signify its extended compass. M. F6tis, who looks only to the East, derives it from eoud, an instrument now in use among the Arabs. |
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