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FAIREST JENNY, DANCING THE HAY, ETC. |
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the merchant service till 1762, when he first came into notice by the publication of The Shipwreck. He was lost at sea in 1769. Stevens merely re-introduced his own song in his Marine Medley of 1772.
p. 617. Fairest Jenny.—In The Devil to pay, this tune is entitled Take a kiss or twa, from the second part of the first stanza.
p. 629. Dancing the Hay.—In Chaucer's third book of Fame, among the Court entertainments were pipers to assist those who chose to dance either " love-dances, springs, or rayes" and in Barclay's Eclogues, 1508, a shepherd says, "I can dance the raye; I can both pipe and sing." Quere, is raye an earlier name for hay?
p. 649. O Mother, a hoop.—Hoops seem to have come into fashion about 1711. There is an entry at Stationers' Hall, July 18,1711, as follows:—" The Farthingale reviv'd, or More work for the Cooper. A Panegyrick upon the late, but most admirable invention of the hoop-pettycoat. Written at the Bath in the year 1711."
p. 652. Vicar of Bray.—Simon Aleyn has long had the credit of being the proverbial Vicar of Bray, but it appears from various authorities quoted in Atheence Cantab, (i. 107), that Simon Symonds was instituted to the vicarage on the 1-lth March, 1522-3, and died about 1551; therefore, the story cannot apply to any vicar of that time.
p.- 700,1. 32. Words of Anthems.—I was mistaken in saying that the words of anthems " are never in rhyme;" there are many old exceptions to the rule, and sometimes, although printed as prose, they are really in rhyme.'
p. 715. Lovely Nancy.—I observe that in Book 2 of Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, this tune is printed as " Lovely Nancy, by Mr. Oswald." I have no doubt that he meant to claim the variations only, for he had previously printed the air, with some difference in the arrangement, in his Curious Scots' Tunes for a violin andfute,1 and then without making any such claim. Oswald has been taken to task by Mr. Gr. F. Graham, in the notes on Wood's Songs of Scotland, for having similarly placed his name before Scotch tunes of which it, is impossible that he can have been the author.
I have seen many half-sheet copies of the song of Lovely Nancy, but never with an author's name, and I doubt whether any one could properly claim it, for it seems to be only an alteration of Ye virgins so pretty (ante p. 682).
Lovely Nancy was turned into a Country Dance in vol. iii. of Johnson's Collection, 1744, and the song is included in Walsh's Select Aires for the Guitar. There are five stanzas, of which the following are the first three :—
" How can you, lovely Nancy, thus cruelly alight A swain who is wretched when banish'd your sight ? Who for your sake alone thinks life worth his care, But which soon, if you frown on, must end in despair.
' This collection wai printed by John Simpson at the who examines the remainder of the selection. It was B< .is Viol and Flute in Sweeting's Alley. It is difficult not the fashion of that day to attempt accuracy in the to know why the tune should have been included iu a slightest degree. collection of Scotch tunes, but no one will be surprised
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