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PENNY MERRIMENTS Street Songs of 17th Century England Lucie Skeaping • Douglas Wootton • Richard Wistreich The City Waites

Left to right: Douglas Wootton, Lucie Skeaping, Michael Brain (seated) and Roderick Skeaping

Photo: Coneyl Jay

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Vagabundendasein fristeten und Balladen voller musikalischer Notation, da die meisten Melodien Penny Merriments Ferkeleien und unflätiger Nichtigkeiten sangen“ 2. entweder bereits ‚Allgemeingut’ gut waren oder von Street Songs of 17th Century England In derartiger Gesellschaft bedurfte es aller den Balladensängern nach dem ersten Hören memoriert möglichen Tricks, um Kunden zu gewinnen. Eine werden konnten. Stattdessen enthalten sie ‘Ballads! My masters, ballads! the Restoration period, many were already widely Bildillustration konnte da manchmal Wunder bewirken, Gebrauchsanweisungen wie „nach der Melodie von Will you ha’ o’ the newest and truest matter in all known through oral tradition, finding their way onto und so erschienen auf den meisten Blättern primitive Wolsey’s Wilde“ oder, noch frustrierender für die London? the printed page as publishing became cheaper and Holzschnitte. Da die Nachfrage den Bedarf oft heutige Forschung, „nach einer neuen nördlichen I have of them for all choices, and over all literacy more widespread. Interestingly some were to überstieg, deckten sich die Drucker mit einem Vorrat an Melodie“. Die Zuordnung von Text und Melodie arguments too. drift back into the oral tradition again, only to be wurmstichigen alten Vorlagen ein und illustrierten erfordert denn auch einigen detektivischen Spürsinn. Here be your story-ballads, your love-ballads, ‘rediscovered’, albeit often in altered form, by the damit ihre Texte, egal ob Inhalt und Bild zueinander Playfords The Dancing Master (achtzehn Auflagen and your ballads of good-life’. 1 great song-collectors of the early twentieth century passten. Viele Balladen hatten Tagesereignisse zum zwischen 1651 und 1728) ist eine verlässliche Quelle; such as Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams. Inhalt, also musste wie bei heutigen Zeitungen für andere existieren in einer Handvoll Liedersammlungen, The songs on this recording were the pop music of The musical arrangements here reflect a variety of raschen Nachschub gesorgt werden. Es hieß, „kaum namentlich in Thomas Durfeys Wit and Mirth or Pills their day. Churned out by anonymous hacks, often settings where ballads were performed. A theatre hatte eine Katze aus dem Rinnstein hervorgelugt, war To Purge Melancholy (sechs Bde., erschienen zwischen working from dingy rooms at the back of London's might employ a small mixed band to play between the auch schon ein schnöder Chronist mit seiner 1698 und 1720). Die sog. Balladen-Opern des print shops, they were printed in their thousands on acts, often accompanying a singer or two in a comic Geschichte unterwegs und hatte seine Ballade beim achtzehnten Jahrhunderts sind eine weitere Schatztruhe, crude penny broadsheets and known as Broadside interlude complete with ‘scurrilous songs and obscene Drucker abgeliefert“ 3. Broadside-Balladen berichteten allen voran John Gays The Beggar’s Opera (1727-28) Ballads. Sung, whistled and hummed in all walks of gestures’; a ballad singer with, perhaps, a fiddle or nicht selten die ‚letzten Worte’ notorischer Verbrecher mit über sechzig Liedern nach bekannten Broadside- life they were as likely to be bought for domestic cittern might find an appreciative audience in a auf ihrem Weg zum Galgen, noch bevor sie gesprochen Balladenmelodien. In seinem Monumentalwerk The entertainment or heard on the London stage as pasted crowded street or the dark corner of a local tavern; the waren, und wenn ein Erdstoß oder ein Feuer die British Broadside Ballad and its Music (1966) ordnet up on the wall of a country tavern. newly fashionable Coffee Houses were notorious for Londoner an einem Tag in Erschrecken versetzte, so Claude M. Simpson über fünfhundert Balladen ihren Broadside ballads were very much an urban means providing lusty male part-singing; while across the beschrieb am nächsten Morgen mindestens eine Ballade ursprünglichen Melodien zu, von denen sich viele nur of expression, a mass form of communication before river in Southwark, London’s infamous red-light das Ereignis und ermahnte die Leser vor dem nächsten als Bearbeitungen für Cembalo, Laute oder Gamben- the days of newspapers and magazines that reported on district, the doxies would entice customers with ‘a ripe zur Reue. Consort erhalten haben. just about every aspect of life. Here we read of selection of filthy songs’. Auf den Straßen kannte der Erfindungsreichtum der Die hier eingespielten Broadside-Balladen wurden historical events like the Great Fire of London, the Most people, though, would have heard the latest singenden Hausierer keine Grenzen. Mit einem Koffer u.a. den folgenden Sammlungen entnommen: der Pepys Spanish Armada and the longed-for return of Charles broadside ballad from the mouth of an itinerant pedlar, voller Balladenblätter, Schnürsenkel, Knöpfe und Collection (Pepys Library, Magdalene College, II; of bygone heroes, tradesmen, notorious criminals, a rough singing professional who, unlike the old sonstigem Schnickschnack führte ihn sein Weg quer Cambridge), der Euing Collection (Universität the passing of the seasons and the fear of death. Like minstrels of the pre-Elizabethan era - a respected breed durchs Land zu Dorffesten, auf Marktplätze und in Glasgow), der Bagford Collection (British Library), der today’s tabloid press, ballads also offered of musicians whose lineage could be traced back to the Schänken, gelegentlich sogar in große Landhäuser, wo Roxburghe Collection (begonnen von Robert Harley, sensationalism - lively, lusty tales of sexual exploits, old Medieval bards - rarely had any musical skills. wohlhabende Familien nicht schnell genug den letzten Earl of Oxford, 1661-1724), die heute zu den Beständen jilted suitors, shrewish wives and fumbling husbands. Some of them would be trained up for just a few weeks ‚Schlager’ aus London kaufen konnten. Nachdem er der British Library gehört, und Durfeys Pills to Purge There is comedy too, with stories of Peeping Toms, by the printers and sent off around the country ‘with a seinen Platz gefunden hatte, begann er zu singen. Melancholy. not-so-innocent maids and country bumpkins (a dozen groatsworth of ballads’ on a sale-or-return Sobald er merkte, dass sich die Zuhörer für die Lucie Skeaping popular butt of jokes throughout the century), and a basis; others were simply ‘idle youths who, loathing Geschichte zu interessieren begannen, unterbrach er Deutsche Fassung: Bernd Delfs plethora of pastoral characters whose amorous honest labour and lawful trades, betook themselves to seinen Vortrag an einer spannenden Stelle und setzte die adventures no doubt satisfied the new city-dwellers’ vagrant life, singing and selling ballads full of ribaldry Geschichte erst dann fort, wenn jeder ihm ein Blatt ZITATQUELLEN nostalgia for their own rural heritage. and scurrilous vanity’ 2. abgekauft hatte. Andere Quellen berichten von Sängern, 1 aus The Exchange in all its Humour, zitiert von Hyder Broadside ballads were the direct descendants of With such a coarse company of performers all die gemeinsame Sache mit Diebesbanden machten. E. Rollins in‚ The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad’, the long folk ballads of the Middle Ages. Their heyday sorts of tricks were needed to entice customers. A good Während der Sänger sein Publikum mit vorher 1919. was the seventeenth century, between the reigns of picture was always an attraction and the majority of abgesprochenen Tricks ablenkte, machten sich 2 Henry Chettles ‚Kind Hearts Dream, c. 1593. Elizabeth I and William and Mary, and although those broadsheets contain crude woodcut illustrations. Taschendiebe an deren Geldbörsen zu schaffen. 3 Martin Mar-sixtus, 1592, zitiert von William Cappell recorded here are taken from broadsheets dating from Demand always exceeded supply so printers would Broadside-Balladen existieren nur vereinzelt in in‚ Popular Music of the Olden Time, 1859. 8.557672 2 11 8.557672 557672 bk Broadside EU 14/04/2005 01:04pm Page 10

Penny Merriments buy in a job lot of old worm-eaten cuts and use them like ‘To the tune of Wolsey’s Wilde’ or, even more Straßenlieder aus dem England des 17. Jahrhunderts again and again regardless of whether or not they bore frustrating for us today, ‘To a new Northern tune’. any relation to the accompanying text. Connecting tunes to texts, therefore, often requires quite „Balladen! Liebe Leute, Balladen! Regierungszeiten Elizabeths I, Williams und Marys, Many ballads described topical events much like a bit of detective work, particularly since publishers Wie wär’s mit den neuesten und wahrsten Sachen und obwohl die hier eingespielten Beispiele aus der Zeit newspapers so a quick turn-around was vital. It was said were in the habit of renaming an old tune after the title aus ganz London? der englischen Restauration [der Wiedereinsetzung der that ‘scarcely a cat could look out of a gutter but out of the latest or most popular ballad to which it had been Ich hab’ sie für jeden Geschmack und über alle Stuarts, 1660-88] datieren, waren viele bereits durch started a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper sung. Playford’s The Dancing Master (eighteen editions Themen. mündliche Überlieferung bekannt, bevor die Fähigkeit new ballad about it was indited’ 3. Broadsheets between 1651 and 1728) is a good source of tunes; Hier sind eure Geschichtsballaden, eure des Lesens und Schreibens nicht länger ein Privileg der frequently printed the ‘last words’ of some notorious others can be found in a handful of song collections, in Liebesballaden Oberschicht war und die Balladen den Weg zum criminal about to be hanged even before he’d uttered particular Thomas Durfey’s ‘Wit and Mirth or Pills To und eure Balladen des guten Lebens.“ 1 Druckerzeugnis fanden. Interessanterweise fielen einige them and, if an earthquake or fire frightened Londoners Purge Melancholy’ (six volumes published between wieder in die mündliche Tradition zurück, nur um in oft on one day, the next morning saw the publication of at 1698-1720). The ballad operas of the eighteenth century Die hier eingespielten Lieder waren die Popmusik ihrer veränderter Form von den großen Liedersammlern des least one ballad describing the disaster and urging are another valuable storehouse, most notably John Zeit. Produziert zu tausenden von anonymen frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wie Cecil Sharp oder people to repent before the next. Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera 1727/8 in which more than Schreiberlingen in schmutzigen Hinterstuben von Ralph Vaughan Williams ‚wiederentdeckt’ zu werden. Out on the road the resourcefulness of the pedlar- sixty songs are set to common broadside ballad tunes. In Druckereien, erschienen sie auf billigem Papier in Die hier vorgestellten Bearbeitungen spiegeln die cum-ballad-singer knew no bounds. With his pack addition, Claude M. Simpson in his monumental book breitem Folioformat, wodurch sie als Broadside- Besetzungsvielfalt wider, in der Broadside-Balladen stuffed full of broadsheets, ribbons, buttons and general The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (1966) Balladen bekannt wurden. Beliebt bei Jung und Alt, dargeboten wurden. Theater bedienten sich knick-knacks, he would travel the length and breadth of reconnects over five hundred ballads to their original wurden sie von allen Gesellschaftsschichten zur beispielsweise kleiner Instrumentalensembles, die the country doing business at fairs, market places, bear- tunes, many of which only survive within arrangements häuslichen Unterhaltung gekauft, erklangen auf zwischen den Akten spielten und vielfach einen oder baitings and taverns, and sometimes even in a large for harpsichord, lute or viol consort. Londoner Bühnen oder hingen an den Wänden von zwei Sänger in einem komischen Interludium voller country house where a well-to-do family would be The broadside ballads performed here have been Landgasthöfen. „zotiger Lieder und obszöner Gesten“ begleiteten; ein eager to purchase a copy of the latest hit song from the selected from sources including the Pepys Collection Broadside-Balladen waren hauptsächlich ein Balladensänger, der sich selbst auf der Fidel oder Zitter London stage. Having established his patch, he would (Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge), the urbanes Ausdrucksmittel. Sie dienten dem begleitete, konnte ein interessiertes Publikum auf einer begin his song. As the crowd became involved in the Euing Collection (University of Glasgow), the Bagford Stadtmenschen als Nachrichtenorgan und waren ein belebten Strasse oder in der dunklen Ecke einer story he might stop halfway through announcing that if Collection (British Library), the Roxburghe Collection Vehikel der Massenkommunikation, bevor Zeitungen Gastwirtschaft finden; die neumodischen Kaffeehäuser they wanted to hear the rest, they must purchase a copy. (begun by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, 1661-1724)) und Magazine diese Funktion übernahmen. Hier lesen waren bekannt für die schlüpfrigen Vorträge ihrer Other sources describe singers working in league with now in the British Library and Durfey’s Pills To Purge wir von historischen Ereignissen wie dem Großen Feuer männlichen Sänger, während am anderen Themse-Ufer gangs of thieves. Perched on top of a barrel the singer Melancholy . von London, der Spanischen Armada und der lang in Southwark, Londons berüchtigtem Rotlichtviertel, would have a good view of his audience and stop for a ersehnten Rückkehr von Charles II., von Helden die Prostituierten ihre Freier mit „einer reifen Auswahl moment to warn them to watch out for pickpockets. Lucie Skeaping vergangener Tage, Kaufleuten und Verbrechern, vom an unanständigen Liedern“ in Stimmung brachten. Die Instinctively everyone would pat the side of their belts Wechsel der Jahreszeiten oder der Furcht der Menschen meisten Leute hörten die aktuellsten Broadside- that held their leather money pouches; the eagle-eyed NOTES vor dem Sterben. Wie die heutige Regenbogenpresse, Balladen jedoch zuerst von singenden Hausierern, einer cutpurses would take note and, as the singing resumed, 1 From The Exchange in all its Humour, quoted by so lebten auch die Broadsides von der Sensationsgier rauhen Spezies von ‚Berufssängern’, die im Gegensatz speedily relieve them of their cash. Hyder E. Rollins in ‘The Black-Letter Broadside der Menschen, dem unstillbaren Verlangen nach zu den altehrwürdigen Barden der vorelisabethanischen Broadsheets rarely contain any musical notation Ballad’ 1919 Berichten über Kapitalverbrechen, Diebstäle, Zeit nur selten eine Gesangsausbildung genossen since most of the tunes were already familiar favourites 2 Henry Chettle’s ‘Kind Hearts Dream, c1593 Sittlichkeitsdelikte usw. Natürlich durfte auch der hatten. Einige von ihnen wurden in einer Art or at least catchy enough to be learned from the ballad 3 Martin Mar-sixtus 1592, quoted by William Chappell komische Aspekt mit Geschichten über Bauerntölpel ‚Schnellkursus’ auf ihre Arbeit vorbereitet und dann singer on first hearing. Instead they offer instructions in ‘Popular Music of the Olden Time’ 1859 und Landpomeranzen nicht fehlen. von Druckern auf eigenes Risiko „mit Balladen im Wert Broadside-Balladen waren aus der direkten von einem Dutzend Hafergrützsäcken“ auf das Volk Traditionslinie der mittelalterlichen Volksballaden losgelassen; bei anderen handelte es sich schlicht um hervorgegangen. Ihre Blütezeit erlebten sie im „faule junge Leute, die ehrliche Arbeit und siebzehnten Jahrhundert zwischen den rechtmäßigen Handel verabscheuten, ein 8.557672 10 3 8.557672 557672 bk Broadside EU 14/04/2005 01:04pm Page 4

1 The Courtiers Health, or The Merry Boys of the Times (RW) Roderick Skeaping He that loves sack doth nothing lack, if he that loyal be, He that denys Bacchus supplies shows mere hypocracy Roderick Skeaping comes from a family who were involved at the very beginning of the early music revival. He Tune: Come Boys Fill Us a Bumper began his career with bands including the Academy of Ancient Music, David Munrow’s Early Music Consort and A Royalist ballad from the early 1670s. The broadsheet is illustrated by two woodcuts - one showing three the Consort of Musicke. He was appointed Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Royal College of Music where he drinkers round a table and a rather harrassed-looking serving wench, the other showing what looks like a Lady also taught the viola da gamba. He creates all The City Waites’ musical arrangements. Original compositions Bacchus emptying wine into a large jug. A caption reads: Here she stands and fills it out amain, Says they: Let’s include commissions for choirs and instrumental ensembles and scores for theatre and feature films. have the other bout again’. *‘Rumper’ was the so-called ‘Rump Parliament’, the remnant of the Long Parliament after the expulsion, by Cromwell in 1648, of those who opposed his purposes. Robin Jeffrey 2 The Country Lass (LS) Tune: Cold and Raw/Stingo Robin Jeffrey is a multi-instrumentalist specialising in the lute family. He has performed and recorded with The main part of the text (by ballad-writer Martin Parker) comes from the Pepys broadsheet but in his ensembles including The Sixteen, The Scholars, the King’s Consort and Concerto Vocale, with companies such as anthology ‘Wit and Mirth or Pills to Purge Melancholy’, Thomas Durfey added a pretty ‘moral’ as a last verse English National Opera, Royal National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe and is a member of The new Scorpion which is included here. The tune Cold and Raw was evidentally a favourite of Queen Mary, the Consort of William band performing traditional music of the British Isles. He is also a member of The Burning Bush playing Middle III. An anecdote relates that on one occasion, while in the company of Henry Purcell, she asked to hear a Eastern instruments including the oud and laouto. performance of the ballad Cold and Raw. Purcell noted this and subsequently incorporated the tune into the bass line of an air in her next birthday ode, May her blest example 1692. Michael Brain 3 The Crost Couple, or A Good Misfortune (DW) Which in a pleasant ditty discovers Michael Brain was a chorister at Westminster Abbey. He studied oboe with Janet Craxton and Lady Barbirolli and The fortunate cross of a couple of lovers was professor of baroque bassoon at the Birmingham Conservatoire. He also performs with Ex Cathedra, Charivari Tune: The Crost Couple Agreabile, the Kings Consort, The Sixteen, Musica donum dei, the Gabrielli Players and the City of London Chamber Players. He is also a freelance plumber. 4 The Countryman’s Joy (RW) at the Coronation of King William and Queen Mary, April the 11th 1689 Tune: I’ll tell thee Dick Nicholas Perry One of several broadside ballads inspired by a comical song written in 1640 by Sir John Suckling for the wedding of his friend the Earl of Orrey which was conceived as a West-country rustic’s humerous account of the Nicholas Perry trained as a horn player at the Guildhall School of Music, going on to study instrument-making as a nuptials, beginning: ‘I’ll tell thee Dick where I have been’. Craft Council apprentice. He has performed and recorded for most of London’s leading early music ensembles including the Gabrieli Consort, the English Baroque Soloists, the Taverner Consort and His Majesty’s Sagbutts and 5 Seldom Cleanly (LS) Cornetts. A regular player at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Shakespeare Company, he continues to work as an or A merry new ditty wherein you may see early brass instrument maker and is currently the United Kingdom’s only professional serpent leatherer. The trick of a huswife in every degree Then lend your attention while I do unfold As pleasant a story as you have heard told. Tune: Upon a Summer’s Day A ballad full of humour and irony, although its editor J. Ebsworth (The Roxburghe Ballads 1871-99) evidently did not see the joke commenting: ‘Price [Lawrence Price, possibly the ballad’s author] must have been greatly at a loss for a subject to have taken so disagreeable a theme for his satire as the most uncleanly slattern of womankind’. The tune takes its name from another ballad beginning ‘Upon a summers day’ and appears in Playford’s The Dancing Master and also in arrangements for keyboard and cittern.

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The City Waites 6 A Merry Jest of John Thomson and Jakaman his wife whose jealousy was justly the cause of their strife (DW) The City Waites have specialised in the research and performance of broadside ballads since the early 1970s. Tune: Peg-a-Ramsey Concert tours have taken them to much of Europe, the Middle and Far East, North and South America and almost An early ballad to a tune entitled variously ‘Peg a Ramsey’, ‘Peggy Ramsey’ or ‘Pigges of Rumsey’ after every corner of the United Kingdom. They feature on numerous movie and television soundtracks, and have another ballad no longer extant. Up until about the time of the Commonwealth the wearing of yellow stockings or collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe. ‘hose’ was a symbol of love, or at least availability, and in the refrain the singer mourns the passing of his bachelor www.citywaites.co.uk days by wishing he could still wear them. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night the love-struck Malvolio declares: ‘I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings’. Shakespeare makes a further allusion to the symbolism of yellow stockings by having Sir Toby call Malvolio a ‘Peg-a-Ramsey’ - a reference to the ballad which would no doubt have been Singers: Instrumentalists: picked up by the audience. Lucie Skeaping (LS), soprano Robin Jeffrey: cittern, lute, theorbo, baroque guitar Douglas Wootton (DW), tenor Michael Brain: bass curtal, recorder 7 The Seven Merry Wives of London, or The Gossips Complaint (LS) Richard Wistreich (RW), bass-baritone Roderick Skeaping: fiddle, bass viol, bum fiddle against their husbands for their neglect as they met together over half a dozen bottles of Canary Nicholas Perry: bagpipes Tune: Fond Boy A group of women complain about their husbands over a drink with a very modern kind of frankness - only the Vulcan’s wife, in the final verse, seems satisfied with her lot. The broadsheet calls for the much used ‘Fond Boy’, a Lucie Skeaping tune which takes its name from an earlier ballad beginning ‘Fond Boy, what dost thou mean’.

Lucie Skeaping has been researching and performing broadside ballads and popular songs from the seventeenth and 8 Old England Grown New (RW) eighteenth centuries for much of her career. Her book Broadside Ballads (Faber Music) is published in 2005 and Tune: The Blacksmith/Greensleeves her project book Let’s Make Tudor Music (Stainer and Bell) is widely used in schools. She also performs traditional It is often said that ‘life was so much better in the olden days’ so it is interesting to see from this ballad that Jewish music with her ensemble The Burning Bush. A frequent broadcaster, she presents The Early Music Show for people in earlier times felt the same. The tune is a version of Greensleeves, also sometimes known as ‘The BBC Radio 3. She can be heard on several documentary and film soundtracks including Simon Schama’s The Blacksmith’ after another broadside ballad of the time. History of Britain for BBC television and Polanski’s film The Pianist. 9 Good advice to Batchelors, How to court and obtain a young lass (DW) Tune: Lilli burlero Douglas Wootton Put your feminist principles on hold for this lesson in seventeenth-century foreplay, one of many ballads that calls for the tune ‘Lillibulero’. Authorship of the tune is sometimes credited to Purcell since a keyboard Douglas Wootton founded The City Waites specifically to explore the English broadside ballad repertoire. arrangement entitled ‘A New Irish Tune’ appears in his ‘Musick’s Hand-maid’ 1689, but in fact it had already Performances, accompanying himself on lute and cittern, have taken him from major concert halls to folk clubs appeared in print three years earlier in Robert Carr’s ‘The Delightful Companion’. where his theatrical and comedic style, in emulation of his seventeenth century counterparts, makes him a truly individual Early Music performer. He is also the author of several top-selling children’s musicals. 0 Neptune’s Raging Fury or The Gallant Seaman’s Sufferings (DW, LS, RW plus voices from the band) Being a relation of the perils and dangers, and of the extraordinary hazards they undergo in their noble adventures. Together with their undaunted valour and rare constancy in all their extremeties and the manner of Richard Wistreich their rejoicing on shore at their return home. Tune: When the stormy winds do blow Richard Wistreich has been performing, recording, researching and teaching Western vocal music of the Middle Of all the ballads that call for this tune, the majority have some kind of connection with the sea. The broadsheet ages through to the 1800s for many years. He has appeared all over the world and made more than a hundred CDs features a woodcut showing two large galleons in full sail. as a soloist and with ensembles including the group he co-directs, Red Byrd. He is currently Head of Performance at the University of Newcastle, where he also teaches and publishes on the history of Renaissance music and ! The North Country Lovers (DW, LS) musicians. or The plain downright merry Wooing between John and Joan Johney addresses to his Joan most dear, And on her piggsneys casteth many a lear, 8.557672 8 5 8.557672 557672 bk Broadside EU 14/04/2005 01:04pm Page 6

Telling her how he wealth and love had got, ^ The Female Captain, or The Counterfit Bridegroom (LS) The which so far transports the subtle slut, Comical news from Bloomsbury, giving a full and true relation how one Madam Mary Plunket, alias Williams, That unto Venus sport she drew him in, a young woman of eighteen years of age, who put on man’s apparel, assumed the name of Captain Charles And in her mortice fastened straight his pin. Fairfax, set up for a young heir, courted a young gentlewoman of Bloomsbury and, by the consent of her friends Tune: Wolsey’s Wilde (in hopes of gain), was married to her by a Jacobite Parson, they being at the charge of the wedding clothes, Comic songs in which simple folk boast of their ‘rustic wealth’ date back to the Middle Ages. Described on the ring, dinner etc. Of her living with the young woman a whole month undiscovered, using a strange instrument broadsheet as ‘A pleasant new song as it was sung before the court at Windsor’, this ballad is one of many written for generation, with the strange manner of the discovery by an old woman of the pretended Captain’s as a dialogue between two country clowns or bumpkins. The broadsheet calls for the tune entitled ‘Quoth John to aquaintance; how being taken up for a cheat and committed to the new Prison at Clerkenwell where she now Joan’. However, William Chappel (Popular Music of the Olden Time 1859) connects the text with another tune remains. ‘Wolsey’s Wilde’ (also known as ‘Wilson’s Wile’) which is used here. Tune: ‘Ladies of London’ An extraordinary tale, and all the more so since, judging by the description at the top of the broadsheet , it @ The Lunatick Lover (RW) appears to be based on fact. The tune is connected to a song of the same name that appeared in Durfey’s ‘Compleat or The Young Man’s call to Grim King of the Ghosts for cure Collection’ in 1687. It must have been instantly popular since most of the thirty or so ballads that call for it were Tune: Grim King of the Ghosts printed within a year. One of the loveliest ballad tunes combines with a heartfelt text to produce a song to rival any of the more artful lute songs of the age. In 1682 a two-stanza song entitled ‘The Frantick Lover’ was printed in ‘A New Collection of & London Mourning in Ashes (RW) the Choicest Songs’. A few years later it appeared in extended form on a broadsheet. The tune entitled ‘Grim King or lamentable narrative lively expressing the ruin of that royal city by fire which began in Pudding Lane on of the Ghosts’ was a evidently popular as it was used in at least ten ballad operas including John Gay’s The September the second 1666 at one of the clock in the morning, being Sunday, and continuing until Thursday Beggar’s Opera. night following, being the sixth day, with the great care the King and the Duke of York took in their own persons, day and night, to quench it. # The Downfall of Dancing (LS) Tune: In sad and ashy weeds or The Overthrow of three fiddlers and three bagg-pipe players who lately broke their fiddles and bagpipes and One of several ballads about the Great Fire of London that give eyewitness accounts of the devastation, panic tore their cloaks so that they are utterly ruined. All this was done in a fearful fray when one of the fiddlers and looting. The fire broke out in the early hours of 2nd September 1666 in Pudding Lane, the house of the King’s catched his wife with his fellow bagpipe player at Uptails All. baker Thomas Farriner, and raged for four days and nights, destroying two-thirds of the city until houses in its path Tune: Robin Goodfellow were blown up with gunpowder to halt it. Foreigners on the streets were arrested on suspicion of arson but the A ballad to appeal to anyone who has ever been in a band. The broadsheet calls for the tune ‘Robin ballad-writer here suggests that the cause is more likely to be God’s Vengeance. The tune called for on the Goodfellow’ which is combined here with another tune, a dance from Playford’s collection conveniently entitled broadsheet, ‘In sad and ashy weeds’, survives as a mid-seventeenth-century virginal piece. ‘Uptails All’. * The Famous Ratcatcher (DW) $ The Saint Turn’d Sinner (DW) Tune: Tom a Bedlam or the Dissenting Parson’s Text Under the Quaker’s Petticoats With their bag of poisons, ratcatchers specialised in the treatment of venereal diseases as well as in the Tune: A Soldier and a Sailor extermination of rats. The earliest appearances of the tune are a lute manuscript and a virginal arrangement c.1613- The Quaker movement began in England in 1652 and followers were frequently ridiculed for their prohibition 16. It is called for in an number of ballads about itinerant beggars and tinkers and, also, as its name suggests, several of such things as alcohol, holidays, theatre, wigs and jewelry and for their pacifism. Here the female Quaker is ballads on the theme of ‘madness’. sarcastically refered to as a ‘saint’ and considered fair game. The tune is by John Eccles and takes its name from a song in Congreve’s comedy Love for Love 1695. Sung texts for this release are available as PDF files online at www.naxos.com/libretti/pennymerriments.htm. This % An Old Song on the Spanish Armada, or Sir Francis Drake (RW) measure is designed to help keep our releases at an affordable price and maintain Naxos’ position as leader in the Tune: Jog on or Eighty-eight budget-priced market. This ballad looks back at the Spanish Armada, of 1588. Some of the details may be blurred but the image of victory is clear enough. An early version of the tune ‘Jog On’ appears in an arrangement by Richard Farnaby in the Die gesungenen Texte dieser CD sind als PDF-Dateien online unter Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and may well be the same as that sung by the ballad pedlar Autolicus in Shakespeare’s www.naxos.com/libretti/pennymerriments.htm erhältlich. Das soll helfen, den günstigen Preis unserer Winter’s Tale which begins ‘Jog on, jog on, the footpath way’. Owing to its association with this particular text, the Veröffentlichungen und die führende Position von Naxos in diesem Preissegment zu halten. tune also became known as ‘Eighty-eight’. 8.557672 6 7 8.557672 557672 bk Broadside EU 14/04/2005 01:04pm Page 6

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PENNY MERRIMENTS Street Songs of 17th Century England Lucie Skeaping • Douglas Wootton • Richard Wistreich The City Waites

Left to right: Douglas Wootton, Lucie Skeaping, Michael Brain (seated) and Roderick Skeaping

Photo: Coneyl Jay

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CMYK N N AXOS The songs on this disc were the pop music of their day. Printed in their thousands, they AXOS were as likely to be performed on the London stage as in the corner of a country alehouse. Subjects of such magnitude as the Restoration of Charles II or the Great Fire of London vie for space with lively, lusty tales of sexual exploits, jilted suitors, shrewish wives, fumbling husbands and country bumpkins. All were sung to some of the most delightful DDD Street Songs of 17th Century England English tunes of the age, recreated here on a variety of period instruments. Street Songs of 17th Century England 8.557672 PENNY MERRIMENTS Street Songs of 17th Century England Playing Time 70:25 1 The Courtiers Health, or The Merry Boys of the Times 2:40 2 The Country Lass 4:07 3 The Crost Couple, or A Good Misfortune 7:12 4 The Countryman’s Joy 2:44 5 Seldom Cleanly 3:38 6 A Merry Jest of John Thomson and Jakaman His Wife 4:45 7 The Seven Merry Wives of London, or The Gossips Complaint 4:01 8 Old England Grown New 2:50 9 Good Advice to Batchelors, How to Court and Obtain a Young Lass 3:07 0 Neptune’s Raging Fury 3:13 ! The North Country Lovers 4:18 www.naxos.com www.naxos.com/libretti/pennymerriments.htm Sung texts may be found at Made in Canada Booklet notes in English • Kommentar auf Deutsch h @ The Lunatick Lover 4:08 & # The Downfall of Dancing 6:14 g 2005 Naxos Rights International Ltd. $ The Saint Turn’d Sinner 3:51 % And Old Song on the Spanish Armada 2:07 ^ The Female Captain, or The Counterfit Bridegroom 4:25 & London Mourning in Ashes 4:07 * The Famous Ratcatcher 2:57 The City Waites: Lucie Skeaping, Soprano • Douglas Wootton, Tenor • Richard Wistreich, Bass-baritone Robin Jeffrey, Cittern, Lute, Baroque Guitar • Michael Brain, Curtal, Recorder 8.557672 Roderick Skeaping, Fiddle, Bass Viol • Nicholas Perry, Bagpipes 8.557672 Recorded at St Paul’s Church, New Southgate, London, 5th-6th September 2004 Producers: Lucie Skeaping and Steve Portnoi • Engineer: Steve Portnoi • Booklet Notes: Lucie Skeaping Cover Image: The King’s Drink by David Teniers, the younger 1610-1690 [The Art Archive / Museo del Prado Madrid ]