The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9304   Message #2159054
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
28-Sep-07 - 01:58 AM
Thread Name: Discuss: Over the Hills and Far Away
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Over the Hills and Far Away
No, IanC is right about Pills. In fact two songs set to the tune appeared both in the 1706 edition and the edition of 1719-20. The tune itself was in a number of publications of the period, including Playford (II, 2nd edn., 1714), Walsh (1719, II, 74) and so on.

Both Pills texts are in the DT (see links above): also the 'origins' thread which contains more detail than this old thread recently revived.

'The Beggar's Opera' used the tune for the song 'Were I laid on Greenland's Coast'; the 'Recruiting Officer' song doesn't appear.

See Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music, 561-3, and Bronson, Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I, 14-16, for more on the history of the tune.