The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118177   Message #2553197
Posted By: Mick Pearce (MCP)
30-Jan-09 - 03:59 PM
Thread Name: Folklore: Bright Phoebe/Phoebus-?
Subject: RE: Folklore: Bright Phoebe-?
Phil - Simpson gives a rather convoluted introduction to Drive the Cold Winter Away, of which this is an extract:

"The ballad begins "All hayle to the dayes/That merite more praise", and the tune is give as "When Phoebus did rest" (Pepys, Roxburghe, reprinted in RB I, 84). Now a song beginning "When Phoebus addres'd [or had drest] his course to the West" in Wit and Drollery, 1656, and Merry Drollery, 1661, has the refrain "O do not, do not kill me yet, /For I am no prepared to dye". And in the Boertigheden section of J.J.Starter's Friesche Lust-Hof, 1621, sig C4v (Fig 125), is music entitled "O doe not, doe not kil me yet for I am not &c", which may be considered the tune of "When Phoebus did rest". A somewhat different tune, called "Drive the cold winter away", is in all editions of The Dancing Master, 1651-c.1728...."

He (Simpson) gives two tunes, 125 and 126, the first - 125 - being the one he identifies as When Phoebus.. 126 is the tune from The Dancing Master (also in Chappell for Drive...).

Hope this is some help.

Mick