Lyr/Tune Req: The Good Old Cause

Subject: The Good Old Cause
From:
Date: 29 Oct 98 - 01:11 PM

Has anyone got the words and music of the English revolutionary song, The Good Old Cause (Hey then up go we)? It was published in the UK Sing! magazine about 40 years ago.

Subject: RE: The Good Old Cause
From: Bruce O.
Date: 29 Oct 98 - 02:05 PM

There's more than one version of the song. One version is at Click An ABC of the tune is B190 on my website, www.erols.com/olsonw

Subject: Lyr Add: THE GOOD OLD CAUSE
From: GUEST,Karl Dallas
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 10:52 AM

I didn't realise no one had answered this query when I searched for the answer just the other day.

Then I found the words in an old copy of Sing! as I predicted in my original posting. Here they are:

Know this my brethren: Heaven is clear and all the clouds are gone.
The righteus man shall flourish now, good days are coming on.
So come my brethren and be glad and eke rejoice with me:
Lawn sleeves and rochets shall go down and hey then up go we!

If once the anti-Christian crew be crushed and overthrown,
We'll teach the nobles how to stoop, and keep the gentry down.
There's neither Cross nor Crucifix shall stand for men too see:
We'll make a pulpit of a cask and hey then up go we!

The name of lord shall be abhorred for every man's a brother,
No reason why in Church or State one man should rule another.
And wheb the change of government shall set our fingers free:
Lawn sleeves and rochets shall go down and hey then up go we!

Good fundamentalist, God-oriented, revolutionary Puritanism, set to a Morris dance tune! That tells you all the libels about the glumness of puritans were untrue. In fact, when the Roundheads conquered Cambridge (I think it was) the scholars at the university complained the Puritans kept them awake all night with the noise of fiddles playing!

Subject: RE: The Good Old Cause
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 11:52 AM

A rather longer broadside example of 1681 can be seen at  Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

A proper new Brummigham ballad to the tune of Hey then up go we

According to Claude M. Simpson (The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music, 1966, 146) the song was written by Francis Quarles c.1641, and the burden gave rise to a popular tune title of the 1680s (as in the broadside). Early printings appeared without tune direction, but by 1662 the song was being reprinted with Cuckolds all a-row specified.

Subject: RE: The Good Old Cause
From: masato sakurai
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 07:01 PM

From Cavalier Songs 1642-1684, Edited by Charles Mackay:

This song, says Mr Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, which describes with some humour the taste of the Puritans, might pass for a Puritan song, if it were not contained in the "Shepherds' Oracles," by Francis Quarles, 1646. He was cup-bearer to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I., and afterwards chronologer to the city of London. He died in 1644, and his Shepherds' Oracles were a posthumous publication. It was often reprinted during the Restoration, and reproduced and slightly altered by Thomas Durfey, in his "Pills to Purge Melancholy," where the burthen is, "Hey, boys, up go we."

Subject: RE: The Good Old Cause
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Nov 03 - 07:35 PM

Irony is a tricky thing to spot sometimes, especially at a distance...