Subject: Lyr Add: THE DOMINION OF THE SWORD (1686 version)
From: Malcolm Douglas
Martin updated the original song, of course; a version of that original can be seen in the e-text version of Charles MacKay's Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 (1863): The Dominion Of The Sword. I quote it below:
^^ THE DOMINION OF THE SWORD
(From The Loyal Garland, 1686. To the tune of Love lies a bleeding.)
Lay by your pleading,
Law lies a bleeding;
Burn all your studies down, and
Throw away your reading.
Small pow'r the word has,
And can afford us
Not half so much privilege as
The sword does.
It fosters your masters,
It plaisters disasters,
It makes the servants quickly greater
Than their masters.
It venters, it enters,
It seeks and it centers,
It makes a 'prentice free in spite
Of his indentures.
It talks of small things,
But it sets up all things;
This masters money, though money
Masters all things.
It is not season
To talk of reason,
Nor call it loyalty, when the sword
Will have it treason.
It conquers the crown, too,
The grave and the gown, too,
First it sets up a presbyter, and
Then it pulls him down too.
This subtle disaster
Turns bonnet to beaver;
Down goes a bishop, sirs, and up
Starts a weaver.
This makes a layman
To preach and to pray, man;
And makes a lord of him that
Was but a drayman.
Far from the gulpit
Of Saxby's pulpit,
This brought an Hebrew ironmonger
To the pulpit.
Such pitiful things be
More happy than kings be;
They get the upper hand of Thimblebee
And Slingsbee.
No gospel can guide it,
No law can decide it,
In Church or State, till the sword
Has sanctified it.
Down goes your law-tricks,
Far from the matricks,
Sprung up holy Hewson's power,
And pull'd down St Patrick's.
This sword it prevails, too,
So highly in Wales, too,
Shenkin ap Powel swears
"Cots-splutterer nails, too."
In Scotland this faster
Did make such disaster,
That they sent their money back
For which they sold their master.
It batter'd their Gunkirk,
And so it did their Spainkirk,
That he is fled, and swears the devil
Is in Dunkirk.
He that can tower,
Or he that is lower,
Would be judged a fool to put
Away his power.
Take books and rent 'em,
Who can invent 'em,
When that the sword replies,
NEGATUR ARGUMENTUM.
Your brave college-butlers
Must stoop to the sutlers;
There's ne'er a library
Like to the cutlers'.
The blood that was spilt, sir,
Hath gain'd all the gilt, sir;
Thus have you seen me run my
Sword up to the hilt, sir.
Claude M. Simpson (The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music, 1966), notes:
"The original ballad sung to the tune is Love Lies a Bleeding, beginning "Lay by your pleading/Love lies a bleeding", to the tune The Cyclops... This is an attack on the Puritans, written c.1653-1654, as a result of which the tune became "political" and was used with no other sort of ballad.
Law lies a Bleeding, 1659, beginning "Lay by your Pleading,/Law lies a bleeding", to the tune of Love lies a bleeding (Wood 401; reprinted in Roxburghe Ballads VIII, clxxi*; see also xxxvi8), is an imitation and continuation of the original ballad, introducing current topical detail.
A manuscript version of words and music, under the title The Dominion of the Sword, and dated August 2, 1658, is reported by Thorn-Drury (see Brooks, Rump Songs: an Index, notes 121, 21). The reprint in Merry Drollery, 1661, is titled The Power of the Sword. The ballad is also found in BM MS Harl. 3991, fol. 51v, in Rump, 1662, in A Loyal Garland, 1686, and in Loyal Songs, 1731. It is printed with the music in Pills To Purge Melancholy, 1719-1720, VI, 190."
Wit and mirth: or, Pills to purge melancholy being a collection of the best merry ballads and songs, old and new. Fitted to all humours, having each their proper tune for either voice, or instrument: most of the songs being new set... London, Printed by W. Pearson for J. Tonson, 1719-20 By Henry Playford
Wood, above, refers to the ballad collection of Anthony Wood (1632-1695), which is now at the Bodleian Library. The broadside referred to can be seen at Bodleian Library Broadsides:
Law lies a bleeding ("Lay by your pleading ...") To the tune of: Love lies a bleeding London, Printed Anno Domini. 1659. It differs in some particulars of wording from the later example given above.
Simpson gives the tune in two forms; its earliest appearance in print, in Jacob van Eyk's Der Fluyten Lust-Hof, Amsterdam, 1654, II, 41v, where it was called Ballet; and from a supplement to Playford's Dancing Master (c.1662), where it was called Dours Catastrophe; in the supplement to the edition of 1665, it had also acquired the title Lawyers leave your Pleading, and by the edition of 1686 it was called Love lies a bleeding.
Midis of both examples can be heard, until they get to the Mudcat Midi Pages, via the South Riding Folk Network site:
Ballet (midi)
Dours Catastrophe (midi)
In both cases I have omitted the repeats indicated, which are necessary for dancing but presumably were not used for the song.
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