The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #65337   Message #1075336
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
18-Dec-03 - 09:14 AM
Thread Name: Tune Req: Flora's farewell
Subject: RE: Tune Req: Flora's farewell
A little background information may be helpful before trying Bruce's site, though you will certainly find several tune possibilities there, and some information which may not be available elsewhere.

The various tune names specified for older broadsides should never be assumed necessarily to be alternate names for a single melody; often they refer to completely different tunes to which the ballad may be sung. In this particular case there is some ambiguity, and Claude M Simpson (The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music, 1966, 749-752) goes into considerable detail under the heading Wert Thou More Fairer Than Thou Art. That title derives from a song by Thomas Stanley (Poems, 1651) which however was swiftly set by four different people, so it isn't possible to tell which is meant when the tune is prescribed for other, later songs; including Loves's Tide (c.1675 with that tune direction; originally licensed in 1649). Simpson prints four tunes, all of which can be found as abc at Bruce Olson's site.

In Summer Time was actually a different tune, which Simpson identifies tentatively with Callino Casturame; Bruce did further work on it and information can be found both at his site and in old threads here. He also mentions that Famous Flower was "printed by John Andrews before 1663, and entered [registered] by him on July 14, 1656".

It appears that there is no known music for Flora's Farewell.