The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #87026 Message #3242612
Posted By: Mick Pearce (MCP)
21-Oct-11 - 02:05 PM
Thread Name: Barbara Allen earliest version?
Subject: RE: Barbara Allen earliest version?
Malcolm Douglas based his god-like authority (something I'm sure he would never have claimed) on Chappell's writing in Popular Music Of The Olden Times, as he clearly states in the post. He did bother to read things before he spoke:
Chappell, PMOT, v1, p307 footnote:
"Ritson, in his Historical Essay on Scotish Song, 1794, says, "An inundation of Scotch songs, so called, appears to have been poured upon the town by Tom D'Urfey and his Grub-street brethren, toward the end of the seven- teenth and in the beginning of the eighteenth century; of which it is hard to say whether wretchedness of poetry, ignorance of the Scotish dialect, or nastiness of ideas, is most evident, or most despicable. In the number of these miserable caricatures, the reader may be a little sur- prised to find the favorite songs of De'ill take the Wars"
Chappell, PMOT, v2, pp451-452, "I Live Not Where I Love"
"In the same Collection, i. 320, is " A Paire of Turtle Doves, Or a dainty new Scotch Dialogue between a yong man and his mistresse, both correspondent in affection," &c. " To a pretty pleasant tune called The absence of my Mistresse, or, I live not where I love" It is subscribed " Martin Parker," Printed at London for Thomas Lambert at the Horse-shoe in West Smithfield, and commences thus :"
Chappell, PMOT, v2, p459, "The Broom, The Bonny Broom"
"In The Dancing Master, from 1650 to 1698, and in Music's Delight on the Cithren, 1666, is a tune entitled Broom, the bonny, bonny broom. I believe this to be the tune of The new broome on hill, as well as of another ballad in the same metre, and issued by the same printer, entitled " The lovely Northern Lasse Who in the ditty here complaining shewes What harme she got milking her daddies ewes." To a pleasant Scotch tune, called The broom of Oowdon Knowes" London, printed for Fr. Coles, in the Old Bayly (Mr. HalliwelPs Collection). This is the English ballad of The broom of Cowdenowes, and the tune is here said to be Scotch. I believe it not to be Scotch, for the following reasons : Firstly, the tune is not in the Scottish scale, and is to be found as a three-part song in Addit. MSS., No. 11,608 British Museum (the same that contains Vive le Roy, before quoted, and written at the end of Charles the First's reign). Secondly, because English tunes or songs were frequently entitled " Scotch," if they related to Scottish subjects, or the words were written in imitation of the Scottish dialect ; (so with Lilliburlero, Purcell's tune is called "a new Irish tune" in Music's Handmaid, not because it is an imitation of Irish music, nor even a new tune, but because a new song on Irish affairs) ; and I rely the more upon this evidence from having found many other ballads to the tune of The broom, the bonny, bonny broom, but it is nowhere else entitled Scotch, even in ballads issued by the same printer. Thirdly, Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, quotes it as a common English country tune. Under the head of " Love Melancholy Symptoms of Love" (edit, of 1652), he says, " The very rusticks and hog-rubbers . . . have thi'ir Wakes, Whitson-ales, Shepheard's feasts, meetings on holidays, Country Dances, Roundelays, writing their names on trees, true lovers' knots, pretty gifts. . . . Instead of Odes, Epigrams and Elegies, &c., they have their Ballads, Country tui ies, the broom, the bonny, bonny broom ; Ditties and Songs, Bess a Bell she doth excel : they must write likewise, and indite all in rhime." Fourthly, because 1650 is too early a date for Scotch tunes to have been popular among the lower classes in England: I do not think one can be traced before the reign of Charles II. It is a common modern error to suppose that England was inundated with Scotch tunes at the union of the two crowns. The first effect was directly the reverse, and the popularity of Scotch tunes in England should rather be dated from the reign of James II. I shall hereafter have occasion to revert to this subject, and therefore will not further enlarge at present."
Chappell, PMOT, v2, p490, Pepys and Scotch and Italian Music
"He first speaks of Scotch music in the year 1666, and it would seem to have been then a novelty. In January he hears Mrs. Knipp, the actress, sing. " her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen" at Lord Brouncker's, and he was "in perfect pleasure to hear her sing" it. In the following July, he says, " To my Lord Lauderdale's house to speak with him, and find him and his lady, and some Scotch people, at supper. But at supper there played one of their servants upon the viallin some Scotch tunes only ; several, and the best of their country, as they seem to esteem them, by their praising and admiring them : but, Lord ! the strangest ayre that ever I heard in my life, and all of one cast." His third and last notice of Scottish music is in June, 1667. " Here in the streets I did hear the Scotch march beat by the drums before the soldiers, which is very odd." The first Scotch tunes that I have found printed in England are among the " Select new Tunes and Jiggs for the Treble Violin," which were added to The Dancing Master of 1665. These are " The Highlanders' March," " A Scotch Firke," and " A Scots Rant.'* They are not included among the country-dances in that publication ; neither do they appear in any other edition. The " Select new tunes" were afterwards transferred to Apolk's Banquet for the Treble Violin." In The Dancing Master of 1686 we find the first Scotch tune arranged as a country-dance." This is " Johnny, cock thy beaver," which had been rendered popular by Tom D'Urfey's song, " To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse," being written to it. On the other hand, the first collection of secular music printed in Scotland, Forbes' Cantns, consists entirely of English compositions, and songs to English ballad-tunes. The first edition was published in 1662, the second in 1666, and the third in 1682. " Severall of the choisest Italian songs and new English Ayres in three parts " were added to the Jast, and, with that exception, all are for one voice. Forbes was a printer at Aberdeen, and this was the only secular music published in Scotland during the seventeenth century."
Chappell, PMOT, v2, p538, "Barbara Allen"
"BARBARA ALLEN. Under this name, the English and Scotch have each a ballad, with their respective tunes. Both ballads are printed in Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, and a comparison will shew that there is no similarity in the music."
Chappell, PMOT, v2, P610 Anglo-Scottish Songs
"Although the popularity of Scottish music in England cannot be dated further back than the reign of Charles II. it may be proved, from various sources, that English music was in favour in Scotland from the fifteenth century, and that many English airs became so popular as at length to be thoroughly domiciled"
Chappell, PMOT, v2, P611
"Before the publication of Ramsay's Tea Talk Miscellany, the " Scotch tunes" that were popular in England were mostly spurious, and the words adapted to them seem to have been invariably so."
The last quote is the reason for asserting that songs described as Scotch did not necessarily originate in Scotland.
I've included the relevant bit about Pepys. Chappell doesn't comment on the origin here, but I think it interesting that only in listening to Mrs Knipp sing does Pepys seem to take pleasure in Scotch music.