The Ballad Opera form, popular in C18-19, of course set songs to well-known airs of various sorts, many folk. Best known example is, of course, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, 1728, whose script specifies the tune to be used; not always by the best known title, but usually to be extrapolated. The song A Miser Thus A Shilling Sees goes to the air we should best recognise as The Broom Of Cowdenowes. I recall a Shirley & Dolly Collins record way back, in which Barry Dransfield joined them on one of the tracks to sing a selection of these. Greensleeves & Lillibulero also, unsurprisingly, feature; and, probably best known, Over The Hills And Far Away.

Such recourses can be used in other contexts. I was once musical director, and playing Amiens, the singing member of the Court in Exile in the Forest, in an open-air "hippy" production of As You Like It, in Selwyn College gardens in Cambridge, back in the 1970s. I set It Was A Lover And His Lass to tune of The Little Beggarman; Under The Greenwood Tree to The Gentleman Soldier; Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind to Here's Adieu Sweet Lovely Nancy; What Shall He Have That Killed The Deer? to Hal-an-Tow; The Wedding Hymn to Kelvingrove. Production got good review in the Cambridge Evening News.

~M~