The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #10491   Message #72986
Posted By: Bruce O.
23-Apr-99 - 04:13 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: songs from 'The Tale of Ale'
Subject: Lyr Add: O Good Ale! thou art my darling
"Good Ale for my money" is by Laurence Price, and is in the Price file on my website (with tune)
"London's Ordinary" is a broadside expansion of a song in Haywood's 'The Rape of Lucrece'
"Allan a Mault", 16th century song, is in the Scarce Songs 1 file on my websites, as are "Four Drunken Maidens" and "Watkins Ale", and some others bacchanalian.
"John Appleby" (a text of 1828), preceeded by Martin Parker's ballad on which it was based are in the Scarce Songs 2 file on my website.
The texts from Ravenscrofts books (and Lant manuscript) are on the SCA Minstrel website, and the older ones are mostly in R. H. Robbins 'Secular Lyrics' or Chambers and Sidgwick's 'Early English Lyrics'.
The 17th century broadside versions of the John Barleycorn ballads and Mas. Mault was a Gentleman are listed in the broadside ballad index on my website, as are "Joan's Ale is new", "Nick and Froth", "Jack Hadland's Lamentation", "The leather Bottle" (in DT), "Wade's Reformation", "I owe my hostess money", etc.

If you let in songs about gin, you open to door for those on Sack, ("Muld-sack", broadside) Port, Sherry, Canary, Muscadine, and Whisky.

There are many drinking songs in Pills to Purge Melancholy, of which you have a few in your list. Some books of drinking songs are:
An Antidote Against Melancholy, 1749
Bucks Bottle Companion, The, London, 1775.
Bacchus and Venus; Or, The Harmony of Love and Wine, London, n.d. [c 1770]
Paddy Whack's Bottle Companion, 1791.

Also, search DT for 'beer' and 'ale'.

[From 'The Banquet of Thalia', a songbook without music, p. 84, York, [1792]

O GOOD ALE THOU ART MY DARLING

The Landlord he looks very big
With his high-cock'd hat and powdered wig;
Methinks he looks both fair and fat,
But he may thank YOU and I for that
Chorus
For, O good Ale! thou art my darling,
Thou art my comfort night and morning.

The brewer brew'd thee in his pan,
And the tapster draws thee in his can;
So I with them will play my part,
And lodge with thee next unto my heart

And if my wife should thee dispise,
By Jove I'll beat out both her eyes!
But if she loves ME as I love THEE,
A happy couple we should be.

Thou oft hath made my friends my foes,
And often made me pawn my clothes;
And since thou art so near my nose,
Come up, my friend -- and down it goes
Chorus
For, O good Ale! thou art my darling,
Thou art my comfort night and morning.

[The Copper family sings this so you can swipe the tune.]