Subject: Origins: Sweet Nightingale / Well Met, Pretty Maid
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 17 May 17 - 01:28 AM
I've grouped all the "Nightingale" songs together, which is a terrible thing to do. But people get them confused, and most of our "Nightingale" threads discuss more than one "Nightingale" song - so don't blame me. They're very different songs, however. This thread is almost completely about the song known usually as "Sweet Nightingale," so let's make this the Origins thread for that particular song. Here's what the Traditional Ballad Index has to say about the song: Well Met, Pretty Maid (The Sweet Nightingale) DESCRIPTION: Singer invites girl to hear the nightingale; he offers to carry her pail. She demurs; "I've hands of my own." They agree to marry; now she's not afraid to go out walking or to "hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale/As she sings in the valley below"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1776 (Journal from the _Ann_)
KEYWORDS: courting love sex marriage bird rejection seduction
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Bell-Combined, pp. 467-470, "The Sweet Nightingale" (1 text)
Williams-Thames, p. 45, "To Milk in the Valley Below" (1 text) (also Wiltshire-WSRO Wt 494)
Huntington-Whalemen, pp. 187-188, "A New Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hugill, p. 562, "Sweet Nightingale" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy 89, "An Eos Whek [The Sweet Nightingale]" (1 text + Cornish translation, 1 tune)
DT, NITINGAL
Roud #371
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Nightingale
NOTES: Kennedy's Cornish words are a revivalist translation from the English. The song has been collected from tradition several times, but positively shouts out a composed origin. Kennedy lumps it with "The Valley Below," but as the plots are notably different, I don't. They certainly share a common ancestor, though, possibly in Thomas Arne's opera "Thomas and Sally" (1761). - PJS
I doubt even that much, and the fact that Kennedy lumps them (on no basis at all that I can see) makes me doubt all his other references. The one thing I'll allow is his claim that the song has a very fine melody. I've used a title from JFSS because that's the way I learned the song.
It's very difficult to know what to do with songs of this type. Huntington thinks his text is a survival of the Corydon/Colin-and-Phyllis/Phoebe type. As Paul observes, it sounds more like a minstrel than a folk piece. But Theodore Bikel and Cynthia Gooding recorded something quite similar (under the "Well Met" title), and there are enough broadsides with similar form that I decided I needed to include the song.
The trick now is to decide which of these many pieces actually belong here, and which are orphan broadsides.... - RBW
Last updated in version 2.8
File: K089
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And here are the lyrics we have in the Digital Tradition. I can't tell where they come from.
THE NIGHTINGALE
D
My sweetheart come along, don't you hear the sweet song
D A7 D A7
Of the beautiful nightingale flow
D A7 D A7
You will hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale
D G D A7 D A7
As she sings in the valley below
D A7 D
As she sings in the valley below
Pray leave me alone, I have hands of my own
And along with you I'll not go
For to hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale
As she sings in the valley below....
Pretty Polly, don't fail, and I'll carry your pail
Straight home to your cottage we'll go
We will hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale
As she sings in the valley below....
Pray sit yourself down with me on the ground
On the banks where the primroses grow
You will hear the fond tale of the sweet nightingale
As she sings in the valley below....
Down in yonder grove there is an alcove
And violets around it do spring
Just by in a bush there sits a song thrush
'Twill charm you to hear how she sings....
Why hark, my love, hark, why yonder's a lark
She warbles and pleases me so
That the beautiful tale of the sweet nightingale
Will never entice me to go....
The two lovers agreed to be married with speed
And straight to the church they did go
Now no more she's afraid to go down in the shade
Or to walk in the valley below....
@animal @love @courtship
Recorded by Margaret Chrystal, T. Bikel, C. Gooding
filename[ NITINGAL
RPf
Jackie Oates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANbOWvQcM1w
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