Music and the Pilgrimage of Grace

Subject: Music and the Pilgrimage of Grace
From: GUEST,Nigel Bartram
Date: 01 May 23 - 05:43 AM

I am a composer based in Pocklington, East Yorks. I would be interested in suggestions for music the pilgrims might have known and maybe would sing on route to York in 1536.
Thanks for any help

Subject: RE: Music and the Pilgrimage of Grace
From: GUEST,Robert B. Waltz
Date: 01 May 23 - 12:09 PM

I am a composer based in Pocklington, East Yorks. I would be interested in suggestions for music the pilgrims might have known and maybe would sing on route to York in 1536.

There are very few folk melodies documented from that long ago. Texts, yes, a few (actually, quite a few, if you're willing to accept that we can't be sure if they are "folk" -- I have more than 150 songs cited from manuscript copies), but less than half have tunes, and most of those tunes were collected with more recent texts.

If I were trying to do what you are doing, I'd start with Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, i.e. William Chappell, (The Ballad Literature and) Popular Music of the Olden Time (Chappell & Co, 1859), reprinted, Dover Publications, 1965. Also, since Chappell sometimes fixed the modality of the songs, William Chappell, revised by H. Ellis Wooldridge, Old English Popular Music (Chappell & Co/Macmillan & Co, 1893). (You shouldn't just go to Chappell/Wooldridge, because while he had the tunes right, he left out all the texts.)

If you want just a few titles to start with -- instances for which we have tunes -- here are a few, fairly popular, sometimes rather bawdy (look, it was the Pilgrimage of Grace, but they couldn't sing hymns all the time!):

A Robin, Jolly Robin

The Blind Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green [Laws N27]

Come Over the Burn, Bessie

The Corpus Christi Carol (the tune is much later: "Down in Yon Forest," but the text was first recorded in the Richard Hill manuscript of almost this exact date)

The Holly and the Ivy/The Holly Bears a Berry (those particular tunes are not that old, but there are so MANY Holly-and-ivy carols that you should have some available)

King Orfeo [Child 19] -- this is descended from the medieval romance "Sir Orfeo," so it must have existed and been popular enough to still exist in fragmentary form in the twentieth century!

Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford or Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar (we don't have tunes for the oldest Robin Hood pieces, but they must have had them, and these two have tunes and have been less corrupted than most later ballads. And, remember, Robin Hood came from Yorkshire, not Nottingam!)

This Endris Night

Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son

Walsingham (A pilgrimage song!)

Watkin's Ale (Perhaps the cleverest multiple-entendere song in English, and the tune is old even if no one dared print the words for many years)

Subject: RE: Music and the Pilgrimage of Grace
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 01 May 23 - 01:02 PM

There is a 1536 ballad attributed to the monks of Sawley Abbey which needs a tune and could also do with editing into modern English.

Subject: RE: Music and the Pilgrimage of Grace
From: GUEST,Robert B. Waltz
Date: 01 May 23 - 01:32 PM

Matthew Edwards wrote: There is a 1536 ballad attributed to the monks of Sawley Abbey which needs a tune and could also do with editing into modern English.

Several points: First, the Pilgrimage of Grace was a secular, mostly popular, movement, not a clerical movement. Yes, it was on behalf of Catholicism, but the participants were mostly not directly affiliated with the church or the monastic movement. (Although, admittedly, the members of the dissolved foundations probably wanted their foundations back!) So the songs must likely to have been sung would be popular songs.

Second, the request was for things "might have known and maybe would sing." I would make the obvious suggestion that this would consist of early modern English lyrics to sixteenth century tunes.

But if the goal is to find lyrics of the time and set non-contemporary music for them, then the number of choices expands dramatically. A good place to start, in that case, would be Peter J. Seng, Tudor Songs and Ballads from MS Cotton Vespasian A-25 (Harvard University Press, 1978).

And if you want good stuff, as opposed to stuffy stuff :-), the obvious place to start is the Sloane Manuscript, London, British Library MS. Sloane 2593. It's a little earlier, but not too much. I've identified 23 texts from the Sloane MS. that give some evidence (not overwhelming evidence, but SOME evidence) of having been in oral tradition:

As I Lay Upon a Night (Alma Redemptoris Mater)
Ave, Maris Stella (Hail, Star of the Sea)
A Babe Is Born All of a May
Blessed Be That Maid Mary
A Carol for St. Edmund's Day
Father of Heaven, Blessed Thou Be (Make Ye Merry for Him That Is Come)
The First Day of Yule
The Golden Carol (The Three Kings)
I Have a Yong Suster, i.e. I Gave My Love a Cherry
I Sing of a Maiden that Is Makeless (Matchless, Mateless)
If Thou Serve a Lord of Price (For Service Is None Heritage)
In the Vale of Abraham
In This Time Christ Hath Us Sent
Jesu was Born in Bethlehem Judea
O Mary Mother
Of a Rose, A Lovely Rose
Out of the Blossom Sprang a Thorn
Robyn and Gandeleyn [Child 115]
Saint Nicholas
Saint Stephen and Herod [Child 22]
Saint Thomas of Canterbury
Sir Peny
Welcome Yule

There is also the Richard Hill manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354. For that, see Roman Dyboski, Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems from the Balliol Ms. 354, Richard Hill's Commonplace Book, Kegan Paul, 1907. (There are many reprints, although most are very low-quality.) Hill was a Catholic who was alive when Henry VIII was doing his thing, and Hill did not like the changes. Here are the items that looked "folk-ish" from that manuscript:

As I Lay Upon a Night (Alma Redemptoris Mater)
Assay Thy Friend Ere Thou Hast Need
A Babe Is Born All of a May
A Babe Is Born To Bliss Us Bring
The Boar's Head Carol
The Corpus Christi Carol
Erthe upon Erthe (Earth upon Earth, Earth out of Earth)
Gabriel of High Degree
Gabriel That Angel Bright
Gossips' Meeting, The
Here Beside Dwells a Rich Baron's Daughter (The Juggler)
The Holly and the Ivy
A Hunting Carol (At A Place Where I Me Set)
In Bethlehem, that Fair City
In This Time Christ Hath Us Sent
Jolly Wat
A Little Child There Is Yborn
Make We Merry Both More and Less
Mary for the Love of Thee (Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay)
My Heart Is Woe (When That My Sweet Son Was Thirty Winter Old)
Now Mercy, Lord, and Gramercy (As I Wanderede Her Bi Weste)
The Nut-Brown Maid
O Mary Mother
Of a Rose, A Lovely Rose
Out of the Blossom Sprang a Thorn
Pray for Us, Thou Prince of Peace
Saint Thomas of Canterbury
Salutation Carol, The
Some Be Merry and Some Be Sad (Women, Women, Love of Women)
This Endris Night
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Tyrle, Tyrlo (Tyrley, Tyrlow)

A few of these have tunes, although they are generally later.

Subject: RE: Music and the Pilgrimage of Grace
From: GUEST,Nigel Bartram
Date: 02 May 23 - 05:51 AM

Thank you for your kind and well informed suggestions.. plenty for me to look at here