Origins: Staines Morris

Subject: Origins: Staines Morris
From: alanww
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 09:41 AM

I like to sing traditional songs and one I have just learnt is Staines Morris. Now I know that its tune is included in John Playford's book The English Dancing Master, published in 1651. Also, as I am a morris man myself, I know that the tune has been used for a morris dance from the village of Longborough in Gloucestershire.

But can anyone please help me with the origins of the lyrics. Thanks in advance ...!

"Come ye young men, come along, with your music, dance and song ...!"
Alan

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 10:07 AM

STAINES MORRIS is in the DT.

William Chappell married the tune and the lyrics in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 1 (1859, pp. 125-6), saying:

This tune is taken from the first edition of The Dancing Master. It is also in William Ballet's Lute Book (time of Elizabeth); and was printed as late as about 1760, in a Collection of Country Dances, by Wright.
The Maypole Song, in Actæon and Diana, seems so exactly fitted to the air, that, having no guide as to the one intended, I have, on conjecture, printed it with this tune.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 12:15 PM

This seems to be the source of the lyrics:

Actæon and Diana, with a Patorall Story of the Nymph Oeone; Followed By the several conceited humors of Bumpkin, the Huntsman. Hobbinal, the Shepherd. Singing Simpkin. And John Swabber, the Sea-man Printed at London by T. Newcomb, for the use of the Author Robert Cox (2nd ed., 1656)

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: alanww
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 12:43 PM

Wow, masato sakurai. That's what I call hunting back a bit in the records! Thanks.
Now let me see if I have this right ... the lyrics were first published in a 1656 book by Robert Cox, entitled John Swabber, the Sea-man.
But presumably, as you say that he was the editor of the book rather than the author, he must have got them from somewhere else, and therefore they were "anon" at that stage? Am I right?

" ... Bring your lasses in your hands, for 'tis that which love commands!"
Alan

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 01:14 PM

The story of Actaeon and Diana was popular in the 16th-17th century (she offed him with her trusty bow and arrow). Robert Herrick's poem, The Vision, is about Diana in her hunting garb. See The Vision
A song about a maypole and the story of a murder seem far apart.

A tune called "The Maypole" was used with the lyrics for the humorous song, "The Chummy's Wedding." No music with the Bodleian broadside, so don't know if it is the same tune or not.

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 01:25 PM

You may have misunderstood a little, Alan. The title is as Masato gave it (apart from the typo!); John Swabber is just a short part of the book (the first edition, published -conjecturally- in the previous year, was of 40 pages only) which is a collection of short theatrical pieces. The author, Robert Cox, is described as a "Comedian"; that is, a performer on, or writer for, the stage. There seems no particular reason to suppose that he didn't write the words of the Maypole song, though I've seen it suggested that Singing Simpkin, also included, may have been based on one of Will Kemp's routines. The copy of the second edition held at the British Library is of 13 pages, and contains only an additional piece, Simpleton the Smith.

The Maypole tune indicated for that broadside would perhaps be Joan to the Maypole ("Come lasses and lads").

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 01:28 PM

"The Dancing Master" has 5 tunes under "May Day" and 10 under "May Fair." (Keller Compendium) Dancing Master Is one of these the tune concerned?

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 01:35 PM

Error?. http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltmd/indexes/dancingmaster/
Dancing Master

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 01:40 PM

The tune is in Playford as Stanes Morris.

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: alanww
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 03:30 PM

Thanks to all. So the lyrics are probably by Robert Cox, the "comedian", and were published in 1656. But how does Will Kemp come into it? I thought he was a fool and dancer. Is it thought that he could he have written the words to the popular tune of the time and Robert Cox included it in his book?

"Then to the maypole ...!"
Alan

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 04:10 PM

I think you need to read Masato's post, and mine, again. 1656 is the date of the second edition. The first, by definition, would be earlier. The British Library makes an educated guess at 1655, but it isn't something you need to worry about. I explained that the book is a collection of separate pieces, the names of which Masato has quoted. Singing Simpkin is just one of them, that's all; and whether or not there is a connection with Will Kemp has nothing directly to do with Staines Morris. I mentioned it, and him, because the suggestion that one piece in the collection might have been based on an earlier stage routine may be taken as presenting the possibility that others were, as well.

Since I take it that none of us have actually seen the book (my reference was bibliographical) we don't actually know whether Chappell meant that the song in question was from the piece Diana and Actæon, or from the book of that title, the other contents of which are detailed above.

That being the case, and in the absence of other information, the most likely assumption is the obvious one; that Cox wrote the words to the song. It's a fairly typical pastoral lyric of the sort popular on the stage of the day. We don't know what tune it was originally sung to; it was some 200 years later that Chappell set it to the Staines Morris tune. That tune is the right age to have been used originally, but so are a great many more.

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: alanww
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 07:19 PM

Malcolm, thanks for spelling it out. I had not logged the point about William Chappell in the first response ....

"For 'tis now our holiday!"
Alan

PS
I must pay attention in future!
I must pay attention in future!
I must pay attention in future!
I must pay attention in future!
I must pay attention in future!
....

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 24 Jun 03 - 08:40 PM

My info on the title of Cox's play is from Charles Read Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig and Related Song Drama (1929; Dover, 1965, p. 123) ["Nymph Oeone" should have been "Nymph Oenone"], which contains the full text of "Singing Simpkin" (pp. 444-49) where the Maypole song is not. "Staines Morris" is in The [English] Dancing Master (1651-1663 editions; "English" was dropped from the 2nd and later editions). Although the title given is "Stanes Morris", it is spelled "Staines Morris" on the contents page.

The following are the notes to the tune by Margaret Dean-Smith in Playford's English Dancing Master 1651 (Schott & Co., 1957, p. 73 [p. 87 in Playford's original]).

STA[I]NES MORRIS
1. Ballet's Lute-Book, c. 1600.
2. Robert Cox, Actæon and Diana, 1656, 'Come ye young men.'
3. CNA [Chappell, National English Airs] 171, CPM [Popular Music of the Olden Time] 125-6, gives the above information, which is repeated by WELLS ['Playford Tunes and Broadside Ballads'], who, quoting Frank Kidson, confirms that the tune of 'Come ye young men' (The Maypole Song) can be identified with 'Staines Morris.' What Professor Wells says about the country dance being 'set to an older morris tune associated with the locality of Staines on the Thames' is, however, most questionable. 'Staines' may be a personal name--cf. 'Mr. Staines Delight' in Farmer's Consort, 1686, secondly, there is no evidence that the morris dance, always highly localized, existed at Staines, and records of it in the counties of Middlesex, Surrey or Berkshire, which meet at Staines, are very slight. The tune is none-the-less very apt to the morris: the Playford version is modal in a much higher degree than 'Come ye young men,' the form in which it is best known. In a context similar to Actæon and Diana it was incorporated into Sir George McFarren's May-Day Cantata 200 years later. These examples of the tune provided a particular exhibit in the Musicians' Company Exhibition of 1904: 'Is it not a striking illustration of the extraordinary interest of the Exhibition,' said Sir Edward Clark, lecturing, 'that you can see, if you are interested in the 'Staines Morris' tune, the original Lute-Book of William Ballet, the very rare first edition of Playford's Dancing Master and the original Ms. score of MacFarren's May Day?' As an illustration to Sir Edward Clark's discourse Miss Adela Vern 'here played on the pianoforte the 'Staines Morris' tune with its imitations of the tabor and the pipe.'
4. The tune 'Anima Christi', No. 327 in The Methodist Hymnbook has been identified by Miss Gilchrist as the 'Staines Morris' tune: it yet remains to identify either form with the 13th century melody 'Anima Christi' known nowadays as a plainsong motet.
The dance is a kissing-dance of processional type sufficiently appropriate to May-day, but in no way a 'morris.' It survives in Wright's Country Dances, Vol. I, c. 1720.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 01:25 AM

John Forrest writes in The History of Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (University of Toronto Press, 1999, p. 251):

The two classical episodes [i.e., the stories of Bumpkin the huntsmen and Hobbinal the shepherd] have rural settings and are heavily larded with country customs. The tale of Bumpkin, for example, contains the famous maypole song 'Come you youngmen' as an entrance piece for a chorus of huntsmen and country lasses, and a general country dance, along with other presumably more conventional stage pieces, including a huntsmen's dance and a dance of nymphs. Incidentally, the maypole song was set to the tune 'Stanes Morris' (see chapter 9) by William Chappell in the nineteenth century on the grounds that the two fit so well together, and for no other reason (Chappell 1859, 125-6). Yet, since Chappell's serendipitous experiment, almost universally, secondary sources have uncritically taken the match to be historically legitimate (see for example Dean-Smith 1957, 73, for a discussion), thus asserting a spurious equation between morris and maypoles. There is no evidence that the words and music were ever performed together before the nineteenth century.

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: alanww
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 06:18 AM

Absolutely fascinating! Let me see if I have the bones of the origins right now ...

1   The earliest reference to the tune was William Ballet's Lute-Book c1600 [Is the specific publishing date known?] and it was also quoted in John Playford's The English Dancing Master 1651.
2   The lyrics were published (and most likely written) by Robert Cox in his Actæon and Diana, with a Patorall Story of the Nymph Oenone; Followed By the several conceited humors of Bumpkin, the Huntsman. Hobbinal, the Shepherd. Singing Simpkin. And John Swabber, the Sea-man (2nd ed.) 1656. [Is it known whether they were also in the 1st edition and when was that published?]
3   There is no evidence from this to connect morris dancing and maypole dancing or to link it with Staines in Middlesex, West London.
4   The words and lyrics were brought together by William Chappell in his Popular Music of the Olden Time (vol. 1) 1859.

Thanks again!

"Here each batchelor may choose ...!"
Alan

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 06:51 AM

Ballet's book was not a printed edition, and there're some differences from Playford. The tune (without words at all) from Ballet is quoted in Chappell's National English Airs. Playford may not have quoted the tune from Ballet. Again from John Forrest's book (pp. 307-8):

The dance notation [of "Staines Morris"] first appeared in 1651 (Playford 1651, 87) and was included in the first three editions of The Dancing Master (i.e., 1651, 1655, and 1665), but with the major reorganization of the collection for the fourth edition in 1670, Playford dropped it. The popularity of the tune itself, independent of dance notation, however, spanned a much longer time (see Ward 1986, 299, 303-5). It may first be found in two manuscript lute book of the late Elizabethan era (c 1595-1600), The Trumbull Lute Book (Berkshire Record Office MS D/ED C1 f.9v), and William Ballet's Lute Book (Trinity College, Dublin MS D.1.21/1.f.91), and last shows up in our period of record in two versions in Daniel Wright's An Extraordinary Collection of Pleasant & Merry Humours, Never Before Published (Wright c 1713, Nos. 3 and 13), whence it leaves popular tradition until the morris revivals of the late nineteenth century.

Subject: Tune Add: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 25 Jun 03 - 09:48 AM

Ballet's tune notated in William Chappell's Old English Popular Music, new edition, revised by H. Ellis Wooldridge ([1893?]; Jack Bussell, 1961, vol. 1, p. 243) is:

X:1
T:Staines Morris
M:6/4
L:1/4
B:W. Chappell, Old English Popular Music, rev. ed. (1893, 1961)
S:William Ballet's Lute Book
K:C
A2d d2^c|d> =c BA2B|c2BA2G/F/|E/D/E2D3|
F/G/A2A2G/F/|E/D/E2D3|D2EF/G/ A/F/ G/F/|E/D/ E^CD3|
f2fc2c|d2de3|e2fe/f/ g/f/ /e/d/|e/d/e2Hd3:|

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 05:45 PM

This is fast becoming a classic Mudcat thread! However, how does the following info fit in?

[1969:] [Staines Morris is the] result of a co-operative effort by Cyril Tawney, the Yetties, Frankie Armstrong and myself. The tune is obviously for a very formal dance, and has echoes of Michael Praetorius and before. (Notes Martin Carthy, 'Prince Heathen')

Am I right in assuming that a set of lyrics was published in 1656, but not necessarily the one we now know as Staines Morris? Is one the basis of the other? Or was Martin Carthy suffering from a lapse of memory?

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 09:46 PM

The original song text was published in 1656, yes (and perhaps also a year or so before) but none of us have seen it; there seems no particular reason, though, to think that it differed significantly from the text as quoted by Chappell when he set it to the Stanes Morris tune.

Martin may not have known at the time that the tune appeared in Playford, or that it didn't really belong to the words. Chappell's setting was later published widely, appearing (for example) in The New National Songbook, where a verse is omitted and the song described as "Time of Queen Elizabeth" (presumably on the strength of the tune's appearance in the Ballet Book). I've wondered too, occasionally, what Martin's note meant exactly. We'd have to ask him to be sure.

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: masato sakurai
Date: 28 Jun 03 - 10:35 PM

The Morris On version sung by Shirley Collins seems to come from some popular edition as The National Song Book or Songs of England, vol. II (Boosey & Hawkes, pp. 66-67), the tile being "To the Maypole Haste Away," which may have been from Old English Ditties from Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 1 (Chappell & Co., [1884?], pp. 24-25). The version Chappell quoted in Popular Music has this chorus: Then to the May-pole come away / For it is now our holiday.

I have a CD which contains both "Staines Morris" and Praetorius in it: To Drive the Cold Winter Away: A Fireside Presentation of Music for Merrymaking down the Ages -- St. George's Canzona (CRD 3319).

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: GUEST,Gavi n Atkin
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 12:14 AM

This is an intriguing thread. Searching for a suitable contemporary tune for use as a setting for the clown's song Come Away Death for a production of 12th Night to be put on by the theatre group in our village of Marden recently, I found Staines Morris worked particularly well.

And, as it turns out, the tune and play could not be more contemporary with each other, as the play is believed to have been written in 1601 or 1602.

Here's a recording of our clown, young performing arts student Dylan Stallard, singing it:

http://youtu.be/j21rzapZxYY

Gavin

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Jul 14 - 09:56 AM

Thanks for the link, Gavin. You did a good job of fitting the lyrics and tune together. It sounds right.

I just went to the DT to see what this tune is, and found myself thinking "I've heard this before."

Yes, it has been used for the Christmas song

"Bles-sed be that maid, Ma-rie-ee;
bo-orn He was of he-r bo-o-dy."

Subject: Origins: To the Maypole Haste Away
From: Joe Offer
Date: 13 May 20 - 11:22 PM

Got more lyrics and information for this song? How is it tied to "Dancing at Whitsun"?

Come you young men come along
With your music, dance and song
Bring your lasses in your hand
For 'tis that which love commands
Then to the Maypole haste away
For 'tis now a holiday

Subject: RE: Origins: Staines Morris
From: Reinhard
Date: 14 May 20 - 01:10 AM

Shirley Collins and Austin John Marshall added it to the end of Whitsun Dance on her album Anthems in Eden. He noted:

Many of the old ladies who swell the membership lists of Country Dance Societies are 1914/18 war widows, or ladies who have lost fiancés and lovers. Country dancing kept the memory of their young men alive. When Shirley Collins started singing the piece to the tune of The False Bride, the impact was disturbing, for many people in audiences identified with it. Tears were frequent. Now a sharp relevance in contemporary song is one thing but such a pessimistic effect was not what was intended. So when Shirley recorded the song we showed the way the spirit of the generation sacrificed in the mud of France had been caught and brought to life by the new generation born since World War II by concluding with the chorus of the Staines Morris.