Introduction
MUCH has been said about Walter Muir Whitehill. One thing is certain. He was truly an enlightened human being. He had an ever curious mind and an insatiable appetite for knowledge. He was open to new concepts, even when they had the potential to contradict his own. He took especial delight in assisting younger persons. He would charge them with a task—the bigger the better—and then continue his generous support by giving freely of his encouragement. He was and continues to be an inspiration to those of us who were privileged enough to know him.
Throughout his life Walter Whitehill had a passion for music. At one time he had been engaged in a debate over whether secular music was practiced by the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He and the majority of those involved had reached a negative conclusion. But in an examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century probate records of Suffolk and Middlesex Counties, the editor of the present volume came across citations of a substantial number of musical instruments. Further research demonstrated that most of these instruments had been in the hands of Puritans. Walter Whitehill characteristically was delighted with the discovery of evidence contrary to his previous position. At his suggestion, the third conference of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts became the forum for reevaluating the prevalence and practice of music in early Massachusetts. I was invited to organize the conference and greatly benefited from Walter’s advice and close cooperation.
Two prior requests were made of the conference participants: that the papers be based on primary sources, and that the content focus upon the role of music in the lives of the people. Greater consideration was given to secular music during the conference because of the previous emphasis on the sacred. Nine papers were presented, organized into three categories according to the locale in which the music usually had been heard: public places, private quarters, and religious settings. In conjunction with the conference, two concerts of colonial music were performed in eighteenth-century locations. One of primarily secular music was presented in Faneuil Hall; the other of sacred was given in King’s Chapel (see Appendix B). In addition, a complementary exhibition, “Early Music in Massachusetts,” was held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from May 16 through September 2, 1973, and sponsored by the Society. It was researched and organized by myself with able and welcome assistance from Cynthia Adams Hoover. The exhibition consisted of musical instruments, printed and manuscript music, paintings and prints which depict musical subjects, diaries, letters and newspapers which record musical events, and probate documents which cite the existence of musical instruments.
After more than one metamorphosis, the published record of the conference has emerged as a two-volume work. The first volume incorporates the studies on music heard in public places. The intimate forum of the conference generated a spirited discussion following each of the presentations. The exchange of knowledge and ideas, coupled with subsequent research, served to transform the original papers. The essays found herein reflect the authors’ knowledge and thinking as of 1975, with the exception of Carleton Sprague Smith’s contribution, which was completed in 1979. Furthermore, three of the four studies are practical in nature. They provide music, texts, and/or dances which require little or no additional editing for performance.
One of the conference papers on music in public places does not appear here. The contribution by Joy Van Cleef and Kate Van Winkle Keller has been substituted for one delivered which was outside the concern of the conference. It was fortunate that Mrs. Van Cleef, dance historian and member of the National Council of the Country Dance and Song Society of America, and Mrs. Keller, co-director of The National Tune Index, were then in the midst of examining surviving dance manuals used in colonial New England. Their work proved particularly congenial to our endeavor, and demonstrates that dancing was as widespread among the New England colonists as among their British brethren. Mrs. Keller’s contribution, accompanied by profuse reproductions of original dance tunes and instructions, can even serve as a guide to replicate the colonists’ practice, and further documents the social history of dance reconstructed by Mrs. Van Cleef. Their study suggests new avenues of research. For example, we know little of the dancing masters: why were some peripatetic, others sedentary; and what was their relationship to one another, let alone their status among the various social and religious groups?
Raoul Camus, Professor of Music, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York, discusses an extremely important development of the musical life of colonial Boston; namely, the impact of the bands of musicians who accompanied the British military escalation immediately prior to the American Revolution. In his Military Music of the American Revolution, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1976, a year after his completion of this essay, he expanded the scope of his military investigations from the Bay State to the thirteen American colonies. Future research is required to reveal the precise interrelationship between these British groups—both the regular fife and drum corps, and the musician-retainers of the aristocratic officers—and the increasingly rebellious Americans.
One hitherto little explored facet of music has been that which was produced commercially for popular enjoyment in the form of verses of songs on broadsheets from the first years of the colonies, and in newspapers from their initiation in the beginning of the eighteenth century. These verses were meant to be sung to popular tunes of the day. Some verses specify the tune, others give clues to the tunes, for example, by their titles, first lines, or refrains. However, in some cases only the ballad meters confirm that the verses were to be sung because the tune is no longer affiliated in an identifiable way. Two contributors explore this rich and diverse terrain: Arthur F. Schrader, music historian and currently an NEH Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, and Carleton Sprague Smith, Professor of Music, Douglass College, Rutgers University.
Arthur Schrader sought first to trace the major political verses of the American Revolution, and then to identify the tunes to which they were originally sung. The verses were unearthed primarily from Massachusetts newspapers with the odd exceptions of a single sheet folio or where Connecticut newspaper sources revealed the earliest extant version. The tunes were taken from sources contemporary with the verses; Mr. Schrader’s particular forte is locating a tune when previously only its name had been known. In the present chapter—a mere fragment of his larger research—fourteen pairings of text with tune are examined. Mr. Schrader gives the historical and bibliographical background of each text and tune, and then presents the earliest or most important version of each pair.
Carleton Smith’s eight chapter-like sections bring together sixty-two broadside verses and seventy-one tunes to which he has set the verses. His material is drawn from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and from a large portion of colonial Anglo-America. The verses range widely in subject, from politics and war to morals and humor. Where possible, Mr. Smith matches these verses to their contemporary tune settings. Otherwise, he presents alternative tunes, most taken from oral tradition, and some of a more recent origin (which he justifies by their similar character with the text and their use of the same meter as the poetry to which they are paired). Smith’s study provides a wealth of material that should inspire further research. For example, the broadside texts were purchased primarily by middle-class colonists, and can provide unusual insights into their clients’ attitudes towards Indians, women, religion, economic issues, and crime.
Messrs. Schrader and Smith demonstrate contrasting solutions to the problems of fitting text to tune. However, an effort was made in both of these contributions to present verses and tunes on facing pages in an attempt to create a kind of “performing edition.” Thanks to the fine quality of Meriden Gravure’s reproductions, even the smallest print can be read with the aid of a magnifying glass!
editorial procedure
Although considerable time and effort were given to minimize the inconsistencies of style from paper to paper, it was felt that each author’s individual preferences should be respected whenever possible. Thus the reader will discover certain inconsistencies of style which should perhaps be pointed out at the onset in order to avoid confusion.
Unquestionably the contribution which presented the greatest challenge was that of Carleton Sprague Smith. Because of its grand scope and numerous illustrations, this study probably deserves a separate volume. The paper tripled in size following its initial presentation in 1973.
Confusion often arose as to whether the author referred to a tune or a broadside text. It was decided to distinguish tune names by placing them in lowercase except for an initial capital of the title and of all proper names. This style, then, was adopted throughout the first volume. In the paper on dance, for instance, tune names appear in lowercase while the names of dances (figuration) appear in modern capitalization. The only deviation from this style appears in the second volume in Richard Crawford’s contribution “Massachusetts Musicians and the Core Repertory of Early American Psalmody,” where the convention of referring to hymn tunes in large and small capitals has been followed.
Because of the large number of broadsides dealt with in the first volume and the manner in which they were used, special attention was given to the orthography of broadside titles, preserving the original capitalization, punctuation, and lineation, in order to facilitate identification and comparison among fairly uncommon sources. However, in the second volume the sources given in the checklist of American songsters by Irving Lowens appear in modern library style, since these songsters have been made available through the Evans microfilm series published by the American Antiquarian Society.
In the two papers in the first volume which deal with song texts and their tunes, the musical transcriptions have been given in two different styles. In Mr. Schrader’s contribution the small notes above the staff indicate the original rhythmic groupings as they appear in the source, giving a clear account of the alterations, if any, made in putting tune to text. Presumably here no alterations in pitch or melody have been made.
In Mr. Smith’s paper, however, the music deviated from the source more frequently and often involved pitch or melodic as well as rhythmic alterations. Here the problem was one of format: how to reconcile the desire for authenticity and a scholarly approach with the desire for a clear and legible page which could be used for performance. Because the established format of the Colonial Society’s volumes dictated the space considerations, it was impossible to reproduce the original notes showing the author’s alterations from the source. For this reason the editor felt it necessary to point out through special terminology those tunes in which substantial changes had been made in order that the reader might refer to the source, which is carefully documented in the “List of Figures” at the front of the book. When a tune was specified on the song text, the text was said to be set to the tune. When no tune was specified on the song text, but the author chose a likely tune, the text was said to be matched to the tune. And, finally, when no tune was specified and the author chose a tune which underwent alteration, the term matched and fitted was used.
It is hoped that the reader will not be impeded by the variations in style encountered in these two volumes, but rather will find it interesting to compare the various scholarly approaches here propounded.
acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgment is due the following persons who contributed to this publication: Shari West for photography and typing; E. Lindsay Davidson, Elizabeth Compton Eichenfield, Frances Yost Knight, Carole Greenleaf, and Edith Schmidt for help with organizational details, some research, and mountains of typing; Kathleen Chase for preparing the index; the tunesmiths Jack Langstaff and especially Paul Cole for reviewing, in some cases researching and supplying, and transposing melodies in the Smith contribution; and Sinclair Hitchings for his leads and advice and for his ready willingness to help whenever called upon.
My appreciation for their faithful assistance and cooperation is extended to many libraries, historical societies, and records archives and their staffs, especially the American Antiquarian Society and in particular Georgia Bumgardner, the Baker and Houghton Libraries of Harvard University, the Boston Athenæum, the Bostonian Society, the Essex Institute, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Massachusetts State Archives, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the Registries of Probate for Suffolk and Middlesex Counties.
Heartfelt thanks are also due Frederick S. Allis, Jr., for his patient assistance in helping to tie up the final details of this volume. And finally, the editor is most indebted to Walter Muir Whitehill for his confident, unerring support, Donald Hindley for his encouragement and helpful hand, and Margaret Sue Ladr for her constant attention to every detail, for her ability to keep track of and follow up on loose ends when my attention was frequently diverted to museum matters, and for her yeomanry far above and beyond the call of an assistant.
Barbara Lambert
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
October 1979
1 Percy Scholes in The Puritans and Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 60–64, quotes many sources which indicate that such eminent Puritans as Milton, Cromwell, and Bunyan as well as somewhat less-known ones such as Whitelocke, Cromwell’s ambassador to Sweden, and Colonel Hutchinson were sympathetic to and enjoyed dancing. Music and dance maintained a position of importance in seventeenth-century England.
2 Dictionary of National Biography quotes [A Register of] Members of Inner Temple, p. 252.
3 James P. Cunningham, Dancing in the Inns of Court (London: Jordan and Sons, Ltd., 1965).
4 The Sabbath was so strictly observed and so universally respected in the first days of the Massachusetts Colony that there was no need for an ordinance enforcing it until 1653. Dancing was not specifically referred to but would certainly have been included in the category of forbidden occupations and pastimes. Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628–1688, 6 vols. (Boston: William White, 1853–1854), iv, i, 150, 347, 395; v, 239, 469; Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 39 vols. (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1876–1909), Second Report, pp. 131, 151; from Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 76. The Boston Record Commissioners report: “28th. 2mo. 1662. . . . It is Ordered that the Counstable watche be giuen out for the ensueing yeare 1662. . . . A charge shall be giuen verballie, or read vnto the watch euery night. The Form of Charge. . . . [number] 2. If after 10 of ye clocke they see any lights, then to make discreet inquiry, whether there be a warrantable cause, likewise if they heare any noyse or disorderlye carriage in any house wisely to demand a reason of it, & if it apeare, a reall disorder, that men are danceing, drinckeing, Singinge vainlie & c, they shall admonish them to cease, but if they diserne the Continnuance of it after moderate admonition, then to acquainte the Counstable of it, or him that hath the care of ye watch for that night, who shall see to the redress of it & to take the names of the persons to acquaint authoritie there with.” Record Commissioners of Boston, Seventh Report, pp. 8–9.
5 Margaret Dean-Smith has made a careful study of the many editions of Playford’s Dancing Master in Playford’s English Dancing Master: A Facsimile Reprint with an Introduction, Bibliography and Notes (London: Schott and Co., Ltd., 1957).
6 [Increase Mather and others], An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing; Drawn Out of the Quiver of the Scriptures (Boston: Samuel Green, 1684), p. 24 (Evans 414).
7 A number of books written before 1700 on the general subject of education which recommend dance are mentioned by Joseph E. Marks on pages 42, 43, and 174 of his book, America Learns to Dance (New York: Exposition Press, 1957); they are The Boke named the Governour, by Sir Thomas Elyot (1531); The Scholemaster, by Roger Ascham (1571); Positions, by Mulcaster (1581); The English Gentleman, by Richard Braitwaite (London: Felix Kingston, 1633) and The English Gentlewoman (London: B. Alsop & T. Fawcet, 1631) by the same author; and, perhaps most important of all, Some Thoughts Concerning Education by the great Nonconformist authority John Locke (ed. by Robert H. Quick [Cambridge University Press, 1880]).
8 Mather, An Arrow, p. 3.
9 The kind of mixed dancing which was the subject of disapproval seems to have been a sort of informal improvised jigging about, which a couple might feel inspired to engage in after having imbibed together in a tavern. This was a distinctly lower-class kind of dancing, and definitely not what was taught in dancing classes.
10 Mather, An Arrow, p. 21.
11 Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, pp. 252, 276.
12 Cotton Mather, A Cloud of Witnesses; Darting out Light upon a Case too Unseasonably made Seasonable to be Discoursed on (Boston: B. Greene & J. Allen, 1700), pp. 1, 8 (Evans 921). The sentiments expressed and the quotations from authoritative sources used to support them both in this sermon and in An Arrow . . . seem to be in large part borrowed from the Histrio-Mastix of William Prynne (London, 1633), with such adaptations and additions as made them suitable to the Mathers’ use (see Scholes, Puritans, p. 322). Such displays of erudition were a standard feature of seventeenth century sermons, which, besides conveying moral and theological truths, were expected to entertain and inform.
13 At this time the publications of French dancing masters such as Feuillet and, later, Rameau began to appear along with those of their English translators and counterparts: John Weaver, E. Pemberton, John Essex, Kellom Tomlinson, and others.
14 A list of 210 dance titles in New England manuscripts is found in Joy Van Cleef, “Rural Felicity,” Dance Perspectives, lxv (Spring 1976), Appendix C, but two more manuscripts with additional titles have been found since publication.
15 Professor John Ward of Harvard University has two such English collections, one of which dates from 1721. At Yale in the Beinecke Library is another, dated 1747, bearing the name of Walter Rainstorp, and containing tunes as well as figures.
16 Henry Beck recorded three dance tunes on this page. For the directions to a country dance entitled “Stoney Point,” see fig. 62. “La Prominade” is the same tune as “The King of Denmark’s favourite” found in Twenty Four Country Dances (London, 1769); see fig. 8.
17 Most of the editorial interpolations in imprints have been recently discovered by author Keller.
18 At this period country dances were always performed in two lines, men facing women; cotillons on the other hand were performed in square formation for four couples.
19 Asa Willcox copied the figures of “The King of Denmark’s Favourite” into his manuscript just before he copied “The Faithfull Shephard.” The dance is identical and indicates strongly that Willcox was familiar with material found in the Thompson collection.
20 Cited in Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt (London, 1955), p. 165.
21 Large collections of country dances frequently mentioned have been abbreviated. Please see pages 14 and 15 for complete citations.
22 Clement Weeks, dance ms (Greenland, [New Hampshire], 1783), p. 9.
23 It is interesting to note here that this particular volume was autographed in 1755 by Edward Augustus Holyoke of Salem (1729–1829) when he was twenty-four years old. His daughter Judith married William Turner in 1795. William was the son of William and the grandson of Ephraim Turner, all three of whom were dancing masters in Boston.
24 For one example see Arthur F. Schrader’s discussion of the song text “Rebels” set to the tune “Black joke,” no. 12 in his study “Songs to Cultivate the Sensations of Freedom” in this volume, pages 148–150.
25 Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1973), p. 12.
26 Clement Weeks, dance ms (Greenland, [New Hampshire], 1783), p. 12.
27 James A. Fishar was not Johann Christian Fischer (1733–1800), German oboist and composer, but probably John Abraham Fisher (1744–1806), English violinist and composer.
28 Another manuscript now in America is derived entirely from a specific London publication. The New England Historic Genealogical Society owns a manuscript collection of dances which is derived entirely from Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1782 (London: T. Skillern, [1782]). This collection was only recently brought to our attention. It is interesting that few of the dances in the collection are to be found in other American manuscripts. Like the Merrill ms, it seems to be a copy of a specific book, not a personal collection of favorite dances. Perhaps this is the reason that so often the same title appears in several manuscript collections of dances or tunes; there were favorites here in America, they seem to have been fairly widespread in their popularity, and they are clearly derived from English sources on a selective basis.
29 Nancy Shepley, dance ms (Pepperell, [Massachusetts], ca. 1795), p. 4v.
30 For an extended discussion of this old English melody long associated with the dance, see William Chappell’s Popular Music of Olden Time (New York, 1965), pp. 227–233; and Claude M. Simpson’s The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick, N.J., 1966), pp. 268–278.
Whittier Perkins has copied several dance tunes on this page. “The new way of wooing” appeared in Wright’s Collection (ca. 1742), p. 9; “Jemmy Dang the weaver” appeared in Rutherford’s 200 Country Dances (ca. 1756) and in Clement Weeks’ manuscript collection (as “Jenny Dangs”; see fig. 15); and a dance called “The Hare in the Corn” appeared in Wright’s Collection (ca. 1742), p. 4, but to a different tune.
31 The tune should not be confused with either of two other popular melodies, “Hunt the hare” and “Hunting the hare,” which occur variously on single song sheets, in Twenty Four Dances for the Year 1768 (London: Chas. & Saml. Thompson, [1768]), p. 42, and in American manuscript tune collections of around 1800.
32 “Cottillion” as Cushing Eells copied it was a very popular tune in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in England and America. Apparently of French origin, it was known as “Cotillion oats peas beans,” “Cacina,” “French march,” “Cassino,” and later in American sources as “Baltimore.” It is recognizable as the tune for the singing game “Oats, peas, beans and barley, oh!”
33 For “Dusty Miller” see pp. 30–33 in this study. The music for “Lady Hope’s Reel,” a very popular dance in England and America, can be found in the Giles Gibbs’ manuscript collection of fife tunes made in Connecticut in 1777 (p. 13r). “The Merry Dancer” is a common title throughout the dance literature. As “The merry dance,” “The merry dancer,” and “Merry dancers,” many tunes and dances can be found in both England and America.
34 Chappell, Popular Music of Olden Time, p. 672.
35 The title “Irish Wash Woman” changes to “Irish Washerwoman” after about 1795.
36 For an example of a broadside verse set to this tune see the study of the Irish-man’s Epistle to the Officer’s and Troups at Boston, no. 9 in Arthur F. Schrader’s article in this volume, “Songs to Cultivate the Sensations of Freedom,” pp. 139 and 141.
37 Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Comedies and Tragedies (London: Humphrey Robinson, 1647), p. 441.
38 As with many other popular dances and airs of the eighteenth century “The maid of the mill” was collected in rural twentieth-century England by Cecil Sharp (see his Folk-Dance Airs [London: Novello & Co., 1909], preface and p. 14).
39 The Cabot ms is in the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.
40 The tunes preserved on these chime clocks reflect the selections made by most manuscript authors in this period. Three can be found in Timothy Swan’s Suffield, Connecticut, manuscript of 1777 now at the American Antiquarian Society. These include “Elliot’s minuet,” “Hob [or] nob,” and “Fr[ench] king’s minuet.” “Hob or nob” is now known as “The Campbells are coming” and with “Over the water to Charly” dates back to dance collections of the 1750s in England. “Over the water” and “The cuckoo’s nest” appear in Giles Gibbs’ manuscript collection made in 1777 in East Windsor, Connecticut, and “The cuckoo’s nest” appears in Clement Weeks’ collection of dances made in 1783 (see fig. 15). “Rakes of Rodney” was well known with its own title as well as the topical title “Rhode Island march.” An excellent study of the clocks and an inaccurate discussion of the tunes can be found in Penrose R. Hoopes’ Shop Records of Daniel Burnap, Clockmaker (Hartford: Connecticut Historical Society, 1958).
41 “Nancy Dawson’s fancy” in Thompson, 200 Country Dances, vol. 2, p. 52, is not the same tune or dance.
42 Chappell, Popular Music of Olden Time, p. 719.
43 Clement Weeks, dance ms (1783), p. ii.
44 Weeks, dance ms, p. 8.
45 Weeks, dance ms, p. 8.
46 Stephen Bonsal includes this charming story concerning “Successful Campaign” in his anecdotal narrative, When the French Were Here (Garden City, N.Y., 1945), p. 58.
47 For a dance to “From the man whom I love” see fig. 61.
48 Clement Weeks, dance ms (1783), p. 21.
49 The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Frances H. Jackson in the preparation of this paper. Her valuable collection and notes made on dance of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the foundation of this study.
1 Isaack de Rasières, “New Netherland in 1627,” New-York Historical Society, Collections, ii (1849), 352.
2 Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 1628–1651 (New York, 1910), p. 135.
3 From 1746 until the present the armory of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts has been located on the upper floor of Faneuil Hall in Boston. This hall, donated to the city by Peter Faneuil in 1742, was a multipurpose building housing town offices and a large assembly hall over a marketplace, a practice common in England at the time. See Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 41–43.
4 Oliver Ayer Roberts, History of the Military Company of Massachusetts now called the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, 2 vols. (Boston, 1898), 1, 76.
5 For further background on the musical instruments and general topics discussed, see Raoul F. Camus, “The Military Band in the United States Army prior to 1834” (New York University, Ph.D. diss., 1969).
6 Samuel Sewall, Diary 1674–1729, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 5th Ser., v–vii (1878–1882), v, 154.
7 Sewall, Diary, vi, 27–28.
8 Pennsylvania Gazette, March 25, 1756; Pennsylvania Journal, March 25, 1756. This is the earliest-known mention of an actual military band in America, but further research may discover that the other leading colonial seaports had their militia bands as well.
9 Boston News-Letter, April 16, 1716.
10 Annie Haven Thwing, The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston 1630–1822 (Boston, 1920), p. 86.
11 Boston Gazette, June 28, 1764. The musical compositions are significant because they were the standard musical fare for the military band. The publishers are significant because both Rutherford and Thompson, around 1759, published fife tutors which served as texts for the Revolutionary fifers.
12 New-York Journal, October 13, 1768; Boston Evening Post, December 12, 1768; Gentleman’s Magazine, xxxviii (London, 1768), 512.
13 New-York Journal, October 13, 1768; Boston Evening Post, December 12, 1768.
14 New-York Journal, October 20, 1768; Boston Evening Post, December 19, 1768. The “Journal of the Times” was first published in New York, and later reprinted in the other leading colonial newspapers, including the Boston Evening Post. The editor, or editors, remained anonymous, though their purpose was obviously to support and encourage the colonial cause. See also Boston under Military Rule, 1768–1769, as Revealed in a Journal of the Times, comp. Oliver Morton Dickerson (Boston, 1936).
15 New-York Journal, November 17, 1768. The account went to some length in describing each step in the ceremony in detail. The editors of the Boston Evening Post, however, did not seem to find it quite so unusual, for their edition published the afternoon of the execution, October 31, stated simply, “The Soldier belonging to the 14th Regiment, who was apprehended for Desertion since their arrival here, and sentenced to Death by the Court Martial, was Shot this Morning in the Common, in View of all the Troops.”
16 New-York Journal, November 17, 1768. See also issues of November 24, December 15, and December 31, 1768, and of January 1, January 12, May 3, and June 22, 1769.
17 New-York Journal, January 19, 1769.
18 New-York Journal, January 19, 1769.
19 New-York Journal, July 13, 1769; Boston Evening Post, July 31, 1769.
20 New-York Journal, supplement, June 29, 1769; Boston Evening Post, July 17, 1769.
21 John Rowe, Letters and Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant (Boston, 1903), p. 180.
22 Boston Evening Post, October 5 and 11, 1772; September 19, 1773; May 9, 1774.
23 Boston Gazette, March 13, 1769; Boston Chronicle, March 9–13, 1769.
24 Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 184.
25 Boston Chronicle, June 26–29, 1769.
26 Boston Evening Post, October ii and 18, 1773.
27 The newspaper advertisements do not specify the performers or the group, but Frederick W. Coburn, s.v. “Flagg, Josiah,” Dictionary of American Biography, vi, 449–450, claimed that it was Flagg’s military band that performed. The entry is, unfortunately, not documented.
28 Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 204–205.
29 Roberts, History, ii, 66.
30 Boston Evening Post, September 5, 1774.
31 Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 288. The funeral was for John Maturin, secretary to Gen. Thomas Gage.
32 Gentleman’s Magazine, January 1775; Rowe, Letters and Diary, p. 288; John Boyle, “Boyle’s Journal of Occurrences in Boston, 1759–1778,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, lxxxiv (1930), 381. The 4th, 5th, 10th, 23d, 38th, 43d, 47th, 52d, and 59th Regiments of Foot were in Boston at the beginning of 1775. No indication of the existence of a band has as yet been found for the 52nd Regiment. The 64th Regiment, with its band, was stationed at Castle William, in Boston harbor. By early June 1775, the 35th, 49th, 63d, 64th, 65th, and 67th Regiments of Foot had arrived at Boston. There are references in inspection reports to bands in all but the 65th Regiment, though it may be assumed that that regiment would have followed the custom and would also have had a band.
33 Robert Honyman, Colonial Panorama, ed. Philip Padelford (San Marino, Calif., 1939), p. 42.
34 John Andrews, “Letters of John Andrews, Esq., of Boston, 1772–1776,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, viii (1866), 400.
35 New-York Journal, March 30, 1775. Discipline was very strict in the eighteenth century armies. Persons convicted of crimes or breaches of discipline were ceremonially punished in front of their regiments or brigades. Where the crime was sufficiently serious to warrant dismissal from the service, but not the penalty of death, the culprit was “drummed from the army.” Traditionally, the music associated with this ceremony was the “Rogues march.” James Thacher, in his Military Journal of the American Revolution (Hartford, 1862), p. 12, stated that the field music played the “Rogues march” on this occasion. Thacher may have unconsciously substituted melodies in his journal, remembering only the connotation rather than the specific tune used, or it is possible that both tunes were played alternately. In either case, considering the social implications of the “Rogues march,” its juxtaposition with “Yankee Doodle” in such a situation would seem to imply that the British regarded the two melodies synonymously. This insult would most certainly have been clearly understood by the local citizens. The Boston Evening Post of March 13, 1775, does not mention the music performed, but includes a sworn statement of the farmer Thomas Ditson. The sign hung on his back, according to Ditson’s statement, read, “American Liberty or Democracy exemplified in a Villain who attempted to intice one of the Soldiers of his Majesty’s 47th Regiment to desert and take up Arms with Rebels against his King and Country.” Holt, the publisher of the New-York Journal, may have been embroidering on the musical facts as well as simplifying the contents of the sign for his readers, or he may have had some other source of information not yet located. Ditson’s full deposition was printed in the Virginia Gazette (Dixon & Hunter) of April 8, 1775, testifying to the widespread and rapid circulation of this cause celèbre, and to the vehemence of the reaction against this insult.
36 Boston Evening Post, March 29, 1773.
37 Boston Evening Post, August 23 and September 13, 1773. This advertisement also appeared in the Boston News-Letter of September 9, 1773. A copy of the trade card is in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
38 Andrews, “Letters,” pp. 323–324.
39 The Company of Grenadiers had been formed just the year previous, according to accounts published in the Boston News-Letter of June ii, 1772. Some indication of the interest taken in these volunteer militia units can be observed from the great achievement of organizing, clothing, and equipping this company in such a brief space of time.
40 Boston Evening Post, June 7, 1773; Boston News-Letter, June 10, 1773. See also Roberts, History, ii, 178.
41 Boston Evening Post, September 27, 1773.
42 Andrews, “Letters,” p. 342.
43 The drum measures 15 inches high by 17 inches wide, and bears a scene of the famous battle, obviously painted considerably later. The counterhoops are painted red, and seven fiber snares are stretched across the bottom head. It is possible that the rope loops, in place of the usual leather ears, are contemporary. For a well-written account of the stand at Lexington and Concord, with many references to this young drummer, see Arthur B. Tourtellot, William Diamond’s Drum (Garden City, 1959).
44 The Journals of each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety (Boston, 1838), p. 520. For a listing of the various regiments formed and their commanders, see Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army During the War of the Revolution (Washington, D.C., 1893), pp. 30–33.
45 John W. Wright, Some Notes on the Continental Army (Vails Gate, New York, 1963), p. 20.
46 Dorothy Dudley, Theatrum Majorum (Cambridge, 1876), p. 60.
47 The units were the 3d, 6th, 14th, 16th, 18th, and 27th Continental Infantry Regiments, commanded respectively by Cols. Ebenezer Learned, Asa Whitcomb, John Glover, Paul Sargent, Edmund Phinney, and Israel Hutchinson, and usually referred to by the colonel’s name. See Israel Hutchinson, “Orderly Book,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xvi (1878), 336–364.
48 Hutchinson, “Orderly Book,” p. 347.
49 Hutchinson, “Orderly Book,” p. 347.
50 Hutchinson, “Orderly Book,” p. 348.
51 Hutchinson, “Orderly Book,” p. 348.
52 John Hancock to Philip Schuyler, July 13, 1776, Schuyler Papers, Letters received, pp. 133–134, Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library.
53 Schuyler to Gates, July 19, 1776, Schuyler Papers, Letter Book, ii, 262, Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library.
54 Schuyler to Hancock, July 20, 1776, Letter Book, ii, 266.
55 Hancock to Schuyler, December 30, 1776, Schuyler Papers, Letters received, p. 221, Manuscripts Division, New York Public Library.
56 William Heath, General Orders issued by Major General William Heath when in Command of the Eastern Department 23 May 1777–3 October 1777 (Brooklyn, 1890), pp. 6–7.
57 War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, ms.18791, National Archives, Record Group 93.
58 Heitman, Historical Register, p. 222.
59 Heitman, Historical Register, p. 222. See also Massachusetts Soldiers & Sailors of the Revolution (Boston, 1900), vii, which ascribes this date of rank to “Continental Army pay accounts.”
60 Camus, “Military Band,” pp. 294–300.
61 War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, ms. 20152, National Archives, Record Group 93.
62 Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York, 1967), p. 40.
63 Camus, “Military Band,” p. 402.
64 General Orders, August 19, 1778, as quoted in George Washington, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C., 1931–1944), xii, 337.
65 For further information on Crane’s Regimental Band, see Camus, Military Band, pp. 211–213, 294–300, 364–366.
66 New-Hampshire Gazette, February 15, 1783, as cited in Oscar G. Sonneck, Early Concert-Life in America (New York, 1969), p. 319.
67 Louis Pichierri, Music in New Hampshire, 1623–1800 (New York, 1960), p. 112.
68 Regimental Orders, June 9, 1783, orderly book of the 3d Regiment of Artillery, manuscript collection, New-York Historical Society.
69 Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band (Boston, 1961), p. 35.
1 John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al., 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1961), i, 341.
2 Some verses were attached to American caricatures. Evidently too few secular “single sheet” songs (which included music) were published in America to allow for substantial numbers of topical songs. Probably the unlocated editions of The Liberty Song (Evans 10881) and of Hopkinson’s Battle of the Kegs (Evans 16305) would qualify as “sheet music” if they could be examined.
3 “All that we can claim for the writers of these songs, is a manifest spirit of devotion to the cause and defiance to its enemies.” Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (New York, 1855), p. vi.
4 Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1941).
5 Bruce Granger, Political Satire in the American Revolution (Ithaca, N. Y., 1960).
6 For an extended discussion of the tune derivation see James Fuld, The Book of World Famous Music (New York, 1966), pp. 510–514.
7 For descriptions of the marching and the singing, see the Christian Science Monitor for August 28, 1963.
8 Henry Commager and Richard Morris, The Spirit of Seventy-Six (New York, 1958), ii, 892–893: “Except for a convivial song, here and there, set to traditional music, one cannot imagine the American soldiers actually singing the songs we have here: most of them are hothouse products.”
The chapter (22) which follows the above comment is titled “Songs and Ballads of the Revolution” and includes seventeen “Patriot” songs and five “Loyalist and British” songs. In this writer’s experience most of these twenty-two songs are quite singable for a musician who understands the genre and the period. The songs usually must be shortened for audiences in our impatient times, but length was no barrier to complete performance in the eighteenth century when the singing itself was a pastime. The vocabulary, the syntax, and the rhetoric of these songs pose difficulties for some singers and listeners today, but the vocabulary, the syntax, and the rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence and of Washington’s “Farewell Address” pose equal problems for some modern readers and listeners.
Specialists in American music may note that three song texts included among the “hothouse products” referred to above are “Chester” by William Billings, “Bunker Hill” by Nathaniel Niles and Andrew Law, and “Toast to Washington” by Francis Hopkinson. Three other song texts from that same chapter are included in the present study with their original music and so may be performed and judged for themselves. They are Liberty Tree, Halcyon Days of Old England, and [The Rebels].
9 Edith Schnapper, The British Union-Catalogue of Early Music, 2 vols. (London, 1957), ii, 744.
10 Irving Lowens has suggested that off-color texts associated with “Yankee doodle” may have been one of the reasons why the tune was not printed in America before 1794, even though it certainly was well known here by 1767. See the essay by Lowens in the facsimile reprint Benjamin Carr’s Federal Overture (1794) (Philadelphia, 1957), p. 2.
11 “When the king enjoys his own again,” first written about 1643, was one of the strongest royalist songs against the Commonwealth, a favorite of the Jacobites thereafter, and even used for songs in support of the Hanovers. Since at least one anti-Commonwealth song text entitled The World turned upside down (British Museum, Thomasen Tracts, 669.f.10 [47]) was published “to the tune” in 1646, it is one of the candidates for the “honour” of having been played at the Yorktown surrender. There is a nagging question as to whether this tune was well enough known under the title of “World turned upside down” to be so recognized at Yorktown in 1781, and disagreement on whether the basic tune remained popular long enough to serve this way. However, if a tune associated with the “World” title was played by the British during their surrender at Yorktown, this is the only such tune found so far that would not have been utterly ridiculous from their point of view. For copies of the tune and some of its texts, and for a further discussion of its history and the musical aspects of the surrender see the works noted below. Another of the “candidates” is discussed in this study. See fig. 86 and its accompanying text.
Joseph Ritson, Ancient Songs from the Time of King Henry the Third to the Revolution (London, 1790), pp. 229–231; William Chappell, Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Times, 2 vols. (London, 1859), ii, 434–439, reprinted in facsimile by Dover Publications (New York, 1961), hereafter abbreviated as Chappell; Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick, N.J., 1966), pp. 764–768, hereafter abbreviated as Simpson; Lewis Winstock, Songs and Music of the Redcoats (Harrisburg, 1970), pp. 80–82; and Raoul Camus, “The Military Band in the United States Army prior to 1834” (New York University, Ph.D. diss., 1969), pp. 341–351.
12 A. S. Collins, “Language 1660–1784,” in Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 4: From Dry den to Johnson, ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1957), pp. 134–140.
13 Arthur F. Schlesinger, Sr., “A Note on Songs as Patriotic Propaganda, 1765–1776,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., xi (1954), 79.
14 J. A. Leo Lemay, A Calendar of American Poetry in the Colonial Newspapers and Magazines and in the Major English Magazines through 1765 (Worcester, 1972), items 2055–2057, pp. 283–284. Also, American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, lxxx, part 2 (1971).
15 For publication details on these songs see Schnapper, British Union-Catalogue of Early Music, under the song titles. Copies of the songs may be found in the Julian Marshall Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
16 Granger, Political Satire, p. 48, cites a copy in London Chronicle, March 11, 1766, p. 236, which the writer has not seen.
17 Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy, ed. Thomas D’Urfey, 6 vols. (London, 1719–1720). Original sets are rare but C. L. Day, late scholar on the work of D’Urfey, described an anonymous reprint which appeared in 1876 as “extraordinarily accurate.” This 1876 reprint was reproduced in facsimile by Folklore Library Publishers Inc., 3 vols. (New York, 1959), with an introduction by Day.
18 Broadsides, Ballads &c. Printed in Massachusetts, 1639–1800, ed. Worthington C. Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, lxxv (1922), 208.
19 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Manuscript Collection (Abs n. d.-9). There is also a photostat copy in the Massachusetts Historical Society broadside collection.
20 Clifford Shipton and James Mooney, National Index of American Imprints through 1800, 2 vols. (Worcester, 1969), ii, 579.
21 Bill Bonyun et al., The American Revolution through Its Songs and Ballads (Wiscasset, Maine, 1961).
22 E. P. Richardson in “Four American Political Prints,” American Art Journal, (November 1974), 36–44, makes an interesting case for this caricature’s having been made by a Boston loyalist. However, it seems to this author to make more sense for a caricaturist in England not to know that Washington had been in command outside Boston for six months than it does for a Boston loyalist to ignore the fact.
23 British Museum, Prints and Drawings, Political and Personal Satires, nos. 3887, 4001, 4133, 4147, 4162, and 5688.
24 “Loyalist Rhapsodies,” Peter Force Papers, Series viii–d, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
1 Walton’s remark in The Compleat Angler (London, 1653 and subsequent editions) concerning broadsides is toward the end of Chapter 2, “The Second Day.”
2 The colonial Scottish settlers early acquired a reputation for their interest in celebrations and music. The same announcement adds: “I am desired to acquaint the Scots Gentlemen, That as the Meeting is fixt for St. Andrew’s-Day, partly to commemorate the Patron of their Country, it’s hoped they’ll Contribute to the carrying on and continuing the same, by the Favour of their Company and Encouragement.”
3 Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, The Ladies Wreath (Boston, 1837), p. 384.
4 Clifford K. Shipton, Isaiah Thomas, Printer (Rochester, N.Y., 1948), pp. 5–6.
5 Phillips Barry, unaware of the Restoration assertion of 1662, wrote in 1937: “the ‘first shot’ fired in the ‘thirty years’ war for the rights of ballad music,’ was our statement in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, xviii (1905), 124, that ‘the words constitute but one-half of a folksong; the air is no less an essential part.’” “American Folk Music” in Southern Folklore Quarterly, i (1937), No. 2, 38.
6 Bertrand H. Bronson, The Ballad as Song (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), p. 62.
7 See George Pullen Jackson, Spiritual Folk Songs of Early America (New York, 1937)., pp. 6, 18, 19; and Anne G. Gilchrist, “The Folk Element in Early Revival Hymns and Tunes,” Journal of the Folk-Song Society, viii, part 2 (1928), p. 63.
8 Barry, “American Folk Music,” p. 30.
9 Barry, “American Folk Music,” p. 33.
10 Patrick W. Joyce, Ancient Irish Music (Dublin, 1872), p. 22. Also cited in Barry, “American Folk Music,” p. 33.
11 Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1728, ed. Worthington C. Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 7th Ser., vii–viii (1911–1912), viii, 242. A photographic reprint in two volumes was issued by Frederick Ungar (New York, 1957).
12 Remains of Myles Coverdale, republished by George Pearson from the unique copy of Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes and Spiritual Songs in the Queens College Library, Oxford (Cambridge, Eng., 1846), p. 537.
13 Thomas Symmes, The Reasonableness of Regular Singing; or Singing by Note (Boston, 1720), p. 20.
14 See the excellent study by Samuel Eliot Morison, “The Reverend Seaborn Cotton’s Commonplace Book,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxii (1933–1937), 320–352. Morison points out on p. 321, “The fact that no printed version of the ballads that he copied can be found before 1660 need not alter the attribution of the copies to his undergraduate days since these ballads may well have been sung for years before they were printed, and doubtless older editions of the broad-sheets than those which have survived once existed.” Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick, N.J., 1966) gives the tunes and information about “Jockey’s jealousy,” p. 341, and “The damask rose; or, omnia vincit amor,” pp. 153–155, as well as “Gerhard’s mistresse,” pp. 250–252.
15 Bronson, Ballad as Song, p. 61.
16 Albert B. Friedman, The Ballad Revival (Chicago, 1961), p. 59.
17 Sir Charles Harding Firth, An American Garland: Being a Collection of Ballads Relating to America, 1563–1759 (Oxford, 1915), pp. xxiv–xxv, 86–87. A Friendly Invitation was entered in the registry March 20, 1638, as Firth discovered in Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640, 5 vols. (London, 1875–1894), iv, no. 387.
18 For the tune and information about “Tom a’ bedlam,” see Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 710–713, and William Chappell, The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time, 2 vols. (London, 1859; facsimile reprint, New York, 1965), 1, 335. There is an arrangement for virginals in Drexel ms. 5612, p. 99, as well as in John Gamble’s “Commonplace Book” (1659), no. 64, both mss at the New York Public Library.
19 All ballads listed in this paragraph can be found in Firth, An American Garland: The Summons to New England, no. 7; A Song beginning “New England is preparing a-pace,” no. 8; A West-Country Man’s Voyage to New England, no. 9, and The Quaker’s Farwel to England, no. 11.
20 The Sewall broadside is reproduced in Ola Elizabeth Winslow, American Broadside Verse from Imprints of the 17th and 18th Centuries (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1930), pp. 116–117, and Georgia A. Bumgardner, American Broadsides: Sixty Facsimilies [sic] Dated 1680–1800, Reproduced from Originals in the American Antiquarian Society (Barre, Mass., 1971), no. 31.
21 Samuel Sewall’s Diary, 1674–1729, has been published twice. The earliest complete edition was issued by the Massachusetts Historical Society in its Collections, 5th Ser., v–vii (1878–1882). A recent edition with more extensive notes was edited by M. Halsey Thomas and published in New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973. This quotation can be found in the former edition in vol. vi, pp. 27–28, and in the latter in vol. i, pp. 440–441.
22 The tune is also found in Maurice Frost, English and Scottish Hymn Tunes, c. 1543–1677 (London, 1953), pp. 207–208.
23 Webster’s Imperial Dictionary (Chicago, 1904), p. 1748.
24 The Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne, ed. James T. Osborn, modern spelling ed. (Oxford, 1962), p. 132.
25 It was James Franklin who urged young Ben to write verse: “My brother thinking it might turn to account, encouraged me to put me on composing occasional ballads.” See A. H. Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 10 vols. (New York, 1905–1907), i, 239; and Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, intro. Carl Van Doren (New York, 1951), p. 19, for an account of the ballad episode. There is a useful résumé about Edward Teach (or Thach), known as Blackbeard, in the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 1917), xix, 481–482.
26 The letter to Peter Franklin in Newport was first published under the title “Criticism on Musick” in the Massachusetts Magazine for July 1790, pp. 97–99. It is quoted in full in Oscar G. Sonneck, Suum Cuique: Essays in Music (Washington, D.C., 1916), pp. 59–84; see particularly p. 81.
27 In his New England History in Ballads (Boston, 1903), p. 56, Edward Everett Hale stated: “Mr. Ashton in his Real Sailor Songs (London, 1891), p. 79 and verso, disinterred the original Franklin—I suppose in the British Museum. It is very bad—as bad as it could be. But it bears every mark of being the original by Benjamin Franklin.” Charles O’Brien Kennedy in A Treasury of American Ballads (New York, 1954), pp. 4–6, was of the same opinion. However, since Ashton failed to mention the air “What is greater joy and pleasure,” neither Hale nor Kennedy went into the question of tunes although the latter declared: “we remember this one from our youth.” There is also a reprint of the Blackbeard ballad in C. H. Firth, Naval Songs and Ballads (London, 1908), xxxv, 167–169.
28 Chappell noted in 1859 that a copy of “‘How happy are young lovers’ . . . derived from the ballad of The Distracted Sailor” and was in turn to be sung “to the tune of ‘What is greater joy or pleasure,’ which carries the air a stage further back.” Ballad Literature and Popular Music, ii, 597.
29 “British Music at the Yorktown Surrender: ‘Welcome, Brother Debtor,’” pp. 593–595; and “St. George Tucker’s Journal at the Siege of Yorktown, 1781,” p. 392, both in William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., v (1948).
30 For the attribution to Francis Williams, see Edward Long, History of Jamaica, 2 vols. (London, 1774), ii, 476. In an eighteenth-century copy of the song in the Library of the Arsenal at Paris (mss.fr.6333) there is also a statement at the bottom of the page: “Les vers ont été composés par Francis Williams nègre de la Jamaique. Voyez, Histoire de cette isle par Edouard Long et la littérature des nègres p. 235 et suiv.” Actually the words in the English edition are more cautious: “it is said (I know not with what truth) that he composed the well known ballad of ‘Welcome, welcome brother debtor’ &c. But I have likewise heard the same attributed to a different author.” A single sheet folio in British Museum, g.307.(34*), credits Charles Coffey with the words.
31 The tune was also published in a beautifully engraved and illustrated edition with the text “Come and listen to my ditty” in George Bickham, The Musical Entertainer, 2 vols. (London, 1740; facsimile reprint New York, 1965), i, 54. There is an interesting set of keyboard variations in the British Museum dating from the 1770s entitled Hosier’s Ghost, or Wellcome, wellcome [sic], Brother Debtor. A Favorite Old Air, with Variations for the Harpsichord, or Piano Forte, etc. (Longman, Lukey &, Broderip: London, [n.d.]). I am indebted to Gillian Anderson for calling my attention to this publication.
32 There is a photographic edition of Good Newes from Virginia made from a copy (no. 100478) in the Public Record Office in London: Photostat Americana, 2d Ser. (Boston, 1940), no. 105. A reduced facsimile also appeared in W. H. Robinson, Catalogue 77 (London, 1948), opposite p. 103, and a facsimile and reprint in the William and Mary Quarterly, v, no. 3 (1948), 358. The Duke of Manchester copy was put up for sale at the Parke Bernet Gallery, New York, May 5, 1970, catalogue 3078, lot 22. The text was reprinted in Virginia Vetusta, ed. E. D. Neill (Albany, N.Y., 1885), pp. 147ff.
Christopher Brook wrote a Poem on the Late Massacre in Virginia (London, 1622), but he was not an eyewitness of the event. Capt. John Smith again discusses the Indian attack in the fourth book of his Generall Historie of Virginia (London, 1624) under the heading “The Massacre Upon the Two and Twentieth of March.”
33 Attempts to understand the Indian point of view were made but the educational efforts of Roger Williams and John Eliot never really took hold.
34 For a modern edition see Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst, I. Ser., xvi (1904), 134–135.
35 Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 13–16, gives detailed information on the many versions of “All you that love good fellows” and prints two of the early tunes. He does not discuss the 1724 and 1725 ballads published by J. Franklin. The London Prentice was published a number of times in Boston; the earliest surviving broadside was issued by Thomas Fleet in 1748 and was printed on the backs of papal indulgences captured by American privateers, presumably in the Caribbean.
36 Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (London, 1643), pp. 16–17 and 21.
37 The 1721 reprint of Some Meditations Concerning our Honourable Gentlemen and Fellow-Souldiers is in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 113.
38 Whoever W.W. was, he had two ideas in this ballad, one dealing with the actual struggle and the other with moralizing observations. The first half may have been written earlier.
39 From the back sheet of The New England Courant, No. 161, August 24, 1724: “On Wednesday next will be publish’d, and sold by James Franklin in Union Street An Excellent new Song, Enttuled [sic], The Rebels Reward; Or, English Courage display’d. Being a full Account of the Victory obtain’d over the Indians at Norrigiwock, &c. Illustrated with a curious Cut.” Though the authorship of this ballad is anonymous, it may have been written by Benjamin Franklin, Sr. It certainly has a similarity to The Voluntiers’ March. See footnote 41. Representative poems by Benjamin Franklin, Sr., are found in J. G. Loring, “The Franklin Manuscripts,” The Historical Magazine, iii (New York, 1859), 9, 50–51, 86–87.
40 Two other ballads concerning the third Indian War are: A Brief / Narrative, or Poem, / Giving an Account of the Hostile Actions of some Pagan Indians towards Lieutenant Jacob Tilton [and his] / brother Daniel Tilton, both of the town of Ipswich, as they were on board of a small vesse[l bound home]/ ward; which happened in the summer-time, in the year 1722. With an Account of th[e remarkable] / Exploits of the said Tiltons, and their victorious Conquest over their insulting enem[ies . . . ] (Newburyport – from a Reprint by J. Thomas and H. W. Tingus – Printed by W. & J. Gilman, No. 9, State Street. [Boston] June, 1834). The broadside is signed W.G. In Mather Byles, Poems on Several Occasions (Boston, 1744), there are verses “To the memory of a young commander slain in battle with the Indians in 1724” which may well have been conceived as a song.
41 There are excellent articles on The Voluntiers March in the Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast for 1933, no. 4, 3–9; no. 5, 17–19; no. 6, 3–4, by Phillips Barry and Fannie H. Eckstorm. The entire bulletin was reprinted as Publications of the American Folklore Society, xi (1960), with an introduction by Samuel P. Bayard.
42 The reason that so much more has been written about Lovewell’s fight than Capt. Harmon’s victory is perhaps due to the fact that The Rebels Reward broadside was “lost” for many years and only recently came to light. The only copy is in the Henry E. Huntington Library at San Marino, California.
43 Here again despite the word speak the ballad was sung. The American parodist probably considered his substitution sing a little clearer. One must be careful not to classify initially broadsides with similar wording as poetry rather than verse to be sung to a definite air or “to any tune that fits.”
44 For an account of the romance of the thirteen-year-old Susannah Rogers and the Rev. Jonathan Frye see “Susannah Rogers’ Elegy on Jonathan Frye” in Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast (1933), no. 6, 3–4.
45 Fannie H. Eckstorm pointed out in an extended article entitled “Pigwacket and Parson Symmes” in the New England Quarterly, ix (1936), 378–402, that owing to the efforts of the Rev. Thomas Symmes, both the official account and the ballad give the date of the fight as Saturday, May 8, although Sunday, May 9, was the day it really occurred. The reason for this change she believes was to protect the reputation of Chaplain Jonathan Frye who should not have been scalp-hunting on the Sabbath. See also Frederic Kidder, The Expedition of Capt. John Lovewell, and His Encounters with the Indians; including a Particular Account of the Pequaket Battle, with A History of that Tribe; and a Reprint of Rev. Thomas Symme’s Sermon (Boston, 1865). An excellent essay is “The Ballad of Lovewell’s Fight,” by Professor George Lyman Kittredge in Bibliographical Essays: A Tribute to Wilberforce Eames (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 93–127.
46 Edward F. Rimbault was the first to transcribe the flageolet tablature of “The baffled knight,” Child ballad no. 112, in his Musical Illustrations of Bishop Percy’s Reliques (London, 1850), p. 81. Bertrand H. Bronson, in Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, 4 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1959–1972), ii, 547–563, gives a large number of tunes both from England and America. The latter, primarily found in New England, are discussed in Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America (Philadelphia, 1963), p. 99. See also Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, p. 27.
47 The Chevy Chase tune used here, Bronson, Traditional Tunes, iii, 115, group b, no. 4, also called “In peascod time,” is described further in Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 368–371. The air goes back to 1600 and can be found in Drexel ms. 5612 and 5609, in the New York Public Library.
48 Other ballads in this study which call for the Chevy Chase tune are A Mournful Lamentation for the sad and deplorable Death of Mr. Old Tenor and A Poor Man’s Advice to his Neighbors (see below pp. 212–214 and pp. 290–292). Although not specified on the broadsides, a variety of sources indicate that The Grecian Daughter and Fair Rosamond were also sung to this famous tune (see below pp. 299–307).
49 A Brief Journal is also reproduced in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 119.
50 See The Journals of Henry Muhlenberg, trans. Theodore R. Tappert and John W. Doberstein, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1942–1958), i, 320.
51 For Pepperell’s paying the troops out of his own pocket see Joseph W. P. T. Frost, Sir William Pepperell, Bart. (1696–1759) (New York, 1951), p. 24; and for the phrase “a promise to pay . . . ,” see W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay, A Popular History of the United States (New York, 1876–1879), iii, 217.
52 Worthington C. Ford’s account concerning the demise of “Mr. Old Tenor” is in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xliii (1909–1910), 256ff. For his conclusion regarding several renderings, see p. 260.
53 There is a reproduction of A Mournful Lamentation for the sad and deplorable Death of Mr. Old Tenor in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 167.
54 The broadside Wonders Upon Wonders contains satirical words on Dr. Henry Sacheverell (? 1674–1724). Descending from a line of nonconformist English ministers, he was a political preacher who advocated the High Church and Tory cause between 1705 and 1709 when the Whigs were in power. Although the House of Commons ordered that he be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, the light sentence handed down in 1710 was considered a triumph for him, the High Church, and Tory party.
55 The Verses Relating to the Events of 1755 were probably written early in 1756. The transcription appearing in this text comes from a manuscript found among the papers of a family in Paxton, Massachusetts, which were transcribed no later than 1796 by Professor Franklin B. Dexter and sent to Samuel A. Green at the Massachusetts Historical Society. They were published only in the “Annual Meeting of April 1894,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2nd Ser., ix (1894), 3–5.
56 John and Alan Lomax in their American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York, 1935), pp. 525–527, give the words of a strange Braddock ballad with 8½ stanzas (it is incomplete) but no melody. The date in brackets is that of the battle.
57 See also Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 252–254.
58 The Ballad concerning the Fight between the English and French at Lake George is reproduced in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 121.
59 See Farmer and Moore, New Hampshire Collections, iii (1824), 218; and the article “Yankee Doodle” by Oscar G. Sonneck in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2d ed. (London, 1904–1910), v, 575–577.
60 The best studies on Yankee Doodle are by Oscar G. Sonneck. See his Report on “The Star Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia” “America” “Yankee Doodle” (Washington, D.C., 1909), pp. 79–164, 199, 214–217; and S. Foster Damon, Yankee Doodle (Providence, R.I., 1959). There is a collection of Yankee Doodle broadsides (Sabin 105958–105966) at the New York Public Library.
61 See “Winslow’s Journal” in Nova Scotia Historical Society, Collections, iii (1882–1883), 134, September 19th to Maj. John Handfield. On September 5th, while communicating the king’s orders to the inhabitants, he said: “The Part of Duty I am now upon what thoh [sic] Necessary is Very Disagreable to my natural make & Temper” (p. 94).
62 On the Valiant New England General is reproduced in Winslow’s American Broadside Verse, p. 123.
63 The eighteenth-century attitude was quite different from that of the romantic period as readers of Longfellow’s Evangeline will quickly realize.
64 For a discussion comparing “Souldiers life,” “Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor,” and “Tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day” see Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 773–775. Also, the Journal of the Folk Song Society (London, 1903), ii, 105ff. gives a twentieth-century survival of “Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor” clearly related to the traditional tune.
65 A copy of An Endeavour to animate and incourage our Soldiers is reproduced in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 125.
66 There is a reproduction of On the Landing of the Troops in Boston, 1758 in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 127.
67 Consult Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (London, 1909), pp. 503–505; and A. Doughty and G. W. Parmlee, The Siege of Quebec, 6 vols. (Quebec, 1909), iii, 201–237. It is perhaps difficult to conceive how greatly prized military songs were in former days. “How stands the glass around” is associated with such names as the Duke of Berwick, Gen. Wolfe, and Alexander Hamilton. See Harry Mac-Neill Bland and Virginia W. Northcott, “Life Portraits of Alexander Hamilton,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., xii (April 1955), 187–198.
68 The best summary of broadsides connected with Wolfe is found in W. R. Mac-Kenzie, Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (Cambridge, 1928), pp. 198–200. S. Foster Damon, Brown University: Harris Collection of American Poetry and Flays, Series of Old American Songs, Nos. 1 and 2 (Providence, R.I., 1936), has excellent notes on the Wolfe ballads and facsimile reproductions of the earliest printed versions of the tunes. The Scots also published an edition entitled Britannia; or, the Death of Wolfe. . . . (Printed and Sold by N. Stewart, Edinr.. [? 1770]).
69 Further light on “Bold Wolfe” can be found in Alan Lomax, Folk Songs of North America in the English Language (New York, 1960), p. 42. A recording of “Montcalm and Wolfe” by Frank Warner can be heard on Disc Record Album No. 611, New York.
70 Thomas Paine’s pen name was “Atlanticus.”
71 The torn copy of The Brave Grenadier . . . and the year 1759 is in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island.
72 Canada subjected is reproduced in Bumgardner, American Broadsides, no. 8.
73 “Logan water” (“Liggan water”) is given as the tune for King William in disguise . . . Sold at the Bible & Heart in Cornbill, Boston where may be had a variety of other Verses, Histories, &c. There is a copy of this early nineteenth-century imprint in the Massachusetts Historical Society. William Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius (London, 1725) was the first collection of Scottish songs with their airs. The second edition in two volumes appeared at Edinburgh in 1733. A facsimile reprint (Hatboro, Pa., 1962) was made of the latter edition. See also Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 457–460.
74 The author is indebted to Claude Simpson who in personal correspondence sent his transcription of the tablature suggesting it be modified to bring out its fife-and-drum character. The fitting and alterations were made by the author.
75 Epilogue of The Recruiting Officer in The Complete Works of George Farquhar, ed. Charles Stonehill, 2 vols. (London, 1930; reprinted New York, 1967), ii, 111. The victories referred to by Farquhar were: Vigo Bay (October 12, 1702) where the British aided by the Dutch sank and captured a good part of the treasure fleet from the New World despite protection from Spanish and French ships; Schellenberg (July 2, 1704), Marlborough’s first triumph over the French in Bavaria; and Blenheim (August 13, 1704), where the great English general with Prince Eugene won the most notable battle of the War of the Spanish Succession.
76 The Virginia Gazette for September 10, 1736, speaks of a stage representation of The Recruiting Officer in Williamsburg by “the Gentlemen and Ladies of this Country.” George Washington attended a performance in 1771. See John W. Molnar, Songs from the Williamsburg Theatre (Williamsburg, Va., 1972), pp. 33, 204.
77 For a discussion of “The grenadiers march” see also Lewis Winstock, Songs and Music of the Redcoats (London, and Harrisburg, Pa., 1970), pp. 28–29, 33–36, and 62–63.
78 For a full account of Zenger and his significance see Livingston Rutherford, Peter Zenger (New York, 1904; reprinted New York, 1967); James Alexander, A brief narrative of the Case and Trial of Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York weekly journal by James Alexander, ed. Stanley Nider Katz (Cambridge, 1963); and Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941).
79 Rutherford, Peter Zenger, pp. 45–46, and Alexander, A brief narrative, p. 18. A copy of the original broadside may be found at the New York Public Library. Reproductions may be found in Rutherford facing p. 38 and in the text edited by Katz, pp. 109–111. Chief Justice DeLancey’s charge to the Grand Jury, October 15, 1734, is worth quoting: “You must have heard of two Scandalous Songs that are handed about, it is your Duty to enquire the Author, Printer and Publisher of them. Some times heavy, half-witted Men get a knack of Rhyming, but it is Time to break them of it, when they grow Abusive, Insolent, and Mischievous with it.” Rutherford, Peter Zenger, p. 39. The order (Rutherford, Peter Zenger, p. 40) issued by the Supreme Court read:
“At a Supreme Court of Judicature held for the Province of New-York, at the City of New-York, Octob. 19, 1734. Present the Honourable James DeLancey, Esq; Chief Justice, the Honourable Frederick Philipse, Esq; second Justice.
“The Grand Jury having yesterday Presented two Scandalous and Seditious Songs or Ballads, lately dispersed about this City, one entitled, A Song made upon the Election of New Magistrates for this City; the other entituled, A Song made on the foregoing Occasion, both highly defaming the present Administration of His Majesty’s Government in this Province, tending greatly to inflame the Minds of His Majesty’s good Subjects, and to disturb and destroy that Peace and Tranquility which ought to subsist and be maintained in this Colony and in all other well governed Communities; of which Virulent, Scandalous and Seditious Songs or Ballads, they have not been able, on a strict enquiry, to discover either the Author, Printer or Publisher. It is therefore Ordered by the Court That said Virulent, Scandalous and Seditious Songs or Ballads be burnt before the City-Hall, sitting the Court, by the hands of the common Hangman, or Whipper, on Monday, the 21st of this Instant, at 12 o’Clock, and that the High-Sheriff of this City and County do take Order accordingly.”
80 Rutherford, Peter Zenger, pp. 70–71, and Alexander, A brief narrative, pp. 22ff. and 62.
81 For further data on “To all you ladies now at land,” see Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 647–651. There is a modern edition by John Edmunds in A Williamsburg Songbook . . . Selected and Set for Medium Voice and Keyboard (Williamsburg, Va., 1964), pp. 41–43.
82 “Now, now you Tories all shall stoop,” or “Hey boys up go we,” was extremely popular in the eighteenth century. Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 304–308, points out that “more than fifty broadsides were written to the tune under one or another of its names and most of these pieces were on political subjects.” Songs critical of British authority were not treated lightly nor could one speak disparagingly of the king as the following document from the records of York County, Virginia, printed in Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, ii, No. 3 (Richmond, Va., 1921), 159, proves:
“At a Court held for York County, July the 19th, 1725. Present Lawrence Smith, Graves Packe, Thomas Nelson, Samuel Timson. Gent., Justices.
“William Robertson, Gent., attorney for our sovereign Lord King George, informs the court that Elizabeth Hansford, the wife of Thomas Hansford, did publicly sing a scandalous and opprobrious song, highly reflecting upon our said Lord the King, and also did curse and revile our said Lord the King, as in the informacon is set forth, to which she pleaded not guilty, thereupon a jury, to wit: Jones Irwin, foreman, Robert Sheild, John Robinson &c were sworn to try the issue & they haveing heard the evidence on both sides retired & being agreed on their verdict returned to the bar & delivered the same in these words: We find the deft guilty of singing the Song that is expressed in the informacon, which verdict on the mocon of the sd Attorney of our Lord the King is admitted to record, and thereupon it is considered by the court and adjudged that the Deft be fined the sum of twenty shillings for the use of our said Lord the King & ordered that the Defent & Thomas Hansford her Husband pay the same with costs als Exo.”
The Thomas Hansford mentioned above was the grandson of the Thomas Hansford, hanged by Sir William Berkeley in Bacon’s Rebellion. John Edmunds in A Williamsburg Songbook, p. 131, suggests that “A ballad on quadrille” containing satirical verses about George II from John Watts’ The Musical Miscellany, 6 vols. (London, 1729–1731), v, 193, was the sort of song for which Elizabeth Hansford was fined. Edmunds prints all ten verses together with the tune and a harmonization, pp. 129–130.
83 Albert Bushnell Hart, American History Told by Contemporaries, 5 vols. (New York, 1897–1929), ii (1898), 145ff., cites documents of the period which throw light on the reactions in England.
84 The resolutions of the congress of 1765 are in Henry Steele Commager, Documents of American History (New York, 1968), p. 58.
85 “William Almy to Elisha Story,” in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 3rd Ser., lvi (1921–1922), 234–237, especially 235–236.
86 There were several tunes with a “tantara rara” refrain and Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, gives “The crossed couple,” or “Tantara rara tantivy,” pp. 143–145, and “Sing tantara rara,” pp. 664–666. The air selected comes from Chappell, Ballad Literature and Popular Music, ii, 438.
87 “The Speech on the Stamp Act, January 14, 1766,” in Old South Leaflets No. 199 (Boston, 1908), viii, 451.
88 Several ballads celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act but A New Song . . . to the Tune, A late worthy old Lyon has the most amusing text. The American Musical Miscellany (Northampton, 1798) prints the “Old lyon” tune under the name “The hobbies,” pp. 84–85, song no. 31. A few sentences from the opening statement “To The Public” are worth quoting since they are concerned with problems of texts and tunes: “The Editors of the American Musical Miscellany, present the public with the following collection of Songs, accompanied by notes:— And whenever they have found the same words of a song sung in different tunes, (which is not unfrequently the case) they have endeavoured to select such notes as, in their opinion, were best adapted to the words. . . . Their aim has been to cull, from a great variety of ancient Songs, such as have been, at all times, generally approved.” (Facsimile reprint: New York, Da Capo Press, 1972; pp. v–vi.) A Newport, Rhode Island, broadside of May 1766, Glorious News, Just received from Boston (a copy is at the New-York Historical Society), publicized the event by quoting from the London Gazette: “Westminster, March 18th, 1766. . . . Yesterday morning about eleven o’clock a great number of North-American Merchants went in their coaches from the King’s Arms tavern in Cornhill to the House of Peers, to pay their duty to his Majesty, and to express their satisfaction at his signing the Bill for Repealing the American Stamp-Act, there was upwards of fifty coaches in the procession.”
89 The tune “Heart of oak” with words by David Garrick first appeared in John Gay’s pantomime, Harlequin’s Invasion (London, 1759). The phrase “this wonderful year” in the opening stanza alludes to the successive victories of Minden, August 1; Quebec, September 13; and Quiberon Bay, November 20, 1759. For further discussion of the tune, consult Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 299–301.
90 See the chapter “A Song for American Freedom, July 1768,” in The Writings of John Dickinson (Philadelphia, 1895), pp. 419–432. The letter is given in full on p. 421.
91 For further details about The Liberty Song see Damon, Series of Old American Songs, no. 3, which also includes a facsimile reproduction of the tune as printed on p. 34 of Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanack (1769); Evans 11112.
92 John Adams’ account of a Dorchester dinner at which both The Liberty Song and the Massachusetts Song of Liberty were sung can be found in John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al., 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1961), i, 341; and in the opening of Arthur F. Schrader’s study in this volume.
93 Evans 11526 describes the second printing of The Parody Parodized.
94 Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (New York, 1856; reprinted New York, 1969), p. 45. The Massachusetts Song of Liberty was reissued as a broadside in 1812 by Nathaniel Coverly, Jr., of Boston when anti-British feelings were again at fever pitch.
95 The tune “Come jolly Bacchus” has had various names. In The Dancing Master (1718), and in Walsh’s The Second Book of the Compleat Dancing Master (London, 1719), the melody is called “Frisky Jenny, or, the tenth of June” (James II’s birthday). In Coffey’s The Beggar’s Wedding (1729), it became the “First of August,” or “Glorious First of August” (the date of George I’s accession in 1714). However, in Coffey’s The Devil to Pay (1731), he called the air “Come jolly Bacchus, god of wine,” the name by which it was best known here. Full details can be found in Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 90–92.
The tune was also used in 1739 for a song celebrating Admiral Vernon’s relatively unimportant capture of Portobello. Vernon was the much criticized British naval officer in the unsuccessful Cartagena attack of 1741. The British admiral, an impressive figure, was known as “Old Grog,” the nickname deriving from his coat of grogram cloth. This word was given to the drink of rum mixed with water which he served daily to his sailors as a form of rationing to curb drunkenness. The London broadside is entitled English Courage Displayed; or Brave News from Admiral Vernon; its text is published in Firth, Naval Songs and Ballads, pp. 177–178.
There is also a pertinent Boston broadside: Some Excellent Verses / On Admiral Vernon’s taking the Forts and Castles of Carthagena, / In the Month of March last. / . . . (Sold at the Heart and Crown in Cornhill, [1741]). Evans 4810; Ford 759. No tune is specified for the nonexistent victory but there is a naive woodcut of the naval attack on the forts.
96 See Schrader’s discussion of The New Massachusetts Liberty Song, no. 7 in his study in this volume, pp. 130–134; and Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Music for Patriots, Politicians and Presidents (New York, 1975), pp. 26–37.
97 For an account of the “British grenadiers,” see Lewis Winstock, Songs and Music, pp. 29–35. For further details about the words, see Schlesinger, “A Note on Patriot Songs as Propaganda,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., xi (1954), 80–81.
98 This copy of Walter’s Grounds and Rules of Musick Explained (Boston, 1760) is at the Boston Public Library.
99 Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York, 1970), pp. 195–196.
100 Gilchrist, “The Folk Element in Early Revival Hymns and Tunes,” pp. 83–84.
101 For further information about “Confesse” see Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 136–137.
102 Arthur Schlesinger discusses the Boston Tea Party satires in his study “A Note on Patriot Songs as Propaganda,” pp. 77–88.
103 Schlesinger, in “A Note on Patriot Songs as Propaganda,” pp. 79–80, quotes the full text of A New Song. To the plaintive Tune of Hosier’s Ghost from a copy of the Virginia Gazette for January 20, 1774. He was apparently unaware of the Norwich broadside. A ballad entitled Three Ill-fated tea ships is also in Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, pp. 55–58. See also Schrader’s discussion of A New Song, no. 8 in his study in this volume, pp. 134–138.
104 In 1739, Richard Glover wrote verses entitled “Hosier’s Ghost” in reference to the deaths of Admiral Hosier and his men at Portobello in 1726 and 1727 (see text, p. 176) and its later capture by Admiral Vernon during the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1730–1741) (see footnote 95). These verses were sung to the tune “Come and listen to my ditty, or, the sailor’s complaint,” but the verses became so popular that the old tune acquired the name “Hosier’s ghost.” The tune was also labeled “Cease rude Boreas,” and “Welcome brother debtor.” See Chappell, Ballad Literature and Popular Music, ii, 597–598; and footnotes 29–31, and 94 above.
105 Schlesinger, in “A Note on Patriot Songs as Propaganda,” p. 84, refers to the American Parody on “Rule Britannia.” It is interesting that the song with the original English words was published a number of times in this country prior to the War of 1812.
106 “Rule Britannia” has inspired many composers to write works based on it. See Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 10 vols. (London, 1954), vii, 330, for a good summary of its history.
107 The Scottish musical influence in Britain and the colonies was a marked one in the second half of the eighteenth century.
108 The literary allusions to Trulla and Hudibras in the ballad text refer to Samuel Butler’s famous mock romance which satirized the hypocrisy of the Puritans. One of the principal sections of the poem described how Trulla, the profligate woman, triumphed over Hudibras the hero of the burlesque epic. J——nny S——tt, later General John Morin Scott, was a noted lawyer and defender of the Sons of Liberty. Sawney M’D——g—ll referred to Alexander McDougall, sometimes known as the “American Wilkes” for his outspoken criticism of the Crown. King S——rs was Capt. Isaac Sears, active in leading mob demonstrations and a prominent member of the New York Committee of Fifty-One. P——r V—n B——k was Peter van Brugh Livingston, a strong defender of the popular party. He along with McDougall and Sears resigned from the committee in 1774 to protest the attempt of the conservative merchants to dominate its decisions.
109 Bronson, Traditional Tunes, i, 354–361, gives a superb summary of “The Abbot of Canterbury,” or “Derry down,” tunes. See also Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad, pp. 52–53; and William Chappell, A Collection of National English Airs, 2 vols. (London, 1838–1840), ii, no. 9a.
110 Sir Philip Sidney speaks of “Chevy Chase” in his Apology for Poetry (London, 1595), edited by Edward Arber (London, 1868), p. 9: “I never heard the olde song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart mooved more than with a Trumpet: and yet is sung by some blinde Crouder, with no rougher voyce than rude stile; which being so evill apparrelled in the dust and cobwebbs of that uncivill age, what would it worke tyrmmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pinder?” For Joseph Addison’s lengthy discussion on “the old Song of Chevy Chase” see The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (Oxford, 1965), vol. i, no. 70 (May 21, 1711), 297–303; and no. 74 (May 25, 1711), 315–364. Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 3 vols. (London, 1765) has a commentary and the text in vol. i, book iii, pp. 231–246.
111 The modern comments on Chevy Chase (known to Sir Walter Scott and Professor Child as The Battle of Otterborn) are numerous and for its survival in this country readers should consult Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad, pp. 110–111; Arthur Kyle Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va., 1929; reprinted 1969), pp. 416–418; Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, British Ballads from Maine (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1929), pp. 243–248; Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 96–101; and Robert S. Thompson, “The Transmission of Chevy-Chase,” Southern Folklore Quarterly, xxxix (Mar., 1975), 63–82.
112 The Spectator, i, no. 70 (May 21, 1711), 297–298.
113 For an account of the widespread influence of the story see Adolphe de Ceuleneer, La charité romaine dans la littérature et dans l’art (Antwerp, 1920); also in Annales de l’Académie Royale d’Archéologie de Belgique (Bruxelles, 1919), lxvii, 6e sér. tome vii, pp. 175–206. The Vermont Spooner imprint is described in Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1968), ii, 23–24, No. 1384, and fig. 8. For information on the various Windsor editions, see Marcus A. McCorison, Vermont Imprints 1778–1820 (Worcester, 1963), Nos. 486 (1798), 1078 (1809), 1173 (1810), and 1292 (1811).
114 Rubens’ Cimon and Piro is today at the Hermitage in Leningrad. There is a copy of the John Smith print at the New York Public Library. At the bottom of the Smith print, in the middle of the page, is the inscription Roman Charity; in the left corner, Reubens [sic] pinx; and in the right corner, I. Smit. ex.
115 It may logically be argued that RES stands for the name of the engraver but, since for more than half a century specialists have been unable to find anyone with these initials and the John Smith rendering of the Rubens canvas unquestionably inspired the Alden Spooner imprint, the R(ubens) E(xcudit) S(mith) suggestion is certainly a possibility.
116 The Roxburgbe Ballads, ed. William Chappell and J. W. Ebsworth, 9 vols. (Hertford, Eng., 1871–1899), viii, 4–6. The editor also calls attention to another undated broadside, A Worthy Example of a Vertuous Wife, who fed her Father with her own Milk, being condemned to be starved to death, and afterwards pardoned by the Emperor. The tune is, Flying Fame. . . . (Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere and William Gilbertson [n.p., n.d.]).
117 Bishop Percy gives an account of Fair Rosamond and a version compiled from black letter copies in the Pepys collection. See Percy, Reliques, ii, book ii, no. 5, 133–145. See also Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 673–675. The widow Franklin was Ann, wife of Benjamin Franklin’s half brother James. James left Boston for Newport, Rhode Island, in 1727 and died there in 1735.
118 Oscar G. Sonneck, in Francis Hopkinson: The First American Poet-Composer (Washington, D.C., 1905), pp. 36–39, discusses the relationship between Hopkinson and Robert Bremner.
119 The numerous editions of Children in the Woods should be carefully analyzed. From 1768 to 1800 Evans lists nos. 41808, 42030, 45849, 46410, 29114–17, 29955, 35086, and 48390. For further data consult Margaret Dean-Smith, A Guide to English Folk-Song Collections (London, 1954), p. 51. Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 103–105, is as usual most informative. G. Malcolm Laws, American Balladry from British Broadsides (Philadelphia, 1957), pp. 290–291, gives details of English, Irish, and Scottish broadsides.
120 The comments on the Two Children in the Wood in The Spectator, i, no. 85 (June 7, 1711), 361–362. This ballad is also given an important place in Percy’s Reliques, iii, book ii, no. 18, 170–177, and in Roxburghe Ballads, ii, 214–221. An alternate tune name in the seventeenth century was “Rogero.”
121 A song about the ballad was also issued as sheet music: The Children In The Wood, / A Favorite Ballad, / For The Harpsichord Or Piano Forte (New York Printed & Sold at G. Gilfert’s Music Store / No. 177 Broadway) includes parts for “Guittar” and “Ger. Flute,” 2 p.
122 See The Spanish Lady’s Love in Percy, Reliques, ii, book ii, no. 23, 227–231, and in Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 655–656.
123 See Chappell, Ballad Literature and Popular Music, i, 186, and Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 677–678.
124 For Barbara Allen and other broadsides consult Coffin, British Traditional Ballad, pp. 82–85. See also Charles Seeger’s analytical study of “Versions and Variants of the Tunes of ‘Barbara Allen,’” Selected Reports, i, no. 1 (Los Angeles/Berkeley, 1966), 120–167; and Mieczyslaw Kolinski, ‘“Barbara Allen’: Tonal versus Melodic Structure,” Ethnomusicology, xii, no. 2 (1968), 208–218, and xiii, no. 1 (1969), 1–73.
125 William S. Powell, “A Connecticut Soldier under Washington: Elisha Bostwick’s Memoir of the First Years of the Revolution,” in William and Mary Quarterly, Ser. 3, vi (1949), no. 1, 104–105. See also Bronson, Traditional Tunes, p. 215, group ad, no. 35.
126 Anne G. Gilchrist, “‘Death and the Lady’ in English Balladry,” Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, iv (1941), 38.
127 This Death and the Lady broadside is in Bumgardner, American Broadsides, no. 31. The number of editions which appeared prior to 1800 is not certain, but besides 42033, Evans also lists 30317 and 43742. See Ford 3057 to 3061 for other editions.
128 Roxburghe Ballads, vii, viii–x; iv, 29.
129 Chappell in his National English Airs, p. 141, said that there is an affinity between the old “Death and the lady” tune, better known as “Fortune my foe,” and the more current version in the early eighteenth century. Also, the folk versions beginning “Fair lady, lay your costly robes aside” are definitely related to both. See James Henry Dixon, Ancient poems, ballads, and songs of the Peasantry of England, taken down from oral recitation (London, 1846), xvii, 24–28; and Robert Bell, ed., Early Ballads illustrative of history, traditions and customs; also Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England . . . (London, 1877; reissued Detroit, 1968), pp. 252–255. The latter is an amplification of Dixon’s book.
130 Gilchrist, “‘Death and the Lady’ in English Balladry,” pp. 37–48.
131 A Hymn, Composed by the Reverend Mr. Whitefield . . . is reproduced in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 51.
132 For the authorship of Charles Wesley consult Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology (New York, 1957), p. 32.
133 Billings published his setting of A Hymn, Composed by the Reverend Mr. Whitefield in The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778), p. 3, and in subsequent editions.
The survival of the Wesley words to a folk tune is extremely interesting. One wonders whether the Kentucky Hard-Shell Baptists had a broadside of the original Boston edition or a later printing among their possessions. The Lomax recording in the Library of Congress (G, no. 1941) preserves the manner of intoning the hymn, and a metronome speed d=60 is given in his Our Singing Country, p. 38.
134 The reader is urged to consult Coffin’s excellent analysis of the Lord Bakeman (Bateman) story in British Traditional Ballad, pp. 58–60, and Bronson’s assemblage of “Lord Bakeman” melodies in Traditional Tunes, i, 409–465.
135 For a bibliographical description of The Happy Ship Carpenter broadside, see John E. Alden, Rhode Island Imprints 1727–1800 (New York, 1949), p. 123, no. 604. Another copy sold at the Heart & Crown in Cornhill, Boston, has the title True Love Well Rewarded. Ford 3158 is entitled The Happy Ship-Carpenter; or Heroic Damsel, Being a Curious New Ballad, to an excellent New Tune.
136 “The Young Seaman’s Misfortune,” in Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., The Pepys Ballads, 8 vols. (Cambridge, 1929–1932), iv, 224, is the same ballad with a different title. Note that the lines which follow the printer’s address on the Providence broadside document the brisk continuation of the hawking and peddling of ballads to which Cotton Mather objected a century earlier.
137 The “Spinning wheel” air used for The Happy Ship-Carpenter can also be found on song sheets, and in Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, 4 vols. (London, 1724), ii, 187.
Barry stressed the fact that folk singers not only change notes but also meter to accommodate the verse. “Such alteration of rhythmic structure . . . [may] operate to adapt an air originally fitted for a stanza in anapaestic metre—12s or 11s—to one in double common metre, that of the Irish Come-all-ye or street ballad, in which so many of the woods songs are written. One might imagine, for instance, a folk composer, lacking an air to a ballad in double common metre, thus changing the rhythm of the familiar air to ‘Lord Randall’ so that it might be used for ‘The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks’” (Barry, “American Folk Music,” p. 36).
138 The Connecticut Historical Society has a copy of The Factor’s Garland (Concord, N.H., 1793) in chapbook form (Bristol-Evans b7241, mp 45768). Regarding the Massachusetts imprints, see Ford 3012–3016.
139 See Phillips Barry’s observations on “Elegies” and “Lines” Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the North East (1934), no. 8, p. 5.
140 For the tune “Penitent” see Gilchrist, “Folk Element in Early Revival Hymn Tunes,” p. 72.
141 The tunes “Retirement” and “Davisson’s retirement” are given (without text) in Jackson, Spiritual Folk-Songs, p. 123.
142 A facsimile of An Exhortation to young and old is in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 103.
143 “The broom, the bonny broom” (Child ballad no. 217) goes back to the earliest edition of The Dancing Master (1651) with its popularity lasting into the nineteenth century.
144 For an earlier reference to “Come all you worthy Christians,” see the text, pp. 187–188, and fig. 121. For another related melody, “Clamandra,” see Jackson, Spiritual Folksongs, no. 93, pp. 119–120. A similar version, “Burns’ farewell,” can be found in George W. Chase, Masonic Harp (Boston, 1858), p. 103, where the tune is referred to as “the original air.”
145 See footnote 129 and fig. 203 of this study for the related tune, “Fortune my foe.”
146 A facsimile of Father Abbey’s Will (Ford 608) appears in Bumgardner, American Broadsides, no. 52, and in Winslow, American Broadside Verse, p. 163. Besides the various American broadside editions, the text was reprinted in the Massachusetts Magazine for November 1794. A privately printed edition with notes was published by John Langdon Sibley at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1864. See Ford 609–618 for later editions.
147 For John Seccomb see Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, viii, 481–490.
148 The most complete study of broadsides and periodical publications of John Seccomb’s humorous verses is George T. Goodspeed, “Father Abbey’s Will,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, New Ser., lxxiii (1961), pp. 18–37. For Seccomb’s authorship see pp. 26, 28, 29–30.
149 The copy reproduced here is the one purchased by the homesick Tory Samuel Curwen (Harvard, A.B. 1735), August 1, 1782.
150 Goodspeed, “Father Abbey’s Will,” p. 30.
151 Bronson, Traditional Tunes, i, lx.
152 I am indebted to Mr. J. A. Parkinson at the Music Library of the British Library, London, for this discovery.
153 Helen Hartness Flanders and Margaret T. Olney, Ballads Migrant in New England (New York, 1953), pp. 14–16.
154 See footnote 4.
155 “London is a fine town,” or “Our Polly is a sad slut,” air no. 7 in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728), was extremely popular in the early eighteenth century. Not only was it included in The Dancing Master but it was set to seven different texts in Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–1720). See also Simpson, British Broadside Ballads, pp. 460–466.
156 “A la mode de France,” also called “Nonesuch,” probably received its tide when Queen Henrietta Maria was in Holland during the great Civil War (1642 or 1643) raising money and troops for the cause of her husband, the unfortunate Charles I. The original broadside has not survived but the words were printed in Rump (1662), i, 27, to which we have referred above. Cecil Sharp gives a harmonized version in Country Dance Tunes, set iv, p. 5.
157 There is a copious literature about Capt. Kidd. Opinion is divided regarding his role as a pirate, his culpability for murder, and the political aspects of his trial. The British Dictionary of National Biography article written by John Knox Laughton states that Kidd was a victim of the faction opposing the Whig government and was sentenced on insufficient evidence. Frank Monaghan in the Dictionary of American Biography believed that “Kidd was found guilty upon clear and weighty evidence.” Sir Cornelius Neale Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd (New York, 1911), Ralph D. Paine, The Book of Buried Treasure (New York, 1911), pp. 26–129, Homer H. Cooper, “William Kidd, Gendeman,” in The American Mercury for November 1924, pp. 337–346, and Hugh F. Rankin, The Golden Age of Piracy (Williamsburg, Va., 1969), pp. 50–64, are on the miscarriage-of-justice side while Graham Brooks, The Trial of Captain Kidd (Edinburgh, 1930), and others think he received his just deserts. This account of Kidd’s life has been taken from these various sources. See also J. Judd, “Lord Bellomont and Captain Kidd,” New-York Historical Society, Quarterly, xlvii (1958), 67–74; L. H. Leder, Robert Livingston (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), especially chapter vi; C. C. Gardiner, Lion Gardiner and his Descendants (St. Louis, Mo., 1890), pp. 100–101; Morton Pennypacker, “Captain Kidd,” New York History, xxv (1944), 482–531; and Frederic de Peyster, The Life and Administration of Richard, Earl of Bellomont (New York, 1879); and above all William Hallam Bonner, Pirate Laureate: The Life & Legends of Captain Kidd (New York, 1947).
158 Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1932), xi, 93.
159 Dictionary of American Biography, v, 367.
160 Bonner, Poet Laureate, p. 37.
161 Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1917), xi, 94.
162 Hugh F. Rankin, The Golden Age of Piracy, p. 60.
163 Dictionary of National Biography, xi, 94.
164 Hugh F. Rankin, The Golden Age of Piracy, p. 80.
165 Dictionary of American Biography, v, 368.
166 Dictionary of National Biography, xi, 94.
167 Dalton, The Real Captain Kidd, pp. 2.04–205.
168 For the contemporary literature, see The arraignment, tryal, and condemnation of Captain William Kidd, for murther and piracy &c. (London, Printed for J. Nutt, 1701); Paul Lorraine, The Ordinary of Newgate his Account of the behaviour . . . of Captain W. Kidd and other Pirates . . . executed May 23, 1701 (London, 1701); and A True Account of the behaviour and last dying speeches of . . . W.K. and the rest of the Pirates that were executed . . . 23rd of May, 1701 (London, 1701).
169 Dictionary of American Biography, v, 369.
170 Just why the captain’s name was changed from William to Robert is not known.
171 The best discussion of Kidd broadsides is in MacKenzie, Ballads and Sea Songs of Nova Scotia, pp. 267–269. The words of the earliest English printing are in Firth, Naval Songs and Ballads, pp. 134–137. Laws, American Balladry, pp. 158–159, lists American texts and tunes. Hale, New England History in Ballads, pp. 37–40, prints all twenty-five verses. Lomax, Folk Songs of North America, p. 70, speaks of the ballad of Capt. Kidd, pp. 6 and 15, and the use of the traditional tune with religious words, p. 70.
172 Bronson, Ballad as Song, p. 23, in his chapter entitled “Samuel Hall’s Family Tree,” says of the “Put in all” tune that it “is in all probability the one we are seeking of ‘Chimney Sweep.’” See also Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 672–675.
173 For religious borrowings of “Captain Kidd” tunes, see Jackson, Spiritual Folk-Songs, no. 142, pp. 159–160; Down East Spirituals, pp. 259ff.; and Another Sheaf of White Spirituals, pp. 27ff., 37ff., 180ff., and 196.
174 The quotation from Mrs. Hogg is given on the back of the frontispiece of Leslie Shepard, The Broadside Ballad: A Study in Origins and Meaning (London, 1962). Although not concerned with colonial broadsides, this is one of the best books on the subject as a whole and well worth reading.
175 For further details on William and Margaret (Fair Margaret and Sweet William) see Bronson, Traditional Tunes, ii, 155–188. George Saintsbury’s observation is in the Cambridge History of English Literature, 12 vols. (Cambridge, Eng., 1907–1927), ix, 185–186; quoted also in Evelyn Wells, The Ballad Tree (New York, 1950), p. 208.
176 The pre-nineteenth-century printed ballad of this type, however, has been largely ignored. I hope to examine this branch of the early broadside as well as certain aspects of other early verse in a subsequent article.
177 Morison, “Seaborn Cotton’s Commonplace Book,” p. 342: “I have not reproduced in full some of the broader quotations.”
178 Readers of this paper should study Sharp’s analyses and comments on folk music in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (New York, 1917), written with Olive Campbell.