Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Popular music of the olden time > Volume 2

REIGN OF CHARLES II.
501
Chorus.
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Love and wine are the bonds that fasten us all, Mankind for each trifle their lives would re-
The world, but for these, to confusion would sign ; [out thinking,
fall : They'd not value dull life, nor could live with-
Were it not for the pleasures of love and good Nor would kings rule the world, but for love
wine, and good drinking.
BONNY NELL.
From one of the earliest editions of Playford's Apollo's Banquet, without a
title page, probably of 1670.
In Westminster Drollery, 3rd edit., 1674, is a song beginning " A blithe and
bonny Country Lass ;" and in the second stanza are these lines : —
" When as the wanton girl espied
The means to make herself a bride,
She simpered much like bonny Nell"
I suppose Nell Gwyn to be intended, and that this tune is also named from her.
Dr. Richard Corbett, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, wrote some verses to a
tune of Bonny Nell, which could not be sung to this air ; and, as Dr. Corbett was
a singer, and not likely to mistake the rhythm, I have no doubt of there having been
another tune, under the same name, and of earlier date. " After he was D.D. ," says
Aubrey, " he sang ballads at the Cross of Abingdon. On a market day, he and
some of his comrades were at the tavern by the Cross (which, by the way, was
then the finest in England) , and a ballad singer complained that he had no cus-
tom ; he could not put off" his ballads. The jolly Doctor put off his gown, and
put on the ballad singer's leathern jacket ; and, being a handsome man, and
having a rare full voice, he presently had a great audience, and vended a large
number of ballads."
Dr. Corbett's verses commence —
" It is not yet a fortnight since
Lutetia entertain'd a prince;"
and are entitled " A grave Poem, as it was presented by certain divines by way