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

634 ENGLISH SONG AND BALLAD MUSIC.
ROGER DE COVEKLEY.
This still popular dance-tune, from -which Addison borrowed the name of Sir
Roger de Coverley in The Spectator, is contained in Playford's Division Violin,
1685; in The Dancing Master of 1696, and all subsequent editions; also in
many ballad-operas, and more recent publications.
In a manuscript now in my possession, •which was written about the commence-
ment of the last century, but contains tunes of a much earlier date, it is entitled
" Old Roger of Coverlay for evermore, a Lancashire Hornpipe ; " in The Dancing
Master, "Roger o/" Coverly;" in the ballad-opera of Polly, "Roger a Coverly;"
in Robin Hood, "Roger de Coverly;" and in Tom Jones, 1769, "Sir Roger
de Coverley."
There is a song with the burden, " brave Roger a Cauverly," in Rills to
purge Melancholy, vi. 31 ; and which I suppose should be to the tune, although
four bars of Old Sir Simon the Ring are printed above it. Both are in % time.
It commences very abruptly, as if it were a fragment, instead of an entire song —
" She met with a countryman But as for John of the Green,
In the middle of all the Green ; I care not a pin for he.
And Peggy was his delight, Dulls and bears, and lions and dragons,
And good sport was to be seen. And brave Roger a Cauverly ;
But ever she cried, Brave Roger, Piggins and wiggins, pints and flagons,
I'll drink a whole glass to thee ; U brave Roger a Cauverly."
These f tunes are not found in the earliest editions of The Dancing Master,
perhaps, because they were originally jig and hornpipe tunes, rather than country-
dances. I cannot, in any other way, account for not having met with early copies
of tunes to such well-known ballads as Arthur a Rradley (so frequently mentioned
by Elizabethan dramatists) , which, from the metre of the words, must have been
sung to an air in % time, and in all probability to this.
According to Ralph Thoresby's MS. account of the family of Calverley, of Cal-
verley, in Yorkshire, the dance of Roger de Coverley was named after a knight
who lived in the reign of Richard I. Thoresby was born in 1658. The following
extract from his manuscript was communicated to Notes and Queries, i. 369, by
Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, Bart. : — " Roger, so named from the Archbishop
[of York], was a person of renowned hospitality, since, at this day, the obsolete
known tune of Roger a Calverley is referred to him, who, according to the custom
of those times, kept his Minstrels, from that, their office, named Harpers, which
became a family, and possessed lands till late years in and about Calverley, called
to this day Harpersroids and Harper's Spring"
Another correspondent of Notes and Queries, vi. 37, says that in Virginia, U.S.,
the dance is named My Aunt Margery, but I find no English authority for
the change.
It is mentioned as one which " the hob-nailed fellows " call for, in The History
of Robert Pmoel, the Puppet-showman, 8vo., 1715. "Upon the prelude's being
ended, each party fell to bawling and calling for particular tunes. The hob-
nail'd fellows, whose breeches and lungs seem'd to be of the same leather, cried
out for Cheshire Rounds, Roger of Coverly, Joan's Placket, and Northern Nancy.'''
Finally, it is known in Scotland under the name of " The Mautman comes on