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

BRANSLE, TEENCHMORE, LUSTY GALLANT, ETC. 769
tenant par la main et se donnant un branle continuel et concerts, avec des pas conve-
nables, selon la difference des air qu'on joue alors. Les Branles consistent en trois pas
et un pied-joint qui se font en quatre mesures, ou conps d'archet, qu'on disoit autrefois
battement de tambourin. Quand ils sont repet6s deux fois, ce sont des Branles
doubles ; au commencement on danse des Branles simples, et puis le Branle gui, par
deux mesures ternaires, et il est ainsi appelle 1 parce qu'on a toujours un pied en l'air."
Thoinot Arbeau gives " Les Branles du Poicta, qui se dansent par mesure ternaire,
en allant toujours a gauche," also " Branles d'Ecosse et de Bretagne : on appelle
ceuxci le Triory." He also tells us that " Lea danses aux chansons sont des espfeces
de Branles."
Here we have it clearly laid down that the Bransle de Poictu, or Bransle double,
is in triple time, and so by Morley, in his Introduction, 1597 and 1611 ; therefore, the
name of Bransle de Poictu is improperly given to " We be three poor Mariners,"
in the Skene Manuscript, unless it be in the sense of " une danse a chanson."
p. 83. Trenchmore. — This is mentioned in Holinshed's Description of Ireland,
c. 2 : " And trulie they suit a Divine as well as for an ass to twang Quipassa on a
harpe or gitterne, or for an ape to friske Trenchnwore in a pair of buskins and a
doublet." In Pills to purge Melancholy, i. 51, 1699, the song, " Willy, prithee go
to bed, for thou wilt have a drowsy head," is to a version of Trenchmore.
p. 87. Quoth John to Joan. — The version of the words printed with the tune is
by D'Urfey. See his New Collection of Songs and Poems, 8vo., 1683, p. 48. The
old ballad of " John wooinge of Jone " was entered at Stationers' Hall in January,
1591-2.
Puttenham, in his Art of English Poesie, quotes a song " in our interlude called
The IVooer, where the country clown came and wooed a young maid of the city, and
being agrieved to come so oft and not have his answer, said to the old nurse very
impatiently :
Wooer. ' Iche pray you, good mother, tell our young dame,
Whence I am come, and what is my name ;
I cannot come a-wooing every day.
(Quoth the Nurse.) They be lubbers, not lovers, that so use to say.' "
The copy of "I cannot come every day to woo" in the Pepys Collection (iii. 134)
consists of fourteen stanzas.
p. 91. Lusty Gallant. — There is a "proper dittie" to this tune in the Gorgious
Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1578, and many more ballads were sung to
it than I have space to enumerate. Holinshed, in his Chronicles of England,
i. 290, speaks of lusty gallant as a newly devised colour: "I might here name
a sort of hues devised for the nonce, wherewith to please fantastical heads."
Among these are " pease-porridge-tawney, popinjay-blue, lusty-gallant, the devil in
the hedge, and such like."
p. 102. The Lute. — There are several other derivations proposed for the word,
" lute." Gerbert says from la ut, and considers the name to have been given to sig-
nify its extended compass. M. F6tis, who looks only to the East, derives it from eoud,
an instrument now in use among the Arabs.