Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Popular music of the olden time > Volume 1

EEIGN OF JAMBS I. 251
the music to conduct lier to churcli (young maids and bachelors following with
garlands in their hands) ; the same from church ; the music at dinner ; and
singing, dancing, and merry-making throughout the evening. For those who had
no talent to write a hunt's-up, there were songs ready printed (like " The Bride's
Good-morrow," in the Roxburghe Collection), but the hunt's-up was not confined
to weddings, it was a usual compliment to young ladies, especially upon their
birthdays. The custom seems now to be continued only with princesses, and on
the last bii'thday of the Princess Royal, the court newsman, at a loss how to
describe this old English custom, gave it the name of a " Matinale."
As to music at weddings, see the following allusions : —
" Then was there a fair bride-cup of silver and gilt carried before her [the
bride] , wherein was a goodly braunch of rosemarie gilded very faire, hung about
with silken ribbonds of all colours; next there was a noyse'^ of musitians, that
played all the loay before her ; after her came all the chiefest maydens of the
countrie, some bearing great bride-cakes, and some garlands of wheat finely
gilded, and so she past unto the church." — Deloney's Pleasant History of John
Winchcomb, in his younger years called Jacke of Neivherie.
" Come, come, we'll to church presently. Prythee, Jarvis, ivhilst the musich
plays just upon the delicious close, usher in the brides." — Rowley's A Match at
Midnight, 1633.
In Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub, Tm-fe, the constable, "will let no music go afore
his child to church," and says to his wife —
"Because you have entertained [musicians] all from Highgate,
To shew your pomp, you'd have your daughters and maids
Dance o'er the fields like faies to church this frost.
I'll have no rondels, I, in the queen's paths !
Let them scrape the gut at home, where they have fill'd it."
And again, where Dame Turfe insists on having them to play at dinner, Clench
adds — " She is in the right, sir, vor your wedding dinner
Is starv'd without the music."
Even at funerals musicians were in request : dirges were sung, and recorders the
instruments usually employed. It appears that the Blue-Coat boys sang at City
Funerals ;* being then taught music, as they shoidd be now. Music was not less
esteemed as a solace for grief, than as an excitement to merriment. Peacham says,
" the physicians will tell you that the exercise of music is a great lengthener of life,
by stu-ring and reviving the spirits, holdmg a secret sympathy with them ; besides
it is an enemy to melancholy and dejection of mind; yea, a curer of some dis-
eases." {Qompleat Gentleman, 1622.) And Burton, " But I leave all declamatory
speeches in praise of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject :
besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign
remedy against despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself."
{Anatomy of Melancholy.) So, m Henry IV., Shakespeare says —
* A noise of musicians means a company of musicians. "having authority to thrust into any man's room, only
It is an expression frequently occurring : " those terrible speaking but this — 'Will you have any musicke?'" —
noijses, with threadbare cloakes, that live by red lattices Dekker's Belman of London, 1608.
and ivy-bushes" [that is by ale-houses and taverns], '' See Brome's Ci/y Tfi/, act iii. sc. 1.