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

REIGNS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I. 375
THE COUNTRY LASS.
This is the tune to -n'hich, with slight alteration, Salli/ in our Alky is now sung.
Henry Carey, the author of that song, composed other music for it, which is
introduced four times in his Musical Century. Carey's tune is the Sally in our
Alley of the ballad-operas that were printed from 1728 to 1760 ; but from the
latter period its popularity seems to have waned, and, at length, his music was
entirely superseded by this older ballad-tune.
The Qountrey Lasse, from which it derives its name, was to be sung to " a dainty
new note ; " but, if unacquainted with that, the singer had the option of another
tune — The mother beyuiPd the daughter. In Pills to purge Melancholy, ii. 165,
1700 and 1707, it is printed (in an abbreviated form) to the one; and in Tlic
Merry Musician, or a Cure for the Spleen,^ iii. 9, to the other.
In Tlie Devil to pay, 8vo., 1731, where Carey's tune is printed at p. 35, as
Charming Sally, this will be found, as What tho' I am a Country Lass, at p. 50.
Being unfit for dancing, the air is not contained in Tlie Dancing Master.
I have quoted the full title of the ballad of The Country Lass at p. 306. The
copy in the Roxburghe Collection, i. 52, being printed by the assigns of Thomas
Symcocke, would date in or after 1620, the year of that assignment. The copy in
the Pepys Collection, i. 268, is, perhaps, an original copy. It bears the initials
of Martin Parker, the famous ballad-writer, and is evidently more correctly
printed.
The versions in Pills to purge Melancholy, and in The Merry Musician, have each
had " the rust of antiquity filed from them," and, as usual, without any improve-
ment. The two first stanzas are nearly the same as in the old ballad ; but the
three remaining have been re-written. The older ballad is reprinted by Evans,
i. 41, from the Roxburghe copy.
The "a" at the end of each alternate line is a very old expedient of the
ballad-maker for fitting his words to music, when an extra syllable was requu-ed.
The reader may have observed it already in John Dory, Jog on the footpath way.
Good fellows must go learn to dance, and others. The custom is thus reproved in
"A Discourse of Miglish Poetrie, by Wilham Webbe, graduate," 1586 : — " If
I let passe the un-countahle rabble of ryming ballet-makers, and compylers of
sencelesse sonets (who be most busy to stuife every stall full of grosse devises
and unlearned pamphlets), I trust I shall, with the best sort, be held excused.
For though many such can frame an alehouse song of five or six score verses,
hobbling uppon some tune of a Northern Jygge, or Robyn Soode, or La
Lubber, &c. : and perhappes observe just number of sillables, eight in one
line, sixe in an other, and therewithal! an ' « ' to make a jercJee in the ende : yet
if these might be accounted poets (as it is sayde some of them make meanes to
be promoted to the Lawrell), surely we shall shortly have whole swarmes of
poets ; and every one that can frame a booke in ryme, though, for want of
matter, it be but in commendations of copper noses or bottle ale, wyll catch at
the garlande due to poets — whose potticall (poeticall, I should say) heades,
* The first volume of The Merry Musician is dated not set up in type like the first, bear no dates.
1716 ; but the second, third, and fourtli, being engraved,