pounding down the brews
Freshly tapped and yet imperishable – English drinking songs and dances
In the 1600’s Europe had become the battleground of religious strife, England was racked by conspiracy and rebellion and hurtling towards civil war and the puritan regime which was to destroy church iconography and eliminate all adornments from the altar. Monasteries went up in flames, farmers were driven from their lands. Forever and a day there was war, the threat of plague. The very planet earth was on the verge of shifting from the centre of the universe to its periphery. “All things are in incessant tremor”, wrote the French essayist Montaigne. His younger colleague Shakespeare found ample evidence to support this claim during the reign of Elizabeth I, the monarch who, though apostrophised as the Virgin Queen, got through as many lovers as she saw to the execution of her opponents... and who loved music.
Countless dances and songs were written at the time, and bear witness to the need to flee into revelry and mirth. We detect in them the high spirits of the times too: culture and trade blossomed in London, the Thames was alive with vessels and craft of all kinds, the carriages of the well-to-do clattered over the cobbled streets of the metropolis with its 250,00 populace. Yet one could go on foot as well, down to the “Devil and St. Dunstan” tavern. That was the artist’s haunt in Fleet St., opposite St. Dunstan’s Church. The song “Old Simon the King” honours the publican Simon Wadloe. At Simon’s the poets drank to the fame and immortality of which their writing was to assure them in the years to come – people like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the dramatists. There is no record that the two caroused together, yet the assumption stands as solidly as a glass stands on the table at “The Devil and St. Dunstan’s”.
Over the door to the Apollo Room which housed the regular’s table, where Jonson & Co. sat, was a proud epistolary verse: “Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, cries Old Sym, the King of Skinkers”, being an appeal by the anti-hops lobby in favour of the pleasures of wine. “Skinker” means server, barman. Whenever “Old Simon the King” and other ditties (or deities) turned up, quality was of the essence. “Let no saucy fiddler presume to intrude”, as the rule-book of this wine-circle has it, unless, that is, he’s cheerful and witty. From this we deduce that musical beggars were at least as prevalent as they are today in the tourist cafés. Just as frowned-upon in the club were ill-temper and watered-down wine; besides the literati themselves entrance was allowed their wives and lady-friends. Lovers could even retire to a chambre separé, “where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve”. And a veil of silence hung over all that was said and done in here...
When all is said and done, there remain songs, which recount the stirrings of the human heart. Amidst the uncertainty and murkiness of the times one clung to songs and dances, just as to the themes and stock characters of the day. Publican Sym was just one of the many local heroes finding his way into posterity in finger-tapping tunes. There was, for example, the legendary Sir John Packington who bet 3000 pounds that he could swim the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich. Some 16 km! Apparently Elizabeth I had her eye on him: concerned for his welfare she banned the record-breaking attempt.
What remained was the popular tune Packington’s Pound, which made it as far as Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal book and had countless new lyrics written for it. Even by Ben Jonson, who used the song in his comedy “Bartholomew Fair”, leading it in with “to the tune of Paggington’s Pound, Sir”. “Fa, la la la, la la la, fa la la, la! Nay, I’ll put thee in tune and all! Mine owne country dance! Pray thee begin.” There then follow ten verses interrupted by comments...
Those not partial to wine as Jonson was could frequent among amusing company as beer lovers too. No sooner had the price for malt dropped, than a pub canon such as “Malt’s come downe” emerged – good enough, it seems, to inspire a genius like William Byrd to arrange it for keyboard. A general term for all kinds of alcoholic beverages, in particular beer, was “Barley-Corne”, arriving on the table in it’s most potent form as Yorkshire “Stingo”, which eventually made it’s way into music as well. One can imagine from how many barrels the melodies issued forth, tapped as readily as they were to remain fresh long after. “There’s a lusty liquor which good fellows used to take..”, thus begins the original text. The beer creates an almost philosophical effect, showing a shrewish person transformed into a most mild-mannered creature...
Thus the Barly-Corne hath power
Even for to change our nature,
And make a shrew, within an houre,
Prove a kindhearted creature:
And therefore here, I say againe,
Let no man tak’t in scorn
That I vertues doe proclaime
Of the little Barly-Corne.
First printed in 1651 in the “English Dancing Master”, John Playford’s collection of 105 popular melodies and assorted dance steps, this was a real best-seller. Over the years “Stingo” collected many other texts. Queen Mary knew the song under the name “Cold and Raw”, and liked it so much that she once interrupted no less a mortal than Henry Purcell during a performance of his own works, requesting a singer to render the old evergreen with a lute. Purcell waited in silence at his harpsichord before getting his own back with true grace. In an aria composed for the Queen’s next birthday the “Stingo” melody was to be heard as the bass accompaniment.
Vice versa, i.e. from serious to inebrious was the fate of the song “Paul’s Steeple” which appeared in Playford’s 1684 “The Division Violin”, over one hundred years old at the time. When the church tower of Old St. Paul’s burnt down after being struck by lightning on 4th June 1561, a lament was composed. The lightning appears here as divine retribution for the sins of London’s citizens.
Lament each one the blazing fire
That down from heaven came,
And burnt S. Powles his lofty spire
With lightning’s furious flame.
Lament, I say,
Both night and day,
Sith London’s sins did cause the same.
The melody was also fitted to the Duke of Norfolk, whom Elizabeth I held in lower regard than Sir John referred to above. She had him beheaded as a conspirator and his fate was regaled in a ballad “I am the Duke of Norfolk”. Later on this became a drinking song. Hour glass and wine glass are closer than we imagine!
As at “wakes” – those post-funereal parties where there was such an excess of drinking and dancing that the church was repeatedly provoked into taking measures. At such festivities fiddlers fiddled for their fees, and were renowned for the fact that they drank it all away again. After “Rosin the bow” had his one glass too many, his deeds were immortalised in a mournful ballad in which whiskey figures largely. And what music did they dance to, those who were still up to it? One of the oldest pieces, something of a synonym for dance music, is called “Sellinger’s Round”, to the tune of which the tumblers were said to have leapt for joy, and in a 1607 comedy we discover that the planets themselves gyrated to this melody – which is why it is also called “The Beginning of the World”.
Yet the world had spun out of control and there was even no relying on love. Which is suggested by the title of one of the most famous songs of the time, “Light of Love”. “Light” is a pun. Beside the light of love hovers the lightness, the fickleness and easy-going lightly-clad dress of the London girls of delight:
“One of your London Light o’Loves, a right one, / Come over in thin pumps, and half a petticoat” as John Fletcher wrote. And William Shakespeare in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” wrote a risqué dialogue about a rhyming love-letter which one of the ladies has received. She ponders with her chamber-maid which tune best to set it to. “The melody for something like this cannot be light enough”, she declares proudly, “so you should sing it to ‘Light of Love’”. And though love then takes a serious turn, All’s Well That Ends Well. The song itself is a tender and affectionate tune, which remains as accessible today as in the lurching and trembling world in which it was originally sung and played, 400 years ago.
In the 1600’s Europe had become the battleground of religious strife, England was racked by conspiracy and rebellion and hurtling towards civil war and the puritan regime which was to destroy church iconography and eliminate all adornments from the altar. Monasteries went up in flames, farmers were driven from their lands. Forever and a day there was war, the threat of plague. The very planet earth was on the verge of shifting from the centre of the universe to its periphery. “All things are in incessant tremor”, wrote the French essayist Montaigne. His younger colleague Shakespeare found ample evidence to support this claim during the reign of Elizabeth I, the monarch who, though apostrophised as the Virgin Queen, got through as many lovers as she saw to the execution of her opponents... and who loved music.
Countless dances and songs were written at the time, and bear witness to the need to flee into revelry and mirth. We detect in them the high spirits of the times too: culture and trade blossomed in London, the Thames was alive with vessels and craft of all kinds, the carriages of the well-to-do clattered over the cobbled streets of the metropolis with its 250,00 populace. Yet one could go on foot as well, down to the “Devil and St. Dunstan” tavern. That was the artist’s haunt in Fleet St., opposite St. Dunstan’s Church. The song “Old Simon the King” honours the publican Simon Wadloe. At Simon’s the poets drank to the fame and immortality of which their writing was to assure them in the years to come – people like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the dramatists. There is no record that the two caroused together, yet the assumption stands as solidly as a glass stands on the table at “The Devil and St. Dunstan’s”.
Over the door to the Apollo Room which housed the regular’s table, where Jonson & Co. sat, was a proud epistolary verse: “Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, cries Old Sym, the King of Skinkers”, being an appeal by the anti-hops lobby in favour of the pleasures of wine. “Skinker” means server, barman. Whenever “Old Simon the King” and other ditties (or deities) turned up, quality was of the essence. “Let no saucy fiddler presume to intrude”, as the rule-book of this wine-circle has it, unless, that is, he’s cheerful and witty. From this we deduce that musical beggars were at least as prevalent as they are today in the tourist cafés. Just as frowned-upon in the club were ill-temper and watered-down wine; besides the literati themselves entrance was allowed their wives and lady-friends. Lovers could even retire to a chambre separé, “where they in soft sighs may their passions relieve”. And a veil of silence hung over all that was said and done in here...
When all is said and done, there remain songs, which recount the stirrings of the human heart. Amidst the uncertainty and murkiness of the times one clung to songs and dances, just as to the themes and stock characters of the day. Publican Sym was just one of the many local heroes finding his way into posterity in finger-tapping tunes. There was, for example, the legendary Sir John Packington who bet 3000 pounds that he could swim the Thames from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich. Some 16 km! Apparently Elizabeth I had her eye on him: concerned for his welfare she banned the record-breaking attempt.
What remained was the popular tune Packington’s Pound, which made it as far as Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal book and had countless new lyrics written for it. Even by Ben Jonson, who used the song in his comedy “Bartholomew Fair”, leading it in with “to the tune of Paggington’s Pound, Sir”. “Fa, la la la, la la la, fa la la, la! Nay, I’ll put thee in tune and all! Mine owne country dance! Pray thee begin.” There then follow ten verses interrupted by comments...
Those not partial to wine as Jonson was could frequent among amusing company as beer lovers too. No sooner had the price for malt dropped, than a pub canon such as “Malt’s come downe” emerged – good enough, it seems, to inspire a genius like William Byrd to arrange it for keyboard. A general term for all kinds of alcoholic beverages, in particular beer, was “Barley-Corne”, arriving on the table in it’s most potent form as Yorkshire “Stingo”, which eventually made it’s way into music as well. One can imagine from how many barrels the melodies issued forth, tapped as readily as they were to remain fresh long after. “There’s a lusty liquor which good fellows used to take..”, thus begins the original text. The beer creates an almost philosophical effect, showing a shrewish person transformed into a most mild-mannered creature...
Thus the Barly-Corne hath power
Even for to change our nature,
And make a shrew, within an houre,
Prove a kindhearted creature:
And therefore here, I say againe,
Let no man tak’t in scorn
That I vertues doe proclaime
Of the little Barly-Corne.
First printed in 1651 in the “English Dancing Master”, John Playford’s collection of 105 popular melodies and assorted dance steps, this was a real best-seller. Over the years “Stingo” collected many other texts. Queen Mary knew the song under the name “Cold and Raw”, and liked it so much that she once interrupted no less a mortal than Henry Purcell during a performance of his own works, requesting a singer to render the old evergreen with a lute. Purcell waited in silence at his harpsichord before getting his own back with true grace. In an aria composed for the Queen’s next birthday the “Stingo” melody was to be heard as the bass accompaniment.
Vice versa, i.e. from serious to inebrious was the fate of the song “Paul’s Steeple” which appeared in Playford’s 1684 “The Division Violin”, over one hundred years old at the time. When the church tower of Old St. Paul’s burnt down after being struck by lightning on 4th June 1561, a lament was composed. The lightning appears here as divine retribution for the sins of London’s citizens.
Lament each one the blazing fire
That down from heaven came,
And burnt S. Powles his lofty spire
With lightning’s furious flame.
Lament, I say,
Both night and day,
Sith London’s sins did cause the same.
The melody was also fitted to the Duke of Norfolk, whom Elizabeth I held in lower regard than Sir John referred to above. She had him beheaded as a conspirator and his fate was regaled in a ballad “I am the Duke of Norfolk”. Later on this became a drinking song. Hour glass and wine glass are closer than we imagine!
As at “wakes” – those post-funereal parties where there was such an excess of drinking and dancing that the church was repeatedly provoked into taking measures. At such festivities fiddlers fiddled for their fees, and were renowned for the fact that they drank it all away again. After “Rosin the bow” had his one glass too many, his deeds were immortalised in a mournful ballad in which whiskey figures largely. And what music did they dance to, those who were still up to it? One of the oldest pieces, something of a synonym for dance music, is called “Sellinger’s Round”, to the tune of which the tumblers were said to have leapt for joy, and in a 1607 comedy we discover that the planets themselves gyrated to this melody – which is why it is also called “The Beginning of the World”.
Yet the world had spun out of control and there was even no relying on love. Which is suggested by the title of one of the most famous songs of the time, “Light of Love”. “Light” is a pun. Beside the light of love hovers the lightness, the fickleness and easy-going lightly-clad dress of the London girls of delight:
“One of your London Light o’Loves, a right one, / Come over in thin pumps, and half a petticoat” as John Fletcher wrote. And William Shakespeare in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” wrote a risqué dialogue about a rhyming love-letter which one of the ladies has received. She ponders with her chamber-maid which tune best to set it to. “The melody for something like this cannot be light enough”, she declares proudly, “so you should sing it to ‘Light of Love’”. And though love then takes a serious turn, All’s Well That Ends Well. The song itself is a tender and affectionate tune, which remains as accessible today as in the lurching and trembling world in which it was originally sung and played, 400 years ago.
