And when I see them feeding by, Where grass and flowers spring-a, Close by a crystal fountain-side, I sit me down and sing-a.' Though the musical taste of the people in Queen Elizabeth's time was distinct from that of the erudite composers and their patrons, it was equally remote from the mere love of boisterous noise which characterises the so-called 'harmonic meetings' of the humbler classes of our own days. Tinkers, tailors, smiths, colliers, not only were known to sing in parts, but their talent in this respect is the subject of frequent allusion in the works of our old dramatists. Nay, Deloney, who wrote a history of the gentle craft,' mentions an unlucky wight who tried to pass for a shoemaker, but was detected as an impostor because he could neither 'sing, sound the trumpet, play upon the flute, nor reckon up his tools in rhyme.' 'Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing, Cuccu! Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springth the wde nu. Sing Cuccu! Awe bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calve cu; Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth, Murie sing Cuccu! Cuccu! Cuccu! Well singes thu Cuccu, During the whole progress of this song, the words 'Sing, Cuccu, nu! sing, Cuccu!' were sung by two voices as a base or burden. Sometimes a proverbial expression-as "Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all-served as text to the burden; sometimes unmeaning syllables, assembled together for no other apparent purpose than that of tickling the ear, as Hey, nonny, nonny no!' or 'Hey, down, down, derry down!' Of this more illustrious nonsense the Tol de rol' and 'Fol de riddle' of modern times are the inglorious progeny, while the burden itself now begins at the end of the verse, instead of being sung as an accompaniment. Harmony, indeed, once belonged to the distinctive characteristics of our island. The Britons,' says Giraldus Cabrensis, who wrote towards the end of the 12th century, 'do not sing their tunes in unison, like the inhabitants of other countries, but in different parts,' and he embraces in his commendation the northern English. When Thomas à Becket went to Paris to negotiate the marriage of the English prince with the daughter of King Louis, The nonsensical words which often terminate the verses of our comic songs, and which are sung in unison with so much delight by a jovial company of the lower class as the solo vocalist arrives at the successive stages of his narrative, are the disreputable relics of a primitive harmony. The burden in early English songs was not a mere supplement, but was sung throughout as a base or undersong, and the singer of this part was said to "bear the burden,' the word itself being a corruption of the Norman word bourdon,' denoting a drone-base.' In Sumer is i cumen in,' which is considered by Mr. Chappell to be the earliest secular composition in parts known to exist in any country, and is assigned by him to the middle of the 13th century, we have one of the plainest examples of the burden properly so called. The words of the song, as originally written and modernized, are as follows: 6 'Summer is come in, Loud sing Cuckoo! Groweth seed, and bloweth mead, Ewe bleateth after lamb, Cuckoo! Cuckoo! he entered the French towns preceded by two hundred and fifty boys on foot, in groups of six, ten or more together, singing English songs, according to the custom of their country. So says the saint's biographer, Fitz Stephen. But we obtain a still more striking proof of the early proficiency of our countrymen in partsinging from an Animadversion on the Church music, written in Latin by Aelredus, Abbot of Rivaulx in Yorkshire, who died in 1188, and translated by Prynne into the following nervous English: 'Let me speake now of those who, under the shew of religion, doe obpalliate the businesse of pleasure: who usurpe those things for the service of their vanity, which the ancient Fathers did profitably exercise in their types of future things. Whence then, I pray, all types and figures now ceasing, whence hath the Church so many Organs and Musical Instruments? To what purpose, I demand, is that terrible blowing of Belloes, expressing rather the crackes of thunder, than the sweetnesse of a voyce? To Frequents the green fern. 'The trembling lute some touch, some strain the viol best, In sets that there were seen, the music wondrous choice. Some, likewise, there affect the gamba with the voice, To show that England could variety afford. Some that delight to touch the sterner wiry chord, The cithren, the pandore, and the theorbo strike; The gittern and the kit the wand'ring fiddlers like. So were there some again, in this their learned strife, Loud instruments that lov'd, the cornet and the fife. what purpose serves that contraction and in- | printed in 1613, which to the inquirer into flection of the voyce? This man sings a base, the antiquities of English music may be this a small meane, another a treble, a fourth almost as serviceable as Homer's catadivides and cuts assunder, as it were, certaine middle notes. One while the voyce is strained, logue of ships to the student of ancient anon it is remitted, now againe it is dashed, and geography :then againe it is enlarged with a lowder sound. Sometimes, which is a shame to speake, it is enforced into an horse's neighings; sometimes, the masculine vigor being laide aside, it is sharpened into shrillnesse of a woman's voyce; now and then it is writhed, and retorted with a certaine artificial circumvolution. Sometimes thou mayst see a man with an open mouth, not to sing, but, as it were, to breathe out his last gaspe, by shutting in his breath, and by a certaine ridiculous interception of his voyce, as it were to threaten silence, and now againe to imitate the agonies of a dying man, or the extasies of such as suffer. In the mean time, the whole body is stirred up and downe with certaine histrionical gestures: the lips are wreathed, the eyes turne round, the shoulders play, and the bending of the fingers doth answer every note. And this ridiculous dissolution is called religion; and where these things are most frequently done, it is proclaimed abroad that God is there more honourably served. In the meantime, the common people standing by, trembling and astonished, admire the sound of the Organs, the noyse of the Cymbals and musical instruments, the harmony of the Pipes and Cornets; but yet looke upon the lascivious gesticulations of the singers, the meretricious alternations, interchanges, and infractions of the voyces, not without derision and laughter; so that a man may thinke that they came, not to an oratory or house of prayer, but to a theatre; not to pray, but to gaze about them; neither is that dreadfull majesty feared before whom they stand, etc. Thus, this Church singing, which the holy Fathers have ordained that the weake might be stirred up to piety, is perverted to the use of unlawfull pleasure.' The hoby, sack but deep, recorder, and the flute, E'en from the shrillest shawm unto the cor namute. Some blow the bagpipe up, that plays the country Round, The tabor and the pipe some take delight to sound.' The patronage once enjoyed by the minstrels was now bestowed on skilful instrumentalists, and Richard Braithwait, a writer of the times of James I., who has drawn up Some Rules for the Government of the House of an Earl,' enjoins the model nobleman to keep five musicians, who are not only to play themselves, but teach the Earl's children to play upon the baseviol, the virginals, the lute, the bandora, and the cittern. Nor does this patronage of musicians begin with the formation of the instrumental branch of the art. In the time of Henry VIII. and of Elizabeth there were wealthy merchants who retained as many musicians as the nobles who flourished under James J. Notwithstanding the importance of cittern, gittern, lute, and virginals during the Elizabethan days, the human voice was considered the chief organ of secular music. With the accession of James I. began that widely extended taste for the purely instrumental part of the art which is conspicuous in so many matinées and soirées When the act of Elizabeth had proof the present day. So anxious indeed scribed minstrels wandering abroad' as were people to play, that they had re-rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars,' course to the music they were once ac- the itinerant musicians were enjoined to customed to sing, and madrigals were sent wear cloaks and badges, with arms of forth with the new recommendation that some patron, individual or corporate, to they were apt for viols as well as for denote in whose service they are engaged. voices. For the names of the instruments Thus equipped, they are exempt from the employed at this period, the inquisitive operation of the act, and they seemed to reader may turn over the pages of his have abused this privilege much after the Bible, for when the Old Testament was fashion of their more romantic predecessors, translated into the vernacular, equivalents thrusting themselves into all companies, for the Hebrew instruments were found without waiting for the ceremony of an in the implements rendered tuneful by invitation. However, there was plenty of British lungs and fingers. There is, more- legitimate work to be done by them, and. over, a passage in Drayton's 'Polyolbion,' | at every species of festivity (not excluding funerals) their services were required. In the waits of London and Westminster, the case of weddings there was a regular who were far more imposing personages routine to be gone through. First, the than the miserable wretches who startle Pabride was to be awakened in the morning terfamilias out of his first sleep in the nineby a hunt's up;' next, music accompani- teenth century, this demand was exceeded ed her to church; then music accompanied by the supply, and England in the sevenher from church; then there was music teenth century was the great exporting throughout the wedding dinner; and as country of tuneful artists. The famous for the singing and dancing in the even- John Dowland, after travelling through ing, that was of course, ad libitum. divers lands, became lutenist to the Christian King of Denmark, and, when he returned home, the King begged that Thomas Cutting, another English luteist, might be allowed to succeed him. Peter Phillips settled in the Netherlands, as organist to the Archduke of Austria, with the Italianized Pietro Philippi; while John Cooper, visiting Italy, became Giovanni Cuperario. The practice of converting English into foreign names is sometimes followed by singing and dancing artists of the present day, but they differ from their professional forefathers in this respect, that they become pseudo-Italians in order to impose upon their fellow-countrymen, not for the sake of conforming to the land of their adoption. The hunt's up' was doubtless, in the first instance, a musical invitation to join the pleasures of the chase, but the meaning of the phrase was soon extended to include every kind of song that in Hibernian fashion, might be described as a morning serenade, and when Juliet complains that the lark drives away Romeo with hunts up to the day,' she no doubt uses the expression in its most general sense. We have a very pretty specimen of the amatory 'hunts up' in the following song taken by Mr. Chappell from a MS. in the possession of Mr. Collier, and possibly as old as the time of Henry VIII.: The hunt is up, the hunt is up, The sun hath risen from out his prison, The hunt is up, the hunt is up, The hunt is up, the hunt is up, Awake, my lady fair, The kine and sheep, but now asleep, Browse in the morning air. The hunt is up, the hunt is up, The stars are fled to the ocean bed, The hunt is up, the hunt is up, The hills look out, and the woods about The hunt is up, the hunt is up, Awake, my lady dear, A morn in spring is the sweetest thing The hunt is up, the hunt is up, I come to thy bow'r, at this lov'd hour, Great, however, as was the demand for musical talent in old London, when each ward had its musicians, besides those of Finsbury, Southwark, and Blackfriars, and We have incidentally alluded to the "Waits.' 'They seem,' says Mr. Chappell, to have been originally a band of musical watchmen, who proved their watchfulness by piping at stated hours of the night. Their duties in the Court of Edward IV. are thus officially described :— 'A WAYTE, that nightely from Mychelmas to Shreve Thorsdaye pipethe watche within this courte fowere tymes; in the Somere nightes three tymes, and makethe bon gayte at every chambere doare and offyce, as well for feare of pyckeres and pillers. He eathethe in the halle with Mynstrelles, and takethe lyverey at nighte a loafe, a galone of ale, and for Somere nights two candles [of] pich, and a bushel of coles; and for Wintere nightes halfe a loafe of bread, a galone of ale, four candles pich, a bushel coles: Daylye whilst he is presente in Court for his wages, in Cheque-roale, allowed iiiid. or else iiid. by the discresshon of the Steuarde and Tressorore, and that after his cominge and deservinge: Also cloathinge with the Houshold Yeomen or Mynstrelles lyke to the wages that he takethe: An he be sycke, he taketh two loafes, two messes of great meate, one galone ale. Also he parteth with the houshold of general gyfts, and hathe his beddings carried by the Comptrolleres assignment; and, under this yeoman, to be a Groome-Waitere. Yf he can excuse the yeoman in his absence, then he takethe rewarde, clotheinge, meat, and all other things like to other Grooms of Household. Also this Yeoman-Waighte, at the making of Knightes of the Bathe, for his attendance upon them by nighte-time, in watchinge in the Chapelle, hathe to his fee all the watchinge clothing that the Knight shall wear upon him.' When applied to the musicians of towns | pandered to the rabble by squibbing that and corporations the word wayte' became obnoxious prelate; but when an ordinance less definite; but some of the significance went forth not only for the suppression of of the ancient office was retained, and stage-plays but also for seizing upon all exists to the present day in the custom of ballad-mongers, the poets of the people rousing people in the mornings, imme- found that they had sided with the wrong diately preceding Christmas. The York party. Chief on the list of loyal rhymesters Waits, as they appeared at the end of the is Martin Parker, whose song 'the king seventeenth century, are described in this shall enjoy his own again' became a kind lively fashionof Party anthem among the Cavaliers, and whose name was so famous among his enemies that ballad-writers in general were stigmatised as Martin Parker's society, and perhaps formed an actual corporation. 'In a winter's morning, By th' help of o'ernights bottle, By moon or lanthorn light, And bar guests dare not stay, Till their brisk helpmates wake 'em, Candles, four in the pound, Thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum, thrum. The Waits for the Minster chimes: Then, Sirs, to hear their music Would make both me and you sick, And much more to hear a roopy fiddler call (With voice, as Moll would cry, Come, shrimps, or cockles buy "), "Past three, fair frosty morn, Good morrow, my masters all.” The Waits are here clearly regarded from the most modern point of view, that is to say, as a nuisance. During the early part of the civil commotions in the time of Charles I. the ballad-writers, who, distinguished from the literary poets, continued to exist in full vigour, were apparently on the side of the Parliament. They found a good unpopular figure ready made to their hands in the person of Archbishop Laud, and Now that the spirit which animated both parties during the civil wars has subsided, very little excitement can be obtained by means of Martin Parker's most celebrated effusion: What Booker can prognosticate As he that gazeth in the skies. My skill goes beyond the depths of a Pond, Whereby I can tell, all things will be well, There's neither Swallow, Dove, nor Dade, The man in the moon may wear out his shoon, But all's not to end, for the times will not Till the King enjoys his own again. Though for a time we see Whitehall Which again you shall see, when the time it That the King enjoys his own again. All this now looks wooden enough, nor does the information that the names in the first two stanzas were those of eminent astrologers and almanac-makers, greatly increase the enjoyment of the sober reader. But Ritson, who considered Parker a Grub-street scribbler,' cannot help styling the 'King shall enjoy his own again,' the 'most famous and popular air ever heard of in this country. The tune to which the words are written was already popular as Marry me, quoth the bonny lass,' 'but there is no doubt that he first gave it general celebrity by his poem, to which many verses were afterwards added, in order to suit the circumstances of the party. Wildrake the typical cavalier in Sir Walter Scott's Woodstock, has this party effusion ever on the tip of his tongue, and for nearly a century it is identified with the cause of the Stuarts. In the days of Charles I. it sustained the courage of the Cavaliers; on the restoration of Charles II. it celebrated their triumph; after the revolution of 1688 it kept alive the enthusiasm of the Jacobites. The Anti-Stuart song, which rivalled the Cavalier lyric in popularity, was the famous 'Lilliburlero, which with words directed against the Irish papists, first became sig nificant about 1688, and was afterwards whistled into immortality by Sterne's Uncle Toby. The line of demarcation that so distinctly separated the cultivated from the uncultivated lover of music, was to a great measure obliterated on the restoration of Charles II. Professors of the science now essayed to please the many as well as the few; the learned tuneless counterpoint which was the pride of an earlier day fell into disuse, and melody began to assert a supremacy over mere scientific combinations. The gittern, now called the 'guitar,' encroached upon the domain of the more unwieldy lute, and the six-stringed viol yielded to the violin, which had hitherto been almost exclusively employed in accompaniment to dancing. This exchange of the viol for the violin denoted a change in the character of the music performed. As Mr. Chappell says: Romanusque lyra plaudet tibi, Barbarus harpa, Græcus Achilliaca, chrotta Britanna canat." tive fiddle, the name of which is so familiar The 'chrotta' was the 'crowd' or primito the readers of Hudibras, and it differed from the modern instrument by the absence of a neck. An aperture was made so as to admit the left hand of the player through the back and enable him to form the notes by the pressure of the strings upon the finger-board. The very circumstance that the violin had previously been associated with dancing, would seem to have been recommendation with Charles II., who, according to Roger North, loved no music but of the dancing-kind, and put down all advocates for the fugal style of composition, with the A band of twenty-four violins (including unanswerable question, 'Have I not ears?' tenors and basses) who merrily accompanied his meals, and even enlivened his devotions in the Chapel Royal, originally suggested the comic song, Four-andtwenty fiddlers all of a row,' that has innovations were deemed offensive by lasted down to the present day. These gentlemen of the old school, and the sober Evelyn was greatly shocked, when in December, 1662, at the conclusion of the sermon, instead of the ancient grave and solenin wind-music accompanying the organ, was introduced a concert of twentyfour violins, between every pause, after the French fantastical light way; better suiting a tavern or playhouse than a church.' Unfortunately, too, the predilection of the king for French fiddlers formed part of his anti-national tendency, and was carried to such an extent, that John Banister, who had been leader of the twenty-four, was dismissed for saying, on his return from Paris, that the English violins were better than the French. Nor was this Viols, it may be remarked, were not all of the same size. A set, or chest' as it was termed, contained instruments of five or six different dimensions to suit different registers. The lighter instrument, as we shall pre-sacrifice of national feeling a tribute to sently find, gained its ascendency through the introduction of French taste,-but the stringed instrument played with a bow, and which without distinction of size or register, we may generally term a fiddle, is of native British growth. The AngloSaxons called it a fithele (with the soft 'th' represented by the obsolete) and the Normans, suppressing the middle consonant altogether, reduced the word to superior accomplishment in the foreigner. France was the country least celebrated in Europe as the birth-place of musicians; and while English gentlemen were not deemed properly educated unless they could play difficult music at sight, the twenty-four professional musicians, who recreated the Grand Monarque,' and were the model on which Charles II. fashioned his own band, were not able to play any |