Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age

Footnotes to the Preface are collected at the end of that section, but other footnotes appear immediately below the relevant song lyrics. All footnotes are numbered sequentially.
A hyperlinked Table of Contents has been added to this version.
There is some Greek in this text, which may require adjustment of your browser settings to display correctly. A transliteration of each line is included. Hover your mouse over words underlined with a grey dotted line to see the transliteration.
Text underlined with a red dotted line has been amended. In particular: In the index, “... land in Kent (Malismata)” has been corrected to “Melismata.” In the index, “... heavenby fire” has been corrected to “heavenly fire.” In “Thrice blessèd be the giver”, “failed” has been corrected to “failèd.”
Inconsistencies in the spelling and hyphenation of words between different songs have been retained, but minor punctuation omissions have been silently corrected.


Note.— Two hundred and fifty copies of this large paper edition printed, each of which is numbered.



The present Anthology is intended to serve as a companion volume to the Poetical Miscellanies published in England at the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. A few of the lyrics here collected are, it is true, included in “England’s Helicon,” Davison’s “Poetical Rhapsody,” and “The Phœnix’ Nest”; and some are to be found in the modern collections of Oliphant, Collier, Rimbault, Mr. W.J. Linton, Canon Hannah, and Professor Arber. But many of the poems in the present volume are, I have every reason to believe, unknown even to those who have made a special study of Elizabethan poetry. I have gone carefully through all the old song-books preserved in the library of the British Museum, and I have given extracts from two books of which there is no copy in our national library. A first attempt of this kind must necessarily be imperfect. Were I to go over the ground again I should enlarge the collection, and I should hope to gain tidings of some song-books (mentioned by bibliographers) which I have hitherto been unable to trace.