The Power of Music / In which is shown, by a variety of pleasing and instructive anecdotes, the effects it has on man and animals.

by Anonymous

QUEEN MARY AND MR. PURCELL.

The famous old ballad, “Cold and raw,” was greatly admired by Queen Mary, consort of King William; and she once affronted Mr. Purcell, by requesting to have it sung to her, he being present. The story is as follows: The Queen, having a mind, one afternoon, to be entertained with music, sent to Mr. Gostling, then one of the Chapel, and afterwards subdean of St. Paul’s; to Mr. Henry Purcell, and Mrs. Arabella Hunt, who had a very fine voice, and an admirable hand on the lute, with a request to attend her. Mr. Gostling and Mrs. Hunt sung several compositions of Purcell, who accompanied them on the harpsichord. At length the queen, beginning to grow tired, asked Mrs. Hunt, if she could not sing the old Scotch ballad, “Cold and raw?” Mrs. Hunt answered yes, and sung it to her lute. Purcell was all the while sitting at the harpsichord unemployed, and not a little nettled at the queen’s preference of a vulgar ballad to his music; but, seeing her majesty delighted with this tune, he determined that she should hear it upon another occasion, and accordingly, in the next birth-day song, viz. that for the year 1692, he composed an air to the words, “May her bright example chace vice in troops out of the land,” the bass whereof is the tune to Cold and Raw. It is printed in the Orpheus Britannicus, and is note for note the same with the Scotch tune.