THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS
Air I: "What tho I am a Country Lass" is an eighteenth century ballad by Martin Parker printed in Orpheus Calendonius; or, A Collection of Scots Songs Set to Music by W[illiam] Thomson, II (London 1733), p. 85. Its first two lines are "Although I be but a Country Lass/Yet a lofty Mind I bear-a." It was used by Theophilus Cibber (as Air XII) in his 1732 one-act version of Charles Coffey's The Devil to Pay where the transformed cobbler's wife Nell sings: "Tho late I was a Cobler's Wife,/In cottage most obscure-a" (pp. 20-21). In The Harlot's Progress, this air, sung by Madame Decoy, is clearly appropriate for seducing Kitty-Moll into the world of bawds and prostitutes, with its theme of magical change and the conquest of innocence by vice.
Air II: "Brisk Tom and Jolly Kate" is Air IX of Lacy Ryan's The Cobler's Opera (London 1729), which has tunes by Leveridge, Purcell, and others. The lyrics in Ryan's piece allude to Bridewell: "Pray; Sir, did I not give to you a Passage free/When Hemp did threaten," (pp. 14-15).
Air III: "Maggy Lawther" is a tune used by Theophilus Cibber (Air IX) in Patie and Peggy ... A Scotch Ballad Opera (London 1730), p. 10.
Air IV: "Oh! what Pleasures will abound" is Air VII of Henry Fielding's The Lottery (London 1732). Johann Pepusch composed the music for this air in collaboration with Lewis Theobald for the pantomime opera Perseus and Andromeda (1730). Fielding's name for the tune was "In Perseus and Andromeda."
Air V: "Lads a Dunce." The music is preserved in British Library Add. MS. 29371, fol. 30a, no. 45, and printed in Fielding's The Grub-Street Opera as Air II (ed. Edgar V. Roberts, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), p. 92. Its composer is not known.
Air VI: "Maidens fresh as a Rose" appears as Air VI in Ebenezer Forrest's ballad opera Momus turn'd fabulist; or, Vulcan's Wedding, a work translated from the French of Fuzelier and Le Grand (London 1729), p. 12. It also could be the song in D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719), with a slightly different title, "Maiden fresh as a Rose," though the syllabic pattern does not seem to match: "Young buxome and full of jollity,/Take no Spouse among Beaux," (I, p. 57).