Giraldus Cambrensis says that singing in parts was indigenous to the parts beyond the Humber, and on the borders of Yorkshire. Threeman singing may still be heard (not as an exotic), in Wales and the West of England. This last is referred to in the above passage, 'There's scarce a maid westward but she sings it'—viz., the song in three parts.
Shakespeare is strictly historical in making a pedlar, and two country lasses, capable of 'bearing a part' in a composition of this sort.
The company of 'men of hair,' calling themselves 'Saltiers,' may derive their name from the dance, 'Saltarello.' Gallimaufry is 'Galimathias,' a muddle, or hotch potch. (See Merry Wives II, i, 115).
The threemansong men are more particularly described in Winter's Tale IV, ii, 41.
Clown. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers; three-man song-men all, and very good ones, but they are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.
These musical harvesters square closely with the account given in the [Introduction], of music amongst the lower classes. Here were 24 good glee singers, with the single defect that their tenors were very weak, 'most of them means [altos] and basses.' The Puritan was most accommodating, and his singing the words of psalms to the tune of the hornpipe would tend to shew that the Old Adam was not all put away as yet. His compromise with his conscience reminds one of the old stories (all too true) of church singers in the 15th and 16th centuries, who would sing the by no means respectable words of popular comic ditties to the solemn strains of the mass 'l'homme armé,' or whatever well-known melody the music happened to be constructed on.
An example of a threemansong will be found in the [Appendix], 'We be soldiers three.'
Shakespeare also alludes to sacred part-music. Falstaff, by his own account, was a notable singer of Anthems, in which holy service he had lost his voice; he was familiar with members of the celebrated choir of St George's Chapel at Windsor; and was not above practising the metrical Psalmody in his sadder moments.
H. 4. B. I, ii, 182.
Chief Justice. Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity, and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!