Chorus.
Lon-don Bridge is bro-ken down:
Dance o’er my La-dy Lea!
Lon-don Bridge is bro-ken down,
With a gay La-dee.
Solo.
How shall we build it up a-gain?
Dance o’er my La-dy Lea!
How shall we build it up a-gain?
With a gay La-dee.
“A choice piece of simple melody, indeed,” said Mr. Postern, as I finished the last strain of the solo, “and, certainly, from its extreme plainness, not unlikely to be of some considerable antiquity; but you called it also a dance, Mr. Barbican; pray was it ever adapted to the feet, as well as to the tongue?”
“You shall hear, Sir,” returned I, “for I learn from a Manuscript communication, from a Mr. J. Evans, of Bristol, which has been most kindly placed in my hands by the venerable proprietor of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ and which enclosed the notes of the tune we have now concluded; that ‘about forty years ago, one moonlight night, in a street in Bristol, his attention was attracted by a dance and chorus of boys and girls, to which the words of this ballad gave measure. The breaking down of the Bridge was announced as the dancers moved round in a circle, hand in hand; and the question, ‘How shall we build it up again?’ was chaunted by the leader, whilst the rest stood still.’ The same correspondent also farther observes, that it is possible some musical critics may trace in these notes sundry fragments that have sailed down the stream of Time, beginning with ‘Nancy Dawson,’ and ‘A frog he would a wooing go;’ though the Lament of London Bridge is certainly far, very far, anterior to the latter. I cannot, however, imagine, that the air of our ballad has more than a very distant consanguinity with either; for the melody of Nancy Dawson is generally supposed not to be more than sixty years old, about which time its heroine flourished; and the metre of that worthless song is perfectly different, each verse having eight lines instead of four. Now, when Isaac Bickerstaff produced his Opera of ‘Love in a Village,’ he composed his 14th air, in the last Scene of the first Act, to that very tune; for there the Housemaid commences the Finale, and thus it runs:
‘I pray ye, gentles, list to me,
I’m young, and strong, and clean, you see,
I’ll not turn tail to any she,
For work, that’s in the county:
Of all your house the charge I’ll take,
I wash, I scrub, I brew, I bake,
And more can do than here I’ll speak,
Depending on your bounty.’
“Thus, you observe, my good Sir, that the verse has no resemblance at all; and the only similitude of the music lies in a very few notes in the second and third bars of the first and fourth lines. The Adventures of the Frog who went a courting is certainly much more like the ballad of London Bridge; but, in addition to its variations in the latter part, it is quite a modern composition, and, therefore, cannot illustrate the antiquity of that other song, of which it is itself merely a musical parody.”