"O when that I was a bachelor brave,
Enjoying of all that my soul could have;
My silver and guineas I then let fly,
I cock'd my beaver, and, who but I?
"I roved about, and I roved awhile,
Till all the ladies did on me smile;
From noble lady to country Joan,
Both gentle and simple, were all mine own.
"My rapier it was a Bilboa blade,
My coat and waistcoat were overlaid
With silver spangles, so neat and gay,
As I were a king in some country play.
"Besides, I had such a flattering tongue,
The ladies laughed whene'er I sung;
I had a voice so sweet and fine
That every lady's heart was mine."
[118.] The Old Man can't keep his Wife at Home. The curious rugged melody was taken down from a very old fiddler named William Andrews, at Sheepstor, by Mr. Bussell. The old fellow did not recall all the words, but remembered the story. According to his account this was a dance tune to which the performers sang in accompaniment to the music and tramp of feet.
I have had to re-compose the ballad from the fragment and the story. It bears a family resemblance to "The Old Couple" given in "The Garland of Country Song," p. 100. In the story the old man locks his wife out. She threatens to drown herself, and throws a stone into the well. The old man, when he hears the splash, descends, opens the door, and goes forth to see whether his wife really has drowned herself. At once she slips in at the open door and locks him out. The story is very ancient. It occurred in the lost Sanscrit book of tales of which Persian and Arabic and Turkish versions exist, and which filtered into Europe through Greek and Latin and Hebrew translations. This story came into Dolopathos and the Seven Wise Masters. The French and Latin versions were made in the 13th century. But the story had already got to Europe through the converted Jew, Peter Alphonsus, who inserted it in his "Disciplina Clericalis," written in 1062. From this it got into some of the versions of the "Gesta Romanorum," and finally into Boccaccio's "Decameron," seventh day, tale 4.
To give the whole story in ballad form would have made the ballad too long; I have therefore reduced it to three verses, and have given it, from the man's point of view, a happier termination.
The tune is clearly a bagpipe air with drone.
[119.] Sweet, Farewell. Taken down from Samuel Fone, of Mary Tavy, in 1889, the music noted by Mr. Bussell. Fone had forgotten the two last lines of verse 1 and the two first of verse 2. The air is pleasant, but the words are naught.
[120.] Old Adam, the Poacher. This curious melody was taken down by Mr. Bussell from the fiddling of William Andrews, Sheepstor. We saw the old man a little over a year before his death. He brought out and lent us a collection of MS. violin tunes, but all of these were well-known, old-fashioned dance airs. Then he played to us several not in his book that were traditional at Sheepstor. This was one of them, a dance tune; but he could not recall the words, only he knew that they told of the adventures of "Old Adam, the Poacher." Mr. Sheppard arranged this for "English Minstrelsy," but did not perceive that the first four lines of air have to be repeated to complete the tune; and in taking the melody from the fiddler, one could not detect at first, not knowing the words, where the tune precisely ended. It seems, however, obvious that there is a repeat of the first strain. I wrote the words.
[121.] Evening Prayer. Some fifty years ago this was the only, or almost the only, prayer used by village children. It was said or chanted far more extensively than the Lord's Prayer. The children had, however, cut down the hymn to one verse. The complete song, as "Prayer of the Week," was obtained from an old woman in the workhouse at Tavistock. Where the passage occurs purporting to come from the Epistles of St. Peter it would be hard to say. The tune, as it stands, is in the Major mode, and is so harmonised. But if the last note were G instead of E♭—as, indeed, it is in the two previous repetitions of the same phrase—the melody would then be in the Phrygian mode. The termination in E♭ is probably a modern corruption.
Something very much like this prayer is found throughout Europe. Here is the Quercy version, sung also in Poitou, Gascony, and Brittany—