I must go seek some dew-drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.”

Bishop Hall, in 1597, published a satirical poem in which he complains that madrigals and ballads were “sung to the wheel, and sung unto the pail”—that is, by maids spinning and milking, or fetching water; and Lord Surrey, in one of his poems, says (not satirically, however):

“My mother’s maids, when they do sit and spin,

They sing a song.”

Now, we gather what was the style of these songs of peasant girls and laborers from the writings of good old Izaak Walton, who mentions, as a common occurrence, that he often met, in the fields bordering the river Lee, a handsome milkmaid who sang like a nightingale, her voice being good and the ditties fitted for it. “She sang the smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago, and the milkmaid’s mother sang the answer to it which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.… They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I think much better than that now in fashion in this critical age.”[166] He wrote in the reign of Charles I., and already deplored the influx of more pretentious songs; but those he mentions with such commendation were the famous “Passionate Shepherd to his Love” and the song beginning “If all the world and love were young,” two exquisite lyrics of an elegance much above what is now termed the taste of the vulgar.

Izaak Walton was as fond of music as of angling, and quotes many of the popular songs of his day. He was a quiet man, and only describes the pastimes of humble life. He used to rest from his labors in an “honest ale-house” and a “cleanly room,” where he and his fellow-fishermen, and sometimes the milkmaid, whiled away the evenings by singing ballads and duets. Any casual dropper-in was expected to take his part; and among the music mentioned as common in these gatherings are numbers of “ketches,” or, as we should say, catches. The music of one of his favorite duets, “Man’s life is but vain, for ’tis subject to pain,” is given in the old editions of his book. It is simple and pretty; the composer was Mr. H. Lawes. Other songs, favorites of his, were “Come, shepherds, deck your heads”; “As at noon Dulcina rested”; “Phillida flouts me”; and that touching elegy, “Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,” by George Herbert. This is as full of meaning as it is short:

“Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky,

Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night