period when all common domestic vessels were of wood. In early times there was an ecclesiastical edict against the use of wooden vessels for the Holy Communion.
Sir James Ramsay, in his Foundations of England (volume ii), quotes an old Saxon “toasting-cry” from Wace, the Anglo-Norman poet (d. 1180). The Chronicler says that the following lines were sung in the English camp on the eve of the battle of Hastings:
Bublie crient é weissel,
E laticome é drencheheil
Drinc Hindrewart é Drintome
Drinc Helf, é drinc tome.
This, according to Sir James Ramsay, may be translated thus:
Rejoice and wassail
Let it come (pass the bottle) and drink health
Drink backwards and drink to me
Drink half and drink empty.
For Other versions, see “ Somersetshire Wassail” (A Garland of Country Song, No. 20); Sussex Songs (No. 3); and The Besom Maker (p. 9). For a Gloucestershire version, see English Folk Carols (No. 21).
The strong tune in the text is in the Dorian mode.
No. 93. It’s a rosebud in June
The Rev. John Broadwood noted a Sussex version of this song before 1840 (see Sussex Songs, No. 11, Leonard & Company, Oxford Street). The words were also set to music by John Barrett, and were probably sung in “The Custom of the Manor” (1715). As the words of this version show traces of West Country dialect, and the tune, with its Dorian characteristics, is not altogether unlike that printed here, it is just possible that Barrett founded his tune upon the folk-air. The Sussex tune is quite different from our Dorian version, which was collected by me in Somerset. The words are printed exactly as they were sung to me.
No. 94. A Brisk Young Sailor
This is one of the most popular of English folksongs. I have collected a large number of variants, from the several sets of which the words in the text have been compiled. For other versions see “There is an ale-house in yonder Town,” in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 252; volume ii, pp. 155, 158, 159, and 168; volume iii, p. 188).
No. 95. The Sheep-Shearing
The tune to which this song is set is, of course, that of “The Sweet Nightingale,” a song that is known to almost every folksinger in the West Country (see Songs of the West, No. 15, 2d ed.). Bell, in his Ballads and Songs of the English Peasantry, prints the words, which he first heard from some Cornish miners at Marienberg and afterwards procured from a gentleman at Plymouth. He erroneously assigns them to the 17th century. For the Rev. S. Baring-Gould has shown that they first appeared in Bickerstaff’s “Thomas and Sally” (1760), set to music by Dr. Arne. The West Country tune, however, is quite distinct from Dr. Arne’s, and has all the qualities of the genuine folk-air. Mr. Baring-Gould suggests that Bickerstaff’s words “travelled down into Cornwall in some such collection as ‘The Syren,’ and were there set to music by some local genius.”
I have collected several variants of “The Sweet Nightingale,” and the singer of one of them casually remarked that the tune did not really belong to those words but to a sheep-shearing song. He went on to say that many years ago, when he was a boy, a very old man used to come to his cottage and sing this sheep-shearing song; and then he repeated to me the words of the first stanza, which were all that he could recall. Now the singer was a man of ninety years of age, so that the sheep-shearing song must, presumably, have been in existence before 1760. It will be noticed that in this version of the air, the fourth phrase is not lengthened as it always is when sung to the words of “The Sweet Nightingale.” How and why this variation came to be made is an interesting point (see English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, p. 110).
