Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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SONG 593
abundance of popular tunes in the 14th century
evidence is supplied by the number of hymns
•written to them. For instance, Sweetest of
'
all, sing,' 'Good-day, my leman dear,' and
many others were secular stage-songs, to which
the Bishop of Ossory, who lived about 1350,
wrote Latin hymns. While the minstrels
flourished, notation was difficult and uncertain,
and they naturally trusted to memory or
improvisation for the tunes to which their tales
should be sung. [See MiNSTKELS.] But with
the end of the 15th century the Minstrels
disappeared, their extinction accelerated by the
invention of printing. When the pedlar had
begun to traverse the country with his penny
books and his songs on broadsheets the Minstrel's
day was past, i To the time of the Minstrels
belongs, however, the famous ' Battle of Aginoourt'
song,2 with the date 1415.
Ex. 1.
The Song of AgiTicowt.
Nor-man-dy, With grace and myght of ohy-val - ry
^E^^^^l^feg^
Ther God for him wrouglit mar-veluB-ly, Wher-fore Eng-
^^^f^gS
», red de ^ pro vie
To the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.
belong also many carols, and amongst them
the celebrated ' Nowell, Nowell ' the ' Boar's
Head ' Carol, sung even now every Christmas
Englishman, high or low, spolte hie own tongue. Qee. d. Mueik in
England, Dr. W. Nagel, il. 8 et eeq.
^ For further information about the minstrels see Old English
PopvZar Mu9., Chappell, i. 1 eC aeq. ; and Oea. d. Muaik in England,
Ifagel, i. 96 et aeg.
2 Old English PopvXar Mvxic, i. 25. ChappeU further says that
when Henry V. entered the city of London in triumph after the
Battle of Agincourt . . . boys with pleasing voices were placed in
artificial turrets singing verses in his praise. But Henry ordered
this part of the pageantry to cease, and commanded that for the
future no ditties should be made and sung by minstrels or others in
praise of the recent victories ' for that he would whollie have the
praise and thanks altogether given to God.' Nevertheless among
many others, a minstrel piece soon appeared on the Se^ge of Rarfiett
(Hai-fleur), and the Battayle of Agynkou/rt, evidently, says Wartou,
adapted to the harp, and of which he has printed some portions
{Sigtory of English Poetry, ii. 257). The above song, which was
printed in the I8th century by Percy, Bumey, and J. Stafford
Smith, from a MS. in the Fepysian eolleetion in the Library of
Magdalene College, Cambridge, has been shown by Mr. Fuller
Maitland to be an incomplete transcript from one in Trinity College,
Cambridge, in which the melody stands as above. (See English
'
Carols of the 15th Century.')
VOL. IV
at Queen's College, Oxford.' Some of these
carols may have been composed by John
Dunstable or his contemporaries. Although
in England there is little left of this earliest
English School of composers, on the Continent
recent discoveries have been important.
'
rosa bella,' a three-part love-song, by Dunstable,
was found at Rome, and afterwards in a different
version at Dijon,* and it is evidently counterpoint
on a popular song. A number of other
MSS. of English composers' works of this period
exist at Modena and Trent, and the latter
library contains another secular song Puisque
'
'
m'amour Dunstable.^ (See Dunstable.)
In the period between 1485 and 1547," which
covers the reigns of Henry A'll. and Henry
VIII., social and political ballads multiplied
fast ; and among the best-known productions
of these reigns are the following
'
: Pastyme with
good companye,' composed by Henry VIII.
himself ; 'The three ravens,' John Dory,' The
' '
hunt is up,'' 'We be three poor Mariners,'
'Robin, lend me thy bow,' 'My little pretty
one,' 'Sellenger's Round,' 'Westron Wynde,'^
etc. It should be noticed here that many
variations in the copies of old tunes indicate
uncertainty in oral traditions. Formerly the
general opinion was that the old secular music
of European countries was based upon the same
scale or mode as the modern major scale, i.e.
the Ionian mode. But it is now generally,
acknowledged that the ecclesiastical modes were
fully used in England in the composition of all
kinds of secular music until early in the 17th
century, and many of the popular songs were
written throughout this period in the Dorian,
Mixolydian, and other modes.^ Thus, amongst
the early songs, The ' '
King's Ballad, ' Westron
Wynde,' and others agree in some of their
many versions with the Dorian mode. And
as will \ie later shown, modal influences exist
to the present day in our simplest folk-songs.
But in the 16th century the easy Ionian
mode was the favourite of strolling singers and
ballad-mongers; and in spite of prohibition
and censure by the Church and the disdain
with which skilled musicians treated what they
3 The words to this carol were printed by Wynkyn de Worde in
1521, but the music appears to be of an earlier date.
4 See Ambros, Oeschichte der ilusih, Musik Beilage, p. 22, where
the lioman version ie reprinted.
6 lliese were discovered in 1892 by Mr. W. Barclay Squire, and
copies are now in the British Museum.
8 Here the chapter on' The Fnglish School ' in Piof.H. Wooldridge's
second vol. of the Oxford Mist, ofMus, may bestudied with advantage.
^ Any song intended to arouse in the morning, even a love-song,
was formerly called a hwnt'a itp (Shakespeare so employe it iu
Eomeo and Juliet, Act ill. Scene 5). There are many different
versions of the tune.
8 This Bong is famous for being the only secular song which our
Church composers employed ; it was the subject of three Masses by
Tavemer, Tye, and Shepherde in the 16th century. See Chappell,
op. cit. 1. 38 for the melody.
" At the time the previous editions of Chappell's work were
published this fact had not been freely accepted, and a cei-tain
number of the tunes had had sharps and flats added to them, which
transformed an ecclesiastical mode into a major or minor key. In
the present edition, 1893, these signs have been removed. Moreover,
in this edition it is stated that there are 44 Ilorian, 19 Mixolydian,
and 12 Aeolian tunes out of 118. The other 43 are mostly in the
major. The Phrygiaii, and Lydian modes occur less often, however,
in English music than in that of other conntriea See Wooldridge's
preface to Chappell's Old Eng, Pop. Music,
2 Q