When Thomas Percy included this ballad in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), he described it as ‘a story of great fame among our ancestors’. This verdict is supported by the multiple editions that had were printed between the 1580s and the 1760s. There are also plentiful references to the Tanner of Tamworth in other forms of early-modern literature. Most notably, Thomas Heywood wrote a play in c.1599 that clearly aimed to exploit the success of the song in order to produce a theatrical hit (see Related texts). Ten years earlier, George Puttenham had noted the manner in which the Tanner’s ‘uncouth’ and ‘ill shapen’ speech added to the humorous effect of the song, though the line that he quoted – ‘I hope I shall be hanged tomorrow’ – does not appear in precisely this form in any surviving version of the ballad (the ill-judged verb, ‘hope’, attracted Puttenham’s analytical attention but most editions used ‘shall’ or ‘traw’ instead). Was Puttenhan mis-remembering or was he referring to a version that has not survived?
In 1659, James Howell noted that another of the Tanner’s expressions – ‘After a coller comes a halter’ – had established itself as a proverb (see also Related texts). John Selden, moreover, is said to have referred to the verse about the collar as legitimate historical evidence of the medieval ceremony for creating an esquire (see Ashmole). And in William Winstanley’s The Essex Champion (1690), this ballad is named as one of those that was specially purchased to help develop the reading skills of the precocious young hero, ‘Billy of Billerecay’.
Early modern society was intensely hierarchical and marked by multifarious inequalities. To superiors and inferiors alike, there was evidently something deeply appealing about fantasies of accidental and temporary parity. Three of our hit ballads focus on interactions between unrecognised kings and sturdy representatives of the common people (see also A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield and The Shepherd and the King).
The tanner is obviously a figure of fun and he proves unable to master a courtly horse, but it is the king who has never heard of ‘cow hides’. The song plays constantly with inequality: the king is temporarily brought low and the Tanner anticipates being taken for a gentleman on his new horse (before he falls off); the king and the commoner negotiate on equal terms over the ‘boot’ that will be paid as part of the horse-swapping deal; and, at the end, the King gives the Tanner a landed estate and the Tanner reciprocates with the promise that, should the King ever fetch up in Tamworth again, ‘thou shalt have clouting leather for thy sho[o]ne [shoes]’.
The success of the song can thus be attributed primarily to the appeal of the king-meets-commoner theme and the skilful manner in which it is explored. Of course, the ballad does not really challenge the status quo – the world is put to rights in the last verses – and both Mark Truesdale and Harriet Phillips have emphasised its social conservatism. For Phillips, such songs are all about satisfying the urge of early-modern consumers to escape from the tense cultural debates of their own period, while Truesdale argues that seventeenth-century versions of the king-meets-commoner theme abandon the radical social criticism that was present in medieval examples. As a result, ballads such as this one were 'a conservative, social propagandist tool..., designed to encourage the good behaviour of the lower orders and defuse political unrest'.
Perhaps these arguments are somewhat overstated, however. A Pleasant new Ballad is clearly not a radical critique of the social order but it certainly allows the vicarious experience of something transgressive in the great tradition of the carnivalesque. It has been said that in such stories the king often represents ‘a proxy for the reader’ (see Phillips) but it was equally possible for contemporary listeners/readers to identify with the tanner and to experience excitement at the temporary licence granted him to insult a reigning monarch (‘I am weary of thy company’; ‘Away with a vengeance’; ‘Why art thou a foole’?). Indeed, the bottom-up insults come so thick and fast that it is hard to imagine that they were not a fundamental aspect of the song's appeal. It also seems likely that, for consumers, the act of seeking out a fantastical medieval past, free from disapproving puritans, was not only an escape from the present but a comment upon it. To this extent, A Pleasant new Ballad is not so very different from late-medieval examples such as ‘The king and the hermit’, ‘King Edward and the shepherd’ and ‘The King and the barker’ (see also Related texts).
Christopher Marsh
References
Anon, ‘The King and the Barker’ (mid-fifteenth century), printed in Anon, Pieces of ancient popular poetry (1791), pp. 58-65. The original manuscript is in Cambridge University Library, MS Ee.4.35.
Anon, ‘The king and the hermit’ (c. 1377-1483) and ‘King Edward and the shepherd’ (mid-fourteenth century), The Camelot Project (University of Rochester), https://d.lib.rochester.edu/search/site
Elias Ashmole, The institution, laws & ceremonies of the most noble Order of the Garter (1672), p. 225.
Thomas Heywood, The first and second parts of King Edward IV containing his mery pastime with the tanner of Tamworth, as also his love to Mistrisse Shoare (1599; also 1600, 1605, 1613, 1619, 1626 and 1641). Our page references are to the edition of 1641.
James Howell, Paroimiographia proverbs, or old sayed sawes and adages (1659), p. 17.
Madden Collection, Garlands, vol. 2, no. 465, Cambridge University Library.
Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry 3 vols. (1765), vol. 2, pp. 75-83.
Harriet Phillips, Nostalgia in print and performance 1510-1613 (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 45-58, 68 and 152-53..
George Puttenham, The arte of English poesie (1590), pp. 214-15.
Mark Truesdale, The king and the commoner tradition: carnivalesque politics in medieval and early modern literature (2018), ch. 4.
William Winstanley, The Essex Champion (1690), p. 4.
No tune specified
The purpose of this section is to provide brief notes on the melody followed by detailed evidence relating to its career, paying particular attention to the ‘echoes’ (inter-song associations and connections) that may have been set up if it was nominated for the singing of more than one ballad. In the list presented in the ‘Songs and Summaries’ section below, we have endeavoured to include as many of the black-letter ballads that used the tune as possible, under any of its variant names. Titles from our chart of best-sellers are presented in bold type (these are also in colour when there is a link to the relevant ballad page on the website). It should be noted that it is extremely difficult to date many ballads precisely and the chronological order in which the songs are listed is therefore very approximate (we have drawn on previous attempts to date the ballads, making adjustments when additional evidence can be brought into play). In most cases, we list the earliest surviving edition of a ballad, though in many instances there may have been earlier versions, now lost.
Versions and variations
Unfortunately, no seventeenth-century tune can be firmly connected with this song. Our featured edition does not nominate a melody, and other editions mentioned only ‘an Excellent new Tune’. Versions of the song survived into later vernacular tradition, however, and our recording therefore uses a tune from mid-twentieth-century Scotland (it is transcribed in Bronson’s Traditional tunes of the Child Ballads). We cannot say what relation, if any, it bore to the original music.
Echoes (an overview)
In the circumstances, it is not possible to say anything significant about cross-currents and interrelationships.
[See 'Postscript', below, for additional notes on the melody].
Songs and Summaries
A Pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tanner of Tamworth (A. M., 1621-24). Roxburghe 1.176-77; EBBA 30112. History – medieval; Royalty – incognito, authority; Humour – misunderstanding, mockery, deceit/disguise; Economy – prices/wages, money; Society – rural life; Politics – power; Emotions – suspicion, anxiety; Employment – crafts/trades; Environment – animals, flowers/trees, landscape; Places – English, travel/transport; Bodies – clothing, bodily functions; Gender – masculinity; Recreation – hunting. The king, while out riding, encounters a straight-talking tanner who fails to recognise him, and the two men indulge in some amusing barter-banter as they swap horses and negotiate appropriate fees.
Postscript
Some of the ballads that were sung to ‘In summer time’ may have shared their melody with this hit song. Tune titles often derived from the opening lines of a text, and A Pleasant new Ballad begins, ‘In Summer time when leaves grew greene’. Unfortunately, many other songs also opened ‘In summer time...’ and it is therefore impossible to be certain.
Christopher Marsh
References
Bertrand Harris Bronson, The traditional tunes of the Child Ballads, 4 vols. (1959-72), vol. 4, p. 93.
Back to contentsStandard woodcut name: Gallant on rearing horse
The purpose of this section is to provide evidence relating to the career of the image under discussion, paying particular attention to the ‘reflections’ (inter-song associations and connections) that may have been set up if it was chosen to illustrate more than one ballad. The list given below includes all ballads from the Pepys and Roxburghe collections that feature this woodcut or a close variant (these are the two largest collections, including approximately 3300 sheets, in total). References to ballads from other collections occur only when the featured edition of the song under consideration here (or the featured edition of another song from our list) comes from such a source. Ballads from our chart of best-sellers are presented in bold type, and they also appear in colour where there is a link to another song in the database. Please note, however, that the editions of hit songs listed below are not necessarily those for which digital images are presented on this website. Cross-references to other examples of our featured woodcuts are also presented in bold. It is extremely difficult to date many ballads precisely and the chronological order in which the songs are listed is therefore very approximate (we have drawn on previous attempts to date the ballads, making adjustments when additional evidence can be brought into play).
Reflections (an overview)
The woodblock used for this picture was clearly in good condition at the time of printing and may therefore have been relatively new. We have searched the Roxburghe and Pepys collections for examples of the Gallant on rearing horse (see below), and his appearance on A Pleasant new Ballad seems to have been one of his earliest outings. Later surviving versions do not in general retain this particular rider, though the gap of several years between extant editions may well conceal further appearances. On our featured edition, he clearly represents the king riding towards the tanner, and the difference in social status is as marked if we compare the horses as it is if we compare the men.
The woodcut also featured on other songs of the period. It was copied more than once, and the gallant’s direction of travel was reversed in the picture that appears on A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore (this happened when a carver copied from a printed sheet without remembering or caring that the picture would be rendered as a mirror image when it passed through the press).
Our featured edition of the Pleasant new Ballad may have exerted some influence over the gallant’s later appearances, for in most cases he represents a king, either past or present. There is nothing in the picture itself to denote royalty, and thus the influence of the hit ballad may be detectable. On the first two ballads listed below, the gallant represents Edward IV (1461-70, 1471-83), and on the last two he plays the role of William III, arriving as England’s saviour in 1688 and perhaps offering a reassuring sense of continuity with monarchs of the past. Given that images of ‘King Billy’ riding a rearing horse can still be seen on the gable ends of loyalist Belfast today, it is worth wondering whether our simple woodcut played any role in stimulating this visual tradition.
Songs and summaries:
A Pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tanner of Tamworth (A. M., ?1621-24). Roxburghe 1.176-77; EBBA 30112. History – medieval; Royalty – incognito, authority; Humour – misunderstanding, mockery, deceit/disguise; Economy – prices/wages, money; Society – rural life; Politics – power; Emotions – suspicion, anxiety; Employment – crafts/trades; Environment – animals, flowers/trees, landscape; Places – English, travel/transport; Bodies – clothing, bodily functions; Gender – masculinity; Recreation – hunting. The king, while out riding, encounters a straight-talking tanner who fails to recognise him, and the two men indulge in some amusing barter-banter as they swap horses and negotiate appropriate fees (picture placement: he appears beneath the title, alongside a more humble-looking man, also on horseback).
The Last News from France, Being a true Relation of the escape of the King of Scots from Worcester to London, and from London to France (W. Thackeray, T. Passenger, and W. Whitwood, 1666-79). Roxburghe 3.54-55; EBBA 30402. Politics – domestic, foreign affairs, Royalist, obedience; Royalty – incognito; Bodies – clothing; Emotions – sorrow, hope; Gender – masculinity, cross-dressing; History – recent; Places – English, European. A gentleman explains how he dressed as a woman in order to help Charles Stuart escape from England following the Battle of Worcester in 1651 (picture placement: he appears over the third and fourth columns of text).
The Troubles of these Times, OR, The Calamities of our English Nation (P. Brooksby, 1670-98). Roxburghe 2.456; EBBA 30930 Religion – Christ/God, divine intervenetion, sin/repentance, prayer; Economy – hardship; Emotions – anxiety, guilt; Morality – general; Politics – foreign affairs; Society – criticism. A song that laments England’s current troubles – particularly warfare and economic hardship – and urges everyone to turn to God in true repentance (picture placement: he appears beneath the title, in between an army and a praying man).
A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore (no publishers’ names, 1671). Roxburghe 3.258; EBBA 30969. Gender – femininity, sex; History – general, romance; Humour – satire, bawdry; Morality – sexual. A survey of history’s most famous sexually-driven women, concluding that Jane Shore tops the list with her ‘all-conquering Thighs’ (picture placement: in a back-to-front version, he appears over the opening verse, riding away from a How-de-do-man).
Win at First, Lose at Last: Or, A New game at CARDS (F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, J. Clark, and T. Passinger, 1680-81). Pepys 2.207; EBBA 20818. Politics – celebration, controversy, domestic, Royalist, satire; Recreation – games; Royalty – praise; Humour – deceit/disguise, extreme situations; History – recent; Violence – civil war. This Royalist ballad represents the conflicts of the period 1640-60 as a game of cards in which the normal rules were turned on their heads (picture placement: he appears in between an Alehouse scene with candle at centre and an image of a king).
Great Britains Delight, OR, A Health to his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange (no publisher names, 1689). Pepys 2.242; EBBA 20856. Politics – celebration, domestic, foreign affairs, Royalist; Religion – Catholicism/Protestantism; Emotions – joy, patriotism; Places – Irish, nationalities. This celebrates the arrival of William of Orange and the deliverance of England from Roman Catholicism (picture placement: he appears beneath the title, riding away from a group of men drinking ‘A good Health to the Prince’).
A New Touch of the Times, OR, The Naton's Consent, For a Free Parliament (T. F., 1689). Pepys 4.316; EBBA 21978. Politics – celebration, domestic, Royalist; Religion – Catholicism/ Protestantism; Royalty – criticism, praise; Emotions – joy, patriotism; Death – warfare; Violence – civil war. The arrival of William Orange is celebrated and the downfall of the ‘Papists’ is described with glee (picture placement: he appears to the right of an aristocratic man and two countrymen talking).
Christopher Marsh
Back to contentsThe short list that appears below is arranged chronologically and includes published texts from before 1700 that share certain themes or material with A pleasant new Ballad and that may therefore be related to it in some way. One line in the hit ballad, for example, can be traced directly to a late medieval song about 'John the Reeve'. When the Tanner of Tamworth declares fearfully that 'After a coller comes a halter', he echoes John's words at a corresponding moment in his own encounter with a king:'after a coller comes a rope'.
More clearly, another late-medieval song,‘The King and the barker’, was a direct ancestor of the later hit ballad (barkers prepared the bark of trees for use by tanners but the poem uses the two terms interchangeably). Numerous features of A pleasant new Ballad are present in the earlier text, including the references to Drayton Basset, the gallows and the swapping of horses. In our ballad, the Tanner remarks at one point that ‘Cow-hides be deare’; in the medieval poem, his ancestor uses the same words, noting that ‘kow heydys beyt der’. Intriguingly, the manuscript in which the poem appears belonged in the fifteenth century to Richard Call, a servant of the famous letter-writing Paston family in Norfolk. Like the Tanner, Call knew a thing or two about the pleasure and pain of social interaction across boundaries of rank; he outraged the Pastons in c. 1469 when he secretly exchanged marital vows with their daughter, Margery.
Of course, this song also bears a general resemblance to several others from the late-medieval and early-modern periods that tell stories of incognito kings engaging with commoners (selected examples are listed below). Most of these, however, are not so closely related to A pleasant new Ballad in terms of precise verbal content.
A merrie, pleasant and delectable history, apparently issued first in 1596, is actually a slightly expanded version of our ballad, published in small book format. There are many minor textual differences between this edition and the broadside ballad, though the two pieces are unquestionably versions of the same song. In the book, over fifty lines are added in order to reach the necessary length, mostly in the form of short new sections, each containing a verse or two. The edition of 1690 also added a section near the end in which the King visits the Tanner at home and flirts briefly with his daughter.
It seems possible that this scene was inspired by a similar one that had earlier appeared in Thomas Heywood's play, The first and second parts of King Edward IV. This was probably first written and staged in 1597-99, and it was published in 1599. It provides fascinating evidence of the powerful influence exerted over the stage by hit ballads. Of course, Heywood also drew on a variety of other sources but he very probably designed his work partly to capitalise on the success of two highly popular Elizabethan ballads, one of which was the Pleasant new Ballad about the Tanner of Tamworth (the other was The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore). Both narratives were prominently mentioned in Heywood’s title, and his play clearly proved a resounding success, both on stage and in print.
In the scenes featuring the Tanner, now named John Hobs, Heywood nods repeatedly towards the text of the ballad in what Harriet Phillips calls ‘successively deepening appeals to audience knowledge’. The Tanner’s very first speech references the ballad by establishing that he has a mare called Brock and a preoccupation with cow hides. Heywood toys inventively with the audience’s recollections of the song, making merry with the fact that many play-goers were probably at least as familiar with the Tanner of Tamworth as they were with King Edward IV. In one delicious moment, Hobs indignantly asks his monarch, ‘Dost thou not know mee?’
Heywood includes much that is familiar but he also elaborates on the ballad narrative, introducing new complexity to the two central characters and referring pointedly to certain topical preoccupations of the late 1590s (benevolences, patents and the regulation of the leather industry, for example). The work is little known today, and critics have tended towards frustration with a ‘history play’ that spends so much of its time dealing with the lives of ordinary people. It was, however, exceptionally successful in its own age, and its resonance with residents of early-modern London was rooted securely in its connections with two Elizabethan super-songs. As Phillips notes, the published version of the play was printed, unusually, in black-letter, presumably to align it with balladry and maximise sales.
Our hit song also bears some resemblance to later folksongs entitled ‘The King and the miller’ and ‘King James and the tinker’ (Vaughan Williams Memorial Library). The texts of these songs echo the Pleasant new ballad at several points – the ‘What news?’ motif appears in many versions, for example - and the stories are again comparable. The similarities are perhaps not sufficient, however, to justify considering the later folk songs as versions of the Elizabethan broadside ballad.
Christopher Marsh
Texts (in chronological order)
Anon, ‘John the Reeve’ (1377-1461), University of Rochester, Middle English Text Series: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/furrow-ten-bourdes-john-the-reeve
Anon, ‘The king and the hermit’ (c. 1377-1483), University of Rochester, Middle English Text Series: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/furrow-ten-bourdes-king-and-the-hermit
Anon, ‘King Edward and the shepherd’ (mid-fourteenth century), University of Rochester, Middle English Text Series: https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/furrow-ten-bourdes-king-edward-and-the-shepherd
Anon, ‘The King and the Barker’ (mid-fifteenth century), printed in Anon, Pieces of ancient popular poetry (1791), pp. 58-65. The original manuscript is in Cambridge University Library, MS Ee.4.35.
The Shepherd and the King... To the Tune of Flying Fame (probably registered in 1578 as ‘A merry songe of a kinge and a shepherd’).
A pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tanner of Tamworth (registered, 1586).
A pleasant new Ballad of the Miller of Mansfield... To the Tune of, The French Lavolta (originally composed 1585-1616).
Anon, A merrie, pleasant and delectable history, betweene King Edward the Fourth and a tanner of Tamworth, as he rode upon a time with his nobles a hunting toward Drayton-Bassett: verie pleasant and merrie to read (1596; also 1613 and 1690).
Thomas Heywood, The first and second parts of King Edward IV containing his mery pastime with the tanner of Tamworth, as also his love to Mistrisse Shoare (1599; also 1600, 1605, 1613, 1619, 1626 and 1641). Our page references are to the edition of 1641.
Anon, The Royal Frolick... To the Tune of, Let Caesar Live long (1692).
Anon, The KING and the FORRESTER (late seventeenth century).
References
Nora L. Corrigan, ‘The merry tanner, the mayor’s feast, and the King’s mistress: Thomas Heywood’s 1 “Edward IV” and the ballad tradition’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 22 (2009), pp. 27-41.
Thomas H. Ohlgren, ‘Richard Call, the Pastons, and the Manuscript Context of Robin Hood and the Potter’, https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ohlgren/RobinHood/Paston.htm
Harriet Phillips, Nostalgia in print and performance 1510-1613 (Cambridge, 2019), p. 153.
Mark Truesdale, The king and the commoner tradition: Carnivalesque politics in medieval and early modern literature (2018), ch. 4.
Andrew Robert Whittle, ‘The historical reputation of Edward IV 1461-1725’, PhD thesis, University of East Anglia (2017).
Thomas Heywood, The first and second parts of King Edward IV, ed. Richard Rowland (Manchester, 2005), ‘Introduction’.
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library: https://www.vwml.org/ (Roud numbers 248 and 8946).
A Pleasant new Ballad betweene King Edward the fourth, and a Tan-/ner of Tamworth, as hee rode upon a time with his/ Nobles on Hunting, towards Drayton Basset.
[Play each verse by clicking anywhere within its text. Our recording uses a tune that was associated with this story in a much later period, and it has therefore been necessary to modify the text in order to fit the words to the melody].
and birds sitting on every tree: King Edward would a hunting ride, some pastime for to see.
by eight a clocke of the day, And well was he ware of a bold Tanner, come riding on the way.
fast buttoned under his chin: And under him a good Cow=hide, and a Mare of foure shilling.
under this trusty tree: And I will wend to yonder fellow, to know from whence came hee.
thou art welcome good fellow (quoth hee) Which is the way to Drayton Basset? I pray you shew it to me.
from this way as thou dost stand, The next paire of Gallowes thou commest to, thou must turne upon the left hand.
the readiest way I pray thee shew mee. Whether thou be thiefe or true man quoth the Tanner, I am weary of thy company.
I hold thee out of thy wit: For [‘all' added in other editions] this day have I ridden and gone, and I am fasting yet.
no Dainties we will lacke: For wee’l have meat and drinke of the best, and I will pay for the shot.
thou shalt pay for no dinner of mine: I have more groats and nobles in my purse, than thou hast pence in thine.
and send them well to thee. Be thou thiefe or true man said the Tanner, I am weary of thy company.
of thee I stand in feare: The apparell thou wearest on thy backe, may seeme a good Lord to weare.
I sweare to you by the rood: Thou art some Ruffian of the Country, thou ridest in the midst of thy good.
I pray what newes d’you heare? I heare no newes answered the Tanner, but that Cow=hides be deare.
I marvell what they be. Why art thou a foole quoth the Tanner? looke I have one under mee.
so that thou would not be strange: If thy Mare be better than my Steed, I pray you let us change.
as change full well may yee: By the faith of my body quoth the Tanner, I looke to have boot of thee.
what boot wilt thou aske on this ground? No pence nor halfepence said the Tanner, but a Noble in gold so round.
The second Part of King Edward the fourth, and the Tanner of Tamworth.
so well paid see that you bee: I love thee better than I did before, I thought thou hadst ne’re a penny.
as change we must abide: Though thou hast gotten Brocke my Mare, thou shalt not have my Cow=hide.
that of the Cow was hilt, And threw it upon the Kings Saddle, that was so fairely gilt.
full quickly that I were gone: For when I come home to Jillian my wife, shee’l say I am a Gentleman.
he girded a fart so round: You are very homely then said the King, were I aware I’de a laid you o’th ground.
astonied then hee was: Hee knew not the stirrops that hee did weare, whether they were gold or brasse.
for and the blacke Cow=horne: [‘and eke the Black-Cow horn’ in other editions] The Steed began to run away, as the Devill the Tanner had borne.
a little beside an Ash: The Steed gave the Tanner [‘such’ added in other editions] a fall, his necke was almost brast.
with mee he shall not abide: It is no marvell said the King, and laught, he knew not your Cow=hide.
as change well that we mote: Ile sweare to you plaine, if you have your Ma[re], I doe looke to have some boot.
what boot wilt thou aske on this ground?’ No pence nor halfepence, said our King, but in gold twenty pound.
and twenty more I had of thine: I have ten groats more in my purse, wee’l drinke five of them at the Wine.
that blew both loud and shrill, Then five hundred Lords and Knights, came riding over a hill.
with thee Ile no longer abide: Thou art a strong thiefe, yonder thy fellows, They will steale away my Cow=hide.
for so it may not be: They be Lords of Drayton Basset, come out of the North country.
full low they fell on their knee: The Tanner had rather than a hundred pound he had been out of their company.
A Coller that he did cry: Then would he ha’ giv’n a thousand pound, hee had not been so nie.
that is a thing will breed sorrow, For after a Coller commeth a halter, and I shall be hanged to morrow.
for pastime thou hast showne me: No Coller nor halter thou shalt have, but I will give thee a fee.
with Tenements three beside: Which is worth five hundred pound a yeare, to maintaine thy good Cow=hide.
for this good deed thou hast done: If ever thou commest to merry Tamworth, thou shalt have clouting leather for thy shone ['shoon' in other editions].
London, Printed by A. M. FINIS.
This ballad is included according to the criteria for List A (see Methodology). The evidence presented here is accurate, to the best of our knowledge, as of 1st January 2024.
Shirburn ballads: not included.
Appearances on Ballad Partners' lists: Pavier and partners, 1624 (as 'King and Tanner'); Coles, Wright, Vere and Clark, 1675; Thackeray, 1689 ('King & the Tanner').
Other registrations with Stationers' Company: 1586; and 1615.
No. of known editions c.1560-1711: 10
No. of extant copies: 7
New tune-titles generated: none established with certainty.
Specially-commissioned woodcuts: none firmly established.
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library databases: 30 references, with only very occasional evidence of later collection as a folk-song (Roud no. 248).
POINTS: 0 + 30 + 10 + 20 + 7 + 0 + 0 + 3 = 70
This box will be used to highlight any new information on this song that might come to light after the launch of the website.
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