This ballad was based on a story from the Apocrypha (the texts that were included in Protestant Bibles but not considered to be part of the accepted Scriptural canon). The song proved very popular during the early modern period and was published on numerous occasions between the 1560s and the early eighteenth century (see Editions). Widespread knowledge of the broadside is also suggested by a variety of cultural references. In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (c. 1601), for example, Sir Toby Belch sings an inaccurately-remembered snatch from the song – ‘There dwelt a man in Babylon, Lady, Lady’ - during a drinking session. And six years later, one of the three ships that carried John Smith and other colonists to Virginia was the recently-constructed ‘Susan Constant’ or ‘Susan Constance’.
There were, of course, other printed versions of Susanna’s story (see Related texts) but An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of Susanna connected its heroine directly to ‘constancy’ in a manner not found in earlier texts. The Biblical account does not, for example, describe Susanna as ‘constant’, though her deep loyalty both to her husband and to God is of course made clear.
The song may even have played a significant part in popularising the name ‘Susanna’ in early modern England. Baptism statistics generated through the ‘Ancestry’ website suggest that the name increased nine-fold in popularity between 1575 and 1705, far outstripping population growth and the rise in the use of more stable options such as ‘Margaret’. Moreover, two of the phases in which use of ‘Susanna’ increased most rapidly were the periods 1595-1635 and 1695-1705, both of which coincided with a distinctive cluster in the number of surviving editions of the song. During the seventeenth century, ‘Susanna’ also caught up with and then overtook ‘Susan’ as the more successful of the two closely-related possibilities. Of course, this is all suggestive rather than conclusive – and genealogical websites are not entirely reliable for the generation of such figures – but the trends are interesting, nonetheless. It is a striking fact that between 1610 and 1630 twenty-six girls were christened either Susan or Susanna in the Sussex parish of Cuckfield alone (there had been none between 1570 and 1590).
The popularity of the ballad can be understood in several ways. To begin with, it skilfully combined a range of tried and trusted broadside themes, including religion, morality, history, marriage, adultery and execution. With its skilful appropriation of an already popular melody (see Featured tune history), it was well-placed to succeed.
We should also note that the Biblical story was already well-known, despite the somewhat questionable status of such non-canonical texts among Protestants. It was highly familiar in medieval England and, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its status was maintained and probably enhanced. In England and Europe, there were numerous artworks representing ‘Susanna and the elders’ (paintings for all budgets, murals in alehouses and domestic dwellings, needlework pictures and miniature images set into jewellery). Most surviving examples focus on the moment when Susanna, naked in the garden, is approached by the lecherous old men (see also Featured woodcut history). To an extent, then, the ballad was tapping into the established popularity of the narrative. People knew the story already, which helps to explain why the ballad-makers were able to render certain details of the Biblical account a little cryptic within their necessarily condensed text.
It is also clear that the ballad must have appealed to women and men alike, though not necessarily for the same reasons. For women, Susanna provided a clear and powerful role-model for life within a patriarchal world: defiantly, she chooses death over debauchery and is then rewarded for her virtue by the intervention of Daniel as God’s agent. Nobody can accuse her of insubordination because she is so clearly beyond reproach, and yet she refuses to bend to the will of men.
Intriguingly, Dorothy Leigh, author of The mothers blessing (1616), explains why she chose to recommend the name ‘Susanna’ for a future granddaughter. She emphasises the character’s chastity, arguing that women should take pride in this quality, perhaps even using it as a resistant weapon when the need arose. Men, Leigh remarks, might complain that Adam was beguiled by Eve, ‘But wee women may now say, that men lye in waite every where to deceive us, as the Elders did to deceive Susanna’. The only way to avoid terrible shame, she concluded, was ‘to be chaste with Susanna, and being women, to imbrace that virtue, which being placed in a woman, is most commendable’. Women of all sorts could turn to Susanna in times of crisis, and the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, appears in one portrait wearing a pendant that carries an image of the Biblical heroine (both were accused of adultery and both insisted on their innocence).
Tessa Watt has argued that men may have been more interested in the ballad’s titillating woodcuts than in the didactic aspects of its text. There must certainly be something in this suggestion, though it is also worth noting that certain editions displayed more modest pictures, and the ballad text was remarkably faithful to the story as narrated in the Bible. Other published versions of the tale often elaborated extensively, including substantial new passages on Susanna’s physical beauty and other matters (see Related texts). And men of course wanted their wives and daughters to behave as Susanna did, even if some of them hoped that other men’s wives and daughters might behave differently. It could also be suggested that the Susanna story deliberately undercut its potential as a male sexual fantasy in two ways: by encouraging lustful men to recognise that they were almost as bad as the elders; and by emphasising the fact that elders failed in their advances and were put to death as a consequence.
This ballad, though highly successful in the early modern period, was rarely printed after c. 1710 and does not seem to have survived as a folk song, though the tune was still known in Wales during the early twentieth century (see Featured tune history). A further trace of the original ballad can be found in the modern replica of the ‘Susan Constant’, moored at the pier of Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum in Virginia (a cartoon version of the ship also featured in Pocahontas, Disney's film of 1995).
Christopher Marsh
References
Alawon John Thomas, A Fiddler’s Tune Book from Eighteenth-Century Wales, ed. Cass Meurig (Aberystwyth, 2004), no. 433.
The Bible in Englishe, according to the translation of the great Booke (1553), Apocrypha, ‘The storie of Susann, which is the thirteenethe Chaptere of Daniel after the Latine’.
Minnie G. Cook, ‘The Susan Constant and the Mayflower’, William and Mary Quarterly 17.2 (1937), pp. 229-33.
Jennifer Heller, The mother’s legacy in early modern England (2011), pp. 73-74.
Jamestown Settlement: https://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement/jamestown-ships/
Dorothy Leigh, The mothers blessing (1616), pp. 29-35.
Christine Peters, Patterns of piety. Women, gender and religion in late medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 251-69.
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601), ed. J.M. Lothian and T. W. Craik, The Arden Shakespeare (1975), pp. 47-48.
Jeremy L. Smith, ‘Mary Queen of Scots as Susanna in Catholic Propaganda’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010), pp. 209-20.
Edith Snook, Women, beauty and power in early modern England. A feminist literary history (2011), p. 13 and image on cover.
Lynn Stanley, ‘Susanna and English communities’, Traditio 62 (2007), pp. 25-58.
Tessa Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 119-19, 194, 202 and 209.
To an excellent new tune (standard name: King Solomon)
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
The ‘excellent New tune’ that was nominated for the singing of An excellent ballad was, without doubt, the melody often known as ‘King Solomon’. This title comes from the first line of William Elderton’s early-Elizabethan ballad, The panges of Love. The same song probably provides the alternative tune-title, ‘Lady, Lady, my faire Lady’, though the ‘Lady, lady’ refrain was also prominent in An excellent ballad. Indeed, the shared refrain combines with the distinctive metre and other verbal cross-references to establish that the two ballads shared a tune (and other songs can be linked conclusively to the tune in the same way). On the continent, the tune was also known as ‘Guerre guerre gay’.
It was not often notated in English sources, though examples can be found in manuscripts associated with Thomas Mulliner and the lutenist Thomas Dallis. These versions were for cittern/gittern and virginals respectively, and we have used Dallis’ tune for our recording. Intriguingly, a melody named simply ‘Susannah’ survived in Wales after the original faded from fashion in England. It appears in the tune-book kept by John Thomas, an eighteenth-century fiddler, and was noted in the early twentieth century as the melody to which the Christmas carol, ‘Wel dyma’r hynod wyl Nadolig’, was sung. Both versions differ significantly from the Elizabethan melody but both are recognisably descended from it.
Echoes (an overview)
The melody is first encountered at the start of Elizabeth’s reign, and its popularity is suggested by the fact that we have four surviving ballads that used it, all issued between 1559 and 1567. Of these, our hit song, An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of Susanna, was the one that survived most notably into the seventeenth century. By this later date, the tune was tied particularly to this song, and it was not named for the singing of other ballads. Its distinctive metre was clearly a factor here, but there may also have been a feeling that the tune had come to define the song and was therefore not suitable for other ballads.
Composers had been more experimental in the early Elizabethan period, and the tune probably originated with Elderton’s romantic ballad, The panges of Love. A Newe Ballade presented a political address to Elizabeth I, warning her about the dangers posed by clerics, and there then followed two songs – including our hit - that adapted Biblical tales for ballad audiences. It seems certain that the ballad-makers were deliberately ‘moralising’ The panges of Love (appropriating its secular theme and tune for godly purposes), a tactic that only rarely produced successful and lasting songs.
The initial success of the ballad about Susanna may owe something to the way in which it incorporated the anguished gender relations of the original ballad into a new song about a well-known Biblical heroine. Sung to the same tune, it also seems to present a riposte to Elderton’s representation of women as suicide-inducing temptresses in The panges of Love. Admittedly, Susanna causes the two elders to burn with lust but there is absolutely no suggestion that any of the blame for the drama that unfolds rests with her. More speculatively, Susanna’s song may also have called into play – for some listeners at least – the political implications that accompanied the tune after A Newe Ballade, the author of which attempted to guide the young queen in her challenging new responsibilities (by 1563, the repetitive refrain, ‘Lady, lady’, could remind consumers of Elizabeth I, Susanna or both women at the same time).
The four Elizabethan songs are also rich in intertextual echoes. The panges of Love opens, for example, with the question, ‘Was not good Kyng Salamon/ Ravished in sondry wyse’? This clearly inspired the composer of A Proper New balad, whose song began with the line, ‘Was not the Bryber Gehezie...?’ and who later remarked, ‘Alas how was thou Gehezie,/ Ravished in worldy gaine?’ These two ballads also included the line, ‘If this be true as trewe it was’, as did A Newe Ballade. Three of the four ballads used the highly distinctive ‘Lady, lady’ refrain, the only exception being A Proper New balad of the Bryber Gehesie. There is also an obvious connection between the questions ‘why should not I serve you alas/ My deare lady’ (The panges of Love) and ‘Why should not we of her learn thus,/ To live godly’ (An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of Susanna).
[See 'Postscript', below, for additional notes on the melody].
Songs and Summaries
The panges of Love and lovers f[i]ttes [no tune specified] (Printed by Richard Lant, 1559). Huntington Britwell 18292; EBBA 32224. Gender – courtship, sex; History – ancient/mythological, romance; Bodies – health/sickness; Death – suicide, heartbreak; Violence – animals, self-inflicted; Environment – weather, landscape; Emotions – anxiety, love, longing; Religion – ancient gods; Royalty – general. A man courts a woman by describing the many pains that male heroes of the past have suffered in wooing their equally renowned sweethearts, and he asks his own beloved to treat him with greater sensitivity than her predecessors have shown.
A Newe Ballade [no tune specified] (printed by Thomas Colwell, c. 1559-62?). Society of Antiquaries of London, Broadsides 1.48; EBBA 36302. History – medieval, recent, villainy; Religion – clergy; Catholic/Protestant; Politics – domestic, controversy, Royalist; Emotions – suspicion; Royalty – praise; Family – kin, children/parents; Death – murder; Violence – interpersonal. This addresses Queen Elizabeth directly, warning her to beware of clerics and reminding her of the many historical episodes in which her royal ancestors were abused and manipulated by the clergy.
An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of Susanna. To an excellent New tune (registered 1562-63; F. Coles, T. Vere and others [imprint cropped], 1665-74). Douce 1 (30a). Religion – Bible, Christ/God, divine intervention, heroism, Judaism, prayer; Gender – marriage, adultery/cuckoldry, sex, femininity, masculinity; History – ancient/mythological; Emotions – fear, despair; Morality – romantic/sexual, general; Bodies – looks/physique; Crime – false witness; Death – execution; Environment –flowers/trees, garden; Places – extra-European. This recounts the Biblical tale of Susanna, who rejects the advances of two lecherous elders of Babylon and then has to endure the false charges they make against her.
A Proper New balad of the Bryber Gehesie... To the tune of Kynge Salomon (Printed by Thomas Colwell, 1560s?). British Library, Huth 50(3); EBBA 77032. Religion – Bible, divine intervention, moral rules; Morality – social/economic Bodies – health/sickness; Emotions – greed, anger, wonder; Employment – apprenticeship/service; History – ancient/mythological. A song recounting the Biblical tale of Gehazi, who lied for personal gain and was punished with leprosy by his master, the propet Elisha.
Postscript
Between 1567 and 1584, the melody was either nominated or clearly intended for the performance of several texts that appeared in printed song-books and interludes. See, for example: A new and mery Enterlude, called the Triall of Treasure (1567); John Pikering’s A Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyning the Historye of Horestes (1567); and A Handefull of pleasant delites (1584).
These songs all dealt with troubled love, often drawing on narratives from the ancient world. They thus took their lead from Elderton’s ballad, The panges of Love (see above). In Scotland, Elderton’s original was ‘moralised’ in a song that appeared in A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs (1567). This refused to romanticise the pains of love, insisting instead that lust was deadly and urging us all to join our hearts to God rather than to earthly creatures. The melody was also mentioned in Cyril Tourneur’s Laugh and lie down: a besotted man fails to realise that the woman he loves is robbing him, and he begs stupidly, ‘I prate you mistris, grace me with your voice, to a dittie that I have made to the tune of, Lady, Lady, my fair Lady’.
Christopher Marsh
References
A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs (1567), ed. A. F. Mitchell (1897), pp. 213-19.
Thomas Dallis, Lute Book, Trinity College Dublin, MS 410/1, p. 305.
Anne G. Gilchrist, ‘Sacred parodies of secular folk songs: a study of the Gude and Godlie Ballates of the Wedderburn brothers’, Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society 3.3 (December, 1938), pp. 170-71.
A Handefull of pleasant delites (1584), section unpaginated.
Thomas Mulliner, Music manuscript, British Museum, Add. 30513, fo. 123 (c. 1560-85).
A new and mery Enterlude, called the Triall of Treasure (1567), D4v-E1r.
John Pikering, A Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyning the Historye of Horestes (1567), C2r-3r.
Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballads and its Music (New Brunswick, 1966), pp. 410-12.
Alawon John Thomas, A Fiddler’s Tune Book from Eighteenth-Century Wales, ed. Cass Meurig (Aberystwyth, 2004), no. 433.
Cyril Tourneur, Laugh and lie down (1605), E1r.
Back to contentsStandard woodcut name: Roman scene with naked woman
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)
Early seventeenth-century editions of this ballad used other pictures, but from the 1670s this scene evidently became a firm favourite (it appears on several surviving editions). It is a sensuous image, and its concentration on Susanna’s nakedness mirrors similar attention found in paintings representing this Biblical narrative by Europe’s leading artists (Rubens, Van Dyk and Rembrandt, for example). The woodcut was clearly not designed with Susanna’s story in mind, but it has the advantage of featuring a tree and a piece of fruit, as does the second half of the song.
Other appearances of the picture increase the suspicion that it has been selected for Susanna’s ballad primarily because of its capacity to arouse. It was not deployed extensively, but most of the songs for which it was chosen feature historical shepherds in love with beautiful maidens. The fact that the individual on the right is quite clearly a soldier rather than a shepherd was not considered an obstacle to relevance. On at least one occasion, the woodcut was selected to represent a young woman who declares herself desperate to find a lover. At the very least, there must have been some interesting under-currents when knowledgeable consumers contemplated this picture as an image of godly, constant and virtuous Susanna.
It is also notable that many of the woodcut’s appearances in the latter part of the seventeenth century were on ballads published by John Deacon. At least two different woodblocks were in existence, indicating that more than one printer saw the value of having a copy in stock.
[See 'Postscript', below, for additional notes on the woodcut].
Songs and summaries
Tom and Will. OR, The Shepherds Sheepfold (F. Coles, 1624-80). Roxburghe 3.104-05; EBBA 30427. Gender – courtship, masculinity, femininity; Emotions – longing, love, sorrow; History – romance; Employment – agrarian. Two shepherds love the same woman but both are disappointed when her beauty wins her a place at court (picture placement: the woodcut appears above the opening lines, alongside a man who walks away with eyes downcast).
An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of Susanna (F. Coles, T. Vere and others [imprint cropped], 1665-74). Douce 1 (30a); Religion – Bible, Christ/God, divine intervention, heroism, Judaism, prayer; Gender – marriage, adultery/cuckoldry, sex, femininity, masculinity; History – ancient/mythological; Emotions – fear, despair; Morality – romantic/sexual, general; Bodies – looks/physique; Crime – false witness; Death – execution; Environment –flowers/trees, garden; Places – extra-European. This recounts the Biblical tale of constant Susanna, who rejects the advances of two lecherous elders of Babylon and then has to endure the false charges they make against her (picture placement: the scene appears on the right side of the sheet).
The Charming ECCHO (J. Deacon, 1671-99). Pepys 3.187; EBBA 21200. Gender – courtship; Death – suicide; Emotions – anxiety, sorrow, love. A curious ballad in which a pining shepherd seeks relationship counselling from an echo (picture placement: the scene appears beneath the title and alongside a woman washing in a brook).
FLORA's Departure: OR, Summers Pride Abated (J. Deacon, 1671-99). Roxburghe 4.14; EBBA 30915. Nature – seasons, birds, crops, weather; Gender – femininity, masculinity. A dialaogue ballad in which Winter arrives to banish Summer, but Summer resists, temporarily at least (picture placement: the scene appears beneath the title, to the right of a woman bathing in a brook).
Flora's lamentable passion, Crown'd with unspeakable Joy and Comfort (J. Deacon, 1671-99). Pepys 3.197; EBBA 21210. Gender – courtship; Emotions – anxiety, love; History – ancient/mythological, romance. Flora is worried that Strephon no longer loves her, but he assures her that he does (picture placement: the scene appears on the right of the sheet, alongside a man with hat in hand).
The Necessitated Virgin (J. Deacon, 1671-99). Pepys 3.200; EBBA 21213. Gender – courtship, femininity, sex; Humour – bawdry; Bodies – health/sickness; Emotions – longing, anger. A fifteen-year-old girl expresses her desperation for a lover and her frustration at the romantic success of her friends and acquaintances (picture placement: the scene appears beneath the title and next to an aristocratic woman).
The Young-Mans Answer to the Merry Maid of Shoreditch her Resolution (J. Deacon, 1671-99). Pepys 3.260; EBBA 21274. Gender – courtship, femininity; Morality – romantic/sexual. Young men are here advised to be very careful in choosing wives because, though there are good maidens around, there are also many who deceive and manipulate (picture placement: the woodcut appears in between a well-dressed gentleman and Respectful man with raised foot).
Loves Boundless Power OR, The Charmed Lovers Happiness Compleated (J. Deacon, 1671-99). Pepys 3.194; EBBA 21207. Gender – courtship; Emotions – love, longing, joy; History – ancient/mythological, romance. Doranus sings of his love for the beautiful Phyllis and is overjoyed when she reciprocates (picture placement: the scene appears beneath the title and next to Respectful man with tufts of grass).
Tom and Will. OR, The Shepars Sheepfold (J. Wright, J. Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, 1681-84). Pepys 3.231; EBBA 21244. Gender – courtship, masculinity, femininity; Emotions – longing, love, sorrow; History – romance; Employment – agrarian. Two shepherds love the same woman but both are disappointed when her beauty wins her a place at court (picture placement: the woodcut appears above the opening lines, alongside Akimbo man with raised hand).
Postscript
Most surviving European artworks focus on the moment at which the elders approach Susanna, and some even seem to imply her complicity in their sin. In Alessandro Allori’s painting of c. 1561, for example, Susanna seems to tempt and tease her supposedly unwelcome visitors. Other pictures are much clearer about Susanna’s reluctance and resistance; in the version by the female artist, Artemisia Gentileschi, she twists her body and holds up her hands so that her discomfiture is abundantly plain.
In Protestant England, there were also artworks that focused upon other phases in the story. Edith Snook has written, for example, about a refined piece of needlework from c. 1660 that presents a beautiful but fully clothed Susanna. Admittedly, the lecherous elders are watching her from behind a tree but the viewer is not invited or permitted to examine her naked body. Images of Susanna were also found in wall-hangings made of cloth, in domestic murals (even, it seems, in alehouses), in elaborate plasterwork friezes, and on cushion covers.
Tara Hamling has shown that the sparse survivals often indicate that early-modern householders paid attention to the entire story, rather than just to the ‘moment of proposition’. This suggests that committed English Protestants were less comfortable than continental Catholics with Susanna’s sensuous potential. On the other hand, the comparatively cheap paintings of ‘Susanna and the elders’ that were sold at English auctions, often based on celebrated continental artworks, seem to indicate a thriving taste for the erotic in some sections of society. It is interesting to note that our ballad, with a text based closely on the Bible and a woodcut dominated by a naked woman, aimed to appeal to a range of consumer preferences.
Christopher Marsh
References
Tara Hamling, Decorating the godly household. Religious art in post-Reformation Britain (New Haven, 2010), pp. 21, 136-37, 153-54 and 211-12.
Edith Snook, Women, beauty and power in early modern England. A feminist literary history (2011), p. 13 and image on cover.
Tessa Watt, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 118-19, 194, 202 and 209.
Back to contentsThe list presented below includes published texts from before 1700 that tell the same story as An excellent ballad, intituled The constancy of Susanna, and that may therefore be related to it in some way. The version included in the The Bible in Englishe is clearly the most important, and the ballad about Susanna follows the Scriptural text very closely indeed. Certain details are omitted because of the constraints imposed by the single-sheet format but nothing significant is added and much of the Biblical vocabulary is retained. It is obvious that the ballad was composed as a metrical version of the Bible story.
Indeed, the ballad connects far more directly and regularly with the Bible account than do all the other ‘secular’ versions of the story listed below. Authors of full-length books about Susanna faced a challenge quite different from the one encountered by ballad-makers, for they had to elaborate on a Bible story that is impressively concise. A great deal of new material was therefore introduced, including back-stories for the main characters and plenty of intimate descriptions of Susanna’s beautiful body. Garter, for example, notes ‘her buttockes broade and round’ while Aylett cannot resist ‘Her paps that like two harvey apples swell’. We are reminded that men and women may have admired different elements in Susanna’s story.
There is little clear evidence of mutual influence between these books and the ballad, though Robert Roche seems to pick up on the ‘constancy’ theme that is highlighted in the title of our song. Admittedly, we have no surviving copy of the ballad from the 1590s and cannot be sure that the later title was already established, though the earliest reference to the ballad in the Stationers’ Registers, dated 1562-63, calls it ‘The godly and constant wyse Susanna’, suggesting that her constancy was already a key quality.
W. V., author of The ladie’s blush (1673), emphasises instead Susanna’s defiance of the elders, though his admiration for such behaviour is not without reservation. In the preface, he explains that he has decided to concentrate on Susanna, rather than on other women from the Apocrypha whose brand of defiance is more active and aggressive. The stories about such women represent ‘too great a precedent of Feminine courage, to be expos’d to the world’. Searching for evidence to support this, W. V. mentions the ‘over-forward’ women who opposed the king during England’s Civil Wars. Susanna is infinitely preferable, he argues, because she displays instead ‘a meek and innocent resistance’.
Christopher Marsh
Texts (in chronological order)
The Bible in Englishe, according to the translation of the great Booke (1553), Apocrypha, ‘The storie of Susann, which is the thirteenethe Chaptere of Daniel after the Latine’.
The Bible and holy Scriptures (Geneva, 1560), Apocrypha, ‘The historie of Susanna, which some joyne to the end of Daniel, and make it the 13. chap.’.
Thomas Garter, The commody of the moste virtuous and godlye Susanna (1578).
Robert Roche, Eustathia, or The constancie of Susanna (Oxford, 1599).
The Holy Bible… Appointed to be read in churches (1611), Apocrypha, ‘The historie of Susanna, set apart from the beginning of Daniel, because it is not in Hebrew’.
Robert Aylett, Susanna: or, The arraignment of the two unjust elders (1622).
George Ballard, The history of Susanna (1638).
W. V., The ladie’s blush, or, The history of Susanna, the great example of conjugal chastity an heroic poem (1673).
An Excellent Ballad, intituled, The Constancy of/ Susanna. To an excellent New tune.
[Play each verse by clicking anywhere within its text]
of reputation great by fame, He took to wife a fair woman Susanna was she cal’d by name: A woman fair and vertuous, Lady, Lady, Why should not we of her learn thus, To live godly.
she feared God, she stood in awe, As in the story you may read, was well brought up in Moses Law. Her parents they were godly folk, Lady, Lady, Why should we not then ['sing and' added in other editions] talk Of this Lady.
which were the Elders of Babylon, To Joachims house was all their trade, who was Susanna’s husband then: Joachim was a great rich man, Lady, Lady, These Elders oft to his house came, For this Lady.
fast joyning to his house or place, Whereas Susanna commonly, her self did daily there solace: And that these Elders soon espy’d, Lady, Lady, And privately themselves did hide For that Lady.
by these Elders of Babylon, A time convenient they espy’d, to have this Lady all alone. In this Orchard it came to pass, Lady, Lady, Where she alone her self did wash her fair body.
& thus they said, faire dame, good speed The doors are fast the Maids are gone, consent to us and do this deed, For we are men of no mistrust: Lady, Lady, And yet to thee we have a lust, O fair Lady.
a testimonial we will bring, We will say that one with thee lay, how canst thou then avoid this thin[g] Therefore consent and to me turn, Lady, Lady, For we to thee in lust do burn, O fair Lady.
now woe is me on every side; Was ever wretch in such a case? shall I consent and do this deed, Whether I do or do it not, Lady, Lady, It is my Death right well I wot, O true Lady.
into your hands and be guiltless, Then that I should consent at all, to this your shameful wickedness? And even with that (whereas she stood) Lady, Lady, Unto the Lord she cry’d aloud, pitifully.
Against Susanna aloud they cry’d Their filthy lust could not obtain, their wickedness they sought to hide, Unto her friends they then her brought Lady, Lady, And with all speed the life was sought Of that Lady.
before the people for to stand, that they might hear & know the truth, how these two Elders Susanna found, The Elders swore and thus did say, Lady, Lady, How that they saw a youngman lay with this Lady.
Susanna causeless she must Die, These Elders bore such evidence, against her they did verifie, Who were believed then indeed, Lady, Lady, Against Susanna to proceed, that she should Die.
they did lament and were full woe, When as they saw no remedy, but that to Death she then must go. Then unto him that is so just, Lady, Lady, In God was all her hope and trust, to him they cry.
The Daughters cry of Israel; His Spirit he raised in a child, whose name was call’d young Daniel, Who cryed aloud whereas he stood, Lady, Lady, I am clear of the guiltless blood, of this Lady.
in Judgement you have not done well, Nor yet the right way have you gone to judge the Daughter of Israel, By this witness of false Disdain, Lady, Lady, Wherefore to judgement turn again for that Lady.
he called for these wicked men, And soon he did them separate, putting the one from th’ other then: He askt the first where he did see That fair Lady, He said under a Mulberry tree, who lyed falsly.
thy sentence is before the Lord, He bad that forth he might be led and bring the other that bare record, To see how they two did agree Lady, Lady, He said under a Pomgranate tree, who lyed falsly.
behold the Messenger of the Lord, Stands waiting for you at the Door, even for to cut thee with a Sword: And even with that the multitude aloud did cry, Give thanks to God, and so conclude, for this Lady.
according as the Scripture saith, They did as with their Neighbour then, by Moses Law were put to Death: She innocent preserved was, Lady, Lady, As God by Daniel brought to pass, for this Lady.
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 'Susanna'); Coles, Vere, Wright and Clark, 1675 ('The constancy of Susannah'); and Thackeray, 1689 ('Susanna').
Other registrations with Stationers' Company: 1562 and 1592.
No. of known editions c.1560-1711: 13
No. of extant copies: 11
New tune-titles generated: none known.
Specially-commissioned woodcuts: none known.
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library databases: 5 references, with no evidence of later collection as a folk-song (Roud no. V3820).
POINTS: 0 + 30 + 10 + 26 + 11 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 77
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