50  A New Song of Lulla By,/ OR, Father Peter's Policy Discovered [Bodleian Wood E25 (110)]

To the tune of ‘Green Sleeves’ (standard name: Greensleeves)

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

Perhaps no ballad tune was written down as frequently as this one. It was known variously as ‘Green sleeves’, ‘Which nobody can deny’, ‘The [bonny] blacksmith’, ‘Is not old England grown new’, ‘Lullaby-baby’ and ‘In Rome there is a most fearful rout’ (the last two titles were derived from the ballad under discussion here).

Versions from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries normally used the title ‘Green sleeves’ and presented the two-part melody of sixteen bars with which we are still familiar. In the later seventeenth century, the other titles were often preferred and shorter forms of the tune became common. These normally included only the first half of the original tune, though in some cases the reduction in length was achieved instead by dropping the normal repetitions (with alterations at the cadences) of the melody’s first and second parts. The version used on our recording adopts this alternative strategy and can be found in John Gamble’s commonplace book (1659).

There are many other versions of the tune, arranged variously for voice, lute, virginals, cittern and viol, and the following examples are merely a selection (there are fuller accounts in the works by Simpson and Ward, listed below): William Ballet’s lute book (c. 1590); Robert Creighton, virginal book (probably compiled in the 1630s);  A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern & Gittern (1652); Playford’s Dancing Master (editions from 1686 onwards); and The Second Book of the Pleasant Musical Companion (1686). Versions of the melody can also be found in numerous eighteenth-century political song-books and ballad-operas.

There is significant variation between different renditions of the tune, probably because ‘Green sleeves’ was, in Ward’s words, ‘not one tune but a type of tune that took a more or less different form each time it was written down’. Trained musicians improvised descants over an unchanging bass line and a short series of chords. Ballad-singers, however, often performed without harmonic accompaniment, and among them it is likely that ‘Green sleeves’ was perceived as a melody rather than a basis for improvisation to the accompaniment of instruments. This did not mean, however, that it took a single form. All early-modern melodies were variable, though some were more variable than others.

Echoes (an overview)

This famous tune appears to have begun life in association with ‘A new Courtly Sonet, of the Lady Green sleeves’, a romantic song of c. 1580 (no broadside copy has survived but the piece appears in A Handefull of Pleasant Delites, 1584). Other romantic songs followed swiftly but none of them is extant.

The melody was also appropriated by godly song-writers, and a ballad entitled ‘Green Sleeves moralized to the Scripture’ was registered with the Stationers in 1580. Although puritan efforts to exploit balladry in the work of converting the nation may have waned soon after this date, it is clear that these efforts had been at least partially successful in turning Greensleeves into a melody that carried a certain moral and religious freight. Most of the earliest surviving black-letter ballads that named the tune were sombre and serious. A warning to all false Traitors described approvingly the executions of numerous Elizabethan Catholics, while A most excellent Godly new Ballad argued that sin was rife and urged immediate repentance. The associations suggested by such songs persisted throughout the seventeenth century, and in the 1670s and 1680s the tune was still being chosen for songs that lamented immorality (A Description of Old England) or attacked Catholics (A View of the POPISH-PLOT).

Long before this time, however, it was also used for a range of songs that were lighter and brighter in tone (some of them may have been sung to the first half of the tune alone). Examples included: A merry new Ballad, both pleasant and sweete, In praise of the Black-smith (the refrain of which gave rise to two new titles for the tune); the bawdy New SONG, of a TAYLOR and his MAID; and THE Frightned People of Clarkenwel, Being an Account of how a COW Ran into the Church.

The impressive success of A New Song of Lulla By, OR, Father Peters’s Policy Discovered can perhaps be related to the manner in which it drew on both sets of associations, drawing together the serious and the jocular. As a mock-lullaby, it was clearly designed to make people laugh, and yet the underlying message about the threat posed by Catholicism was not to be taken lightly. Other songs had drawn on the tune’s dual associations - Much A-do about Nothing, for example – but none matched the popularity of the laughing lullaby.

There are also some direct intertextual connections between the songs, but for some reason these seem to be rather less extensive than is the case with many of our hit ballads. The most obvious example is the refrain ‘Which nobody can deny’ that appears first in A merry new Ballad, both pleasant and sweete, In praise of the Black-smith, and thereafter in numerous songs (see, for example, Much A-do about Nothing and A View of the POPISH-PLOT). 

THE Frightned People of Clarkenwel drops this refrain, but draws directly on the words of the A New Song of Lulla By. This slightly earlier song had opened, ‘In Rome there is a most fearful Rout,/ And what do you think it is about?/ Because the Birth of the Babe’s come out,/ Sing Lulla by Babee, By, by, by’. In THE Frightned People this became, ‘In Clerkenwell-Church there was a Rout,/ Last Sunday the People like Bedlams run out,/ And what shou’d this fearful stir be about,/ But Nannicock my poor Cow...’  Part of the humour must have resided in the comparison that was hereby drawn between two equally ridiculous occurrences: the alleged counterfeiting of a royal birth and the intrusion of a cow into a church service.

[See 'Postscript', below, for additional notes on the melody].

Songs and Summaries

A pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn, and the false Steward (registered 1580; J. Clarke, W. Thackeray and T. Passinger, 1684-86). Pepys 1.494-95; EBBA 20233. Family – children/parents; Crime – robbery/theft; Death – execution, result of immorality; Gender – marriage, masculinity, femininity, courtship; Morality – familial; Environment – landscape, animals; Places – Scottish, European, travel/transport; Emotions – sorrow, anger, love, joy; Employment – agrarian, apprenticeship/service; Recreation – hunting, hospitality, food, music, weddings; Bodies – looks/physique, clothing; Religion – divine intervention; Violence – punitive, animals. An aristocratic boy is sent to France with a guardian, but the guardian turns out to be thoroughly evil and the boy has to endure horrible suffering until a lovely lady intervenes to turn things around.

A warning to all false Traitors by example of 14... To the tune of Greensleeves (Edward Allde, 1584-1627). Crawford 1434; EBBA 34359. Crime - treason, punishment; Death – execution; Religion – Catholic/Protestant; Politics – domestic, plots, treason; News – political, domestic; Places – English; Royalty – praise; Violence – punitive. This presents a musical catalogue of all the ‘Romish’ traitors who have recently been executed because they ‘troubled the peace of England’.

A most excellent Godly new Ballad: [shew]ing the manifold abuses of this wicked world... To the tune of Greene-sleeves (R. B., 1595-1626). Manchester Central Library, Blackletter Ballads 1.4; EBBA 36012. Morality – social/economic, familial, general; Religion – church, Christ/God, moral rules, sin/repentance, charity; Bodies – clothing; Death –godly end; Emotions – anxiety; Family – children parents; Gender – marriage, sex; Society – rich/poor; Recreation – games/sports; Death – execution. The narrator urges everyone to repent their many sins (pride, wantonness, flattery, and so on) and pray to God for mercy.

A merry new Ballad, both pleasant and sweete, In praise of the Black-smith, which is very meete. To the tune of Greene sleeves, &c. (no imprint, 1620-50?). Roxburghe 1.250-51; EBBA 30173. Employment – crafts/trades, professions, soldiers/sailors; History – ancient/mythological, medieval; Gender – femininity, masculinity, sex; Recreation - Crime – punishment. This sings the praises of blacksmiths past and present, drawing attention to the many proverbs that refer positively to their work.

Much A-do about Nothing... To the Tune of, Which no body can deny (T. Vere, 1660). Bodleian Wood 401(169). History – recent; Politics – domestic, Royalist; History – ancient/mythological; Violence – civil war; Humour –verbal; Religion – puritanism, Protestant nonconformity, clergy; Bodies – clothing; Gender – courtship, sex. A meditation on nothing that includes a distinctly Royalist take on the turbulent decades just past, during which the radical plans of Cromwell and others came to nothing.

The Praise of Brewers: OR, The Brewers Bravery. To the Tune of, No body can deny (F. Coles, T. Vere, and J. Wright, 1665-74). Bodleian 4o Rawl. 566(187). Employment – crafts/trades, sailors/soldiers, professions; Recreation – alcohol; Gender – masculinity, courtship; History – recent; Politics – domestic, Royalist; Violence – civil war; Places – Scottish, nationalities; Religion – angels/devils. A response to the song about blacksmiths, arguing that brewers are more important and influential, particularly as a result of their role in stimulating armies to fight (evidence from the civil war period is given).

A Description of Old England, Or, A true Declaration of the times... To a pleasant new tune, Or, is not old England grown new (F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, and J. Clarke, 1675-80). Crawford 1244; EBBA 34108. Morality – social/economic, general; Economy – trade, money, hardship/prosperity; Society – criticism, rich/poor, urban live, rural life; Recreation – fashion, alcohol; Employment – sailors/soldiers; Bodies – clothing, adornment; Emotions – sorrow; Gender – masculinity. England, once ‘a stately brave place’ in which rich and poor all did well, is now a hotbed of immorality, vanity and corruption, much to the author’s regret.

The Citty Prophisier. Or, the country Fortuneteller.. Tune of, Oh is not Old England, grown New (F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, and J. Clarke, 1675-80). Bodleian 4o Rawl. 566(101). Morality – social/economic, general; Economy – hardship/prosperity, prices/wages, taxation, trade; Bodies – clothing, adornment; Society – criticism, neighbours, rich and poor, rural life, urban life; Recreation – alcohol, fashions; Religion – Protestant nonconformity. The singer predicts that good times will return when a number of (unlikely) changes come about: lower taxes, charitable rich men, the reform of misers, lawyers, drunkards, and so on.

A New SONG, of a TAYLOR and his MAID... To the Tune of The Black-Smiths Song, Or oh brave Popery (A. Milbourn, 1682-1708). Pepys 3.40; EBBA 21036. Employment – crafts/trades, female; Gender – adultery/cuckoldry, marriage, sex, masculinity, femininity; Humour – bawdry, domestic/familial; Morality –romantic/sexual; Emotions – anger; Bodies – clothing, health/sickness; News – general. The wife of a tailor finds him having sex with the maid; she dismisses the girl and rebukes her husband, but he refuses to terminate his affair with the ‘Impudent Jade’.

A New Song of Lulla By, OR, Father Peters’s Policy Discovered… To the Tune of Green Sleeves. Or, My Mistriss is to Bulling gone (no publisher named, 1688). Wood E25 (110). Politics – controversy, domestic, plots, court; Royalty – criticism; Family – pregnancy/childbirth; Religion – Catholic/Protestant, clergy; Humour – deceit/disguise, domestic/familial, extreme situations/surprises, verbal; Emotions – scorn, suspicion;  Employment – female/male, professions; Places – European. A mocking lullaby, imagining the responses of Catholics to the exposure of their alleged plot to pass off an infant impostor as the newly-born heir to the English throne.

THE French CRYER Newly arriv’d in ENGLAND. To the Tune of Lullaby-Baby (J. Millet, 1688-92).  Pepys 4.321; EBBA 21984. Humour – extreme situations, satire; Employment – urban; Society – criticism, urban life; News - general.  People with a variety of problems or news to tell are invited to inform the town crier.

THE Frightned People of Clarkenwel, Being an Account of how a COW Ran into the Church... To the Tune of, In Rome there is a most fearful Rout (J. Millet, 1689). Pepys 4.343; EBBA 22006. Environment – animals; Religion – church, angels/devils, clergy; News – sensational, domestic; Places – English; Emotion – fear, excitement; Humour – extreme situations, mockery; Politics – foreign affairs. A cow walks into the church at Clerkenwell, causing a level of alarm that seems to the beast’s owner unwarranted.

A View of the POPISH-PLOT; OR, A Touch of the Cunning Contrivance of the Romish Faction... To the Tune of, The bonny Blacksmith (no named publishers, 1689). Pepys 2.281; EBBA 20895. Politics – domestic, treason, court, plots; Religion – Catholic/Protestant; History – recent; Crime – treason, murder, punishment; Death – execution; Violence – punitive. This narrates the plotting and scheming of English Catholics from the ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678 to to the welcome arrival of King William (who has ‘quite spoyl’d the Jest’).

Postscript

It is perhaps surprising that there are not more ballads on the list above, given that Simpson identified Greensleeves as one of the most popular of all early-modern ballad tunes. In fact, it was used more prominently on white-letter ballads, which were typically somewhat more sophisticated, than it was on the black-letter songs with which we are primarily concerned.

Numerous white-letter ballads with political themes named the tune, and some of these connected strongly with one or more of the songs listed above. The JESUITS Character, a ballad of 1679, was one of many songs that adopted ‘Which no body can deny’ as its refrain (EBBA 35551).  A DISPLAY Of the Headpiece and Codpiece VALOUR Of the most renowned Colonel Robert Jermy (1660) inverted the praise-theme of the song about blacksmiths in order scorn and humiliate the named individual. Just in case we might miss the point, it is set ‘to the Tune of a Turd, or the Black-Smith’ (EBBA 34400).

And EPITHALAMIUM OR, A Wedding Song (EBBA 22396), published in 1689, described ‘The Supposed Marriage, of the Supposed Prince of Wales, to the Supposed Grand-Chil[d of] the French King’, thus continuing the tale of the baby discussed in A New Song of Lulla By (the connection was strengthened by naming the tune ‘Lulla by baby’). The melody, usually under its short-form titles, was also nominated very regularly in political song-books and in ballad-operas of the eighteenth century.

This tune was also referred to regularly in other forms of literature. In Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, for example, Mistress Ford declares that Falstaff’s disposition and words ‘do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundred psalms to the tune of GreenSleeves’. It is difficult to sing most of the metrical psalms to the melody because their second lines typically require three stressed beats rather than four, but the remark might also reflect a feeling that a secular tune should not be used for the singing of sacred material. Others, too, referred to the singing of metrically inappropriate ballads to the tune of Greensleeves in order to indicate the incompetence or drunkenness of the performer (see, for example, John Taylor, Ale Ale-vated into the Ale-titude, 1651). And the melody was also adopted for the singing of Christmas carols. In Good and true, fresh and true (1642), Greensleeves is the melody for ‘A Caroll of New-yeares day’.

Of course, Greensleeves is one of very few early-modern ballad tunes that remains well-known today. It appears to have been in continuous use since c. 1580, and the modern attentions of composers such as Ralph Vaughan-Williams boosted, rather than resurrected, the melody.

'My Mistriss is to Bulling gone', the tune named as an alternative for A New Song of Lulla By, has not been identified. 'Bulling' was a farming term, meaning 'putting the bull to the cow', though it could also mean 'making a fool of', or 'boasting' or 'bull-baiting' (a common early-modern recreation). The term and perhaps the tune thus had associations that might have proved amusing in relation to this particular ballad (see also Song history).

Christopher Marsh

References

William Ballet’s lute book (c. 1590), Trinity College Dublin, MS 408, p. 104.

Jeremy Barlow (ed.), The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford’s Dancing Master (1985), no. 244.

A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern & Gittern (1652), p. 31.

Robert Creighton, virginal book (1630s), Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS Conservatoire Rés. 1186, fo. 101.

John Gamble, Commonplace book (1659), New York Public Library, Drexel 4257, no. 121.

Good and True, Fresh and New (1642), A8r-B1r.

Oxford English Dictionary ('bulling').

The Second Book of the Pleasant Musical Companion (1686), pt. 3, no. 23.

William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor (Arden Shakespeare, 2000), p.167.

John Taylor, Ale Ale-vated into the Ale-titude (1651), p. 17

John M. Ward, ‘Apropos The British broadside ballad and its music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 20.1 (Spring 1967), pp. 44-46.

Standard woodcut name: Quacksalver or mountebank

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)

This woodcut is only rarely encountered, usually in association with political ballads. It is actually a representation of a quacksalver or mountebank (a travelling seller of medical cures and potions). Quacksalvers had a reputation for trickery and deceit, and the woodcut, in its appearance on A New Song of Lulla By, brings additional humour to the ballad's satirical condemnation of those who allegedly tried to fake a royal birth to the Catholic James II and his wife.

The only other ballad listed below is another hit song, The Whig Rampant. Here, too, the woodcut alerts viewers to the fraudulence that is the song's subject. The pictures that appear on the two ballads seem to have been produced from the same woodblock. It was already showing signs of wear and tear by the early 1680s, but its career in the previous decades has not, so far, been traced.

[See 'Postscript', below, for additional notes on the woodcut].

Songs and summaries

The Whig Rampant: OR, EXALTATION. Being a Pleasant New Song of 82 (P. Brooksby,  1682).  Roxburghe 2.517; EBBA 31018.  Politics – celebration, controversy, domestic, plots, Royalist, Tories/Whigs, satire; Religion – Catholic/ProtestantRecreation – good fellowship; Humour – satire; Death – execution; Emotions – joy; History – recent.  A satirical song in which a group of Whigs remember the Civil Wars and plan fresh outrages against all good order while anticipating their own executions (picture placement: the scene appears beneath the title, and the speech banners bear the lines, ‘My book you see, Remember me’ and ‘Then the Old cause We will set free’).

A New Song of Lulla By, OR, Father Peters’s Policy Discovered (no publisher named, 1688). Wood E25 (110). Politics – controversy, domestic, plots, court; Royalty – criticism; Family – pregnancy/childbirth; Religion – Catholic/Protestant, clergy; Humour – deceit/disguise, domestic/familial, extreme situations/surprises, verbal; Emotions – scorn, suspicion;  Employment – female/male, professions; Places – European. A mocking lullaby, imagining the responses of Catholics to the exposure of their alleged plot to pass off an infant impostor as the newly-born heir to the English throne (picture placement: the scene appears beneath the title, and there are no other woodcuts).

Postscript

The woodcut does not appear to have been connected with quacksalvers and mountebanks before now but it clearly fits within the relevant European iconography. Various elements of this iconography, as discussed by Katritzky, are represented in the ballad picture: the beakers full of potions, the trunk for transporting wares, the makeshift stage, the written testimonial, the theatricality, the fine clothes and the credulous crowd.

References

M. A. Katritzky, 'Marketing medicine: the image of the early-modern mountebank', Renaissance studies 15.2 (June 2001), pp. 121-53.

Christopher Marsh