Annotation:Walpole

Back to Walpole

---

WALPOLE. AKA - "Walpoole: or, the Happy Clown." AKA and see "I'm like a skiff on the ocean tossed," "One evening having lost my way," "Happy Clown (The)," "Happy Farmer (2)." English, Country Dance Tune (6/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The tune appears in the Second Volume of the Dancing Master [1] (1718), published in London by John Young. William Chappell notes the melody was also the vehicle for songs in John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1729, "I'm like a skiff on the ocean tossed," with the first line "One evening having lost my way"), The Grub-Street Opera, The Welsh Opera, or The Grey Mare the better Horse. A lyric to the melody, credited to "Mr. Burkhead," were issued on single-sheets and were published by Allan Ramsay in his Tea-Table Miscellany as "Sang XII" set to the tune of "Happy Clown." The first two stanzas go:

Hid from himfelf, now by the dawn
He flarts as frefh as rofes blawn.
And ranges o'er the heights and lawn.

After his bleating flocks.
Healthful, and innocently gay.
He chaunts and whiftles out the day;
Untaught to fmile and then betray.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Young (Second Volume of the Dancing Master, 3rd edition), 1718; p. 347.

Recorded sources:

---