Annotation:Cease Your Funning (1)

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 CEASE YOUR FUNNING [1]. AKA and see "Lofty Mountains," "Constant Billy." English, Air (6/8 time). The song appears in John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1729) and The Fashionable Lady (1730). Chappell reminds us that the tune is, as are all the tunes in Gay's famous work, older than the opera. Kidson (1922) dates the tune to the late 17th century where he finds it on half-sheet music attached to the song "Constant Billy." In fact, the air appears as "Constant Billy" in the third volume of Playford's Dancing Master. Sharp (1907) explores the relationship between "Constant Billy" and "Cease Your Funning," and points out that Gay was not a musician himself and employed the services of a German, Pepusch, by name, to note down and arrange the airs which Gay sang to him. "It needs but a cursory examination of this opera to see that the airs are anything but faithful transcriptions of genuine peasant-tunes..." and concludes that Gay or Pepusch, or both, were guilty of alterations or 'improvements.' "The rhythm of the fine old melody 'Constant Billy' is changed that it might fit the metre of the new words of 'Cease Your Funning', and the tune adorned with a dominant modulation at the middle cadence." In the Beggar's Opera the untitled lyric goes: Cease your funning, Force or cunning, Never shall my heart trepan; All these sallies Are but malice To seduce my constant man.  'Tis most certain, But their flirting, Women oft have envy shown; Pleas'd to ruin Others' wooing, Never happy in their own. There have been some claims that "Cease Your Funning" was derived ('stolen') from the Welsh tune "The Ash Grove," despite the fact that the latter first appeared in print in the Bardic Museum of 1802. As above, it clearly derives from "Constant Billy," and the claim for Welsh provenance has no merit, according to Kidson (Groves).

Source for notated version: Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Time), vol. 2, 1859; pp. 119-120. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 61. Sharp (English Folk-Song), 1907; p. 113. Recorded sources:

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