Annotation:Cock Lorrel

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COCK LORREL. AKA and see "An Old Man is a Bed Full of Bones." English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time). G Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. Chappell (1859) states the tune appears in 180 Loyal Songs (1685), Pills to Purge Melacholy, and The Dancing Master (1650 and all later editions, under a different name). As is usual with ballad tunes, which it once was, this melody was used as the vehicle for several songs and so is also variously known by the titles "The Rump roughly but righteously handled", "The City's Feast to the Lord Protector," "St. George for England," "The Painter('s Pastime)," "Michaelmas-Term," "The Rambling Clerke," and "A Bill of Fare," among others. The song "The Cock Lorrel" is in Ben Jonson's masque The Gipsies Metamorphosed and Pepys collection of ballads in addition to Pills to Purge Melancholy.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times), vol. 2, 1859; pp. 40-41.

Recorded sources:




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