Annotation:Stingo

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X:1 T:Stingo T:Oil of Barley, The T:Cold and Raw M:6/4 L:1/8 S:Chappell – Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G Dorian G4G2 d4B2 | c2 A4 F4F2 | G4G2 d4B2 | G6B6 :| B4B2 B4 AB | c4c2 c4c2 | d4d2 g4g4 | d6f6 || B4B2 B4 AB | c4c2 c3d_e2 | d3c B2 c4 A2 | G6 B6 ||

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STINGO. AKA and see: "Cold and Raw," “Juice of Barley (1),” "Maid that Sold Her Barley (The)," "Mother Beguiles the Daughter (The),” "Oil of Barley," “Up in the Morning Early." English, Country Dance Tune (6/4 time). G Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABC. The air was published in London by John Playford in his English Dancing Master (1651). There is a song called "A Cup of Old Stingo" contained in Merry Drollery Complete, 1661 & 1670, that Chappell (1859) says must be forty or fifty years younger than that publication, if it is the original song, thus placing it in the reign of King Charles I. Stingo is a brewed alcoholic beverage, according to the lyrics of this ballad. The Merry Drollery ballad begins:

There’s a lusty liquor which
Good fellow use to take-a;
It is distilled with Nard most rich,
And water of the lake-a.

Of hop a little quantity,
And Barm to it they bring too;
Being barrell’d up, they call’t a cup
Of dainty good old stingo.

In the area once countryside outside London, on the road toward Paddington, there was an establishment called The Yorkshire Stingo opposite Lisson Grove, that “invited the wayfarer to its tea-garden and bowling-green; it was much crowded on Sundays, when an admission fee of sixpence was demanded at the doors. For that a ticket was given, to be exchanged with the waiters for its value in refreshments; a plan very constantly adopted in these gardens, to prevent the intrusion of the lowest classes, or of such as might only stroll about them without spending anything” (R. L. Chambers, Book of Days, vol. 2, 1863).

The tune appears under the title of “Stingo, or the Oyle of Barley” in John Playford’s Dancing Master from 1651-1690, and afterwards as “Cold and Raw.” The “Cold and Raw” title was derived (as were other titles) from a “New Scotch Song” to the tune by Thomas D'Urfey, printed in one of his books in 1688. The first two stanzas of D'Urfey's song of seduction [Roud 3007] go:

Cold and raw the wind do blow,
Bleak in the morning early;
And all the fields was covered in snow
And winter come severely.
As I was walking on my way
I met a farmer's daughter;
With cherry cheek and glittering eye
She made my mouth to water.

I asked this girl where was she going
Up in the morning early.
She answered, to the next market town
A-purpose to sell her barley.
Now in my pocket, as well I knew,
Half a sovereign lay squarely.
I said, “Put your journey out of your mind
And I bargain for your barley.

Sir John Hawkin’s givens an anecdote about Queen Mary, consort of King William III, and says: “Mr. Gosling and Mrs. Hunt sung several compositions of Purcell, who accompanied them upon the harpsichord; at length the Queen beginning to grow tired, asked Mrs. Hunt if she could not sing the old Scots ballad of ‘Cold and Raw’.” A similar tune, under the rather vague title “Northern Catch” (Catch=simple song) appears in John Hilton’s Catch that Catch Can (1652). D’Urfey printed another song to the melody in his Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719), called “A New Song to the Scotch Tune of ‘Cold and Raw’.” Samuel Bayard (in his article “A Miscellany of Tune Notes,” Studies in Folklore, p. 170) finds the melody under the title “Captain Gwynn’s Attack” on p. 80 of the first book of Nicholas Bennett’s Alawon fy Ngwlad (1896) and again in Bennett’s second volume in “a curious set” as “Judge a Point” (p. 97). According to Dean-Smith & Nicol, "Stingo" is related to the 'Barleycorn' ballads.

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