Annotation:Happy Groves

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HAPPY GROVES. English, Air (4/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). This air, by biography:John Barrett (ca. 1674-ca. 1735), and was published in The Harpsicord Master, 3 (1702, p. 8). It can be heard as the vehicle for a song in John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1729), followed by appearances in a number of period ballad operas such as The Downfall of Bribery, or the Honest Men of Taunton (1733) and Rome Excis'd (1733). Northumbrian musician Henry Atkinson (Morpeth) entered an instrumental version of the melody into his 1694-95 music manuscript collection [1]. It was printed in 1719 by Thomas D'Urfey in his Wit and Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy, as the air to the song "The Pilgrim," which begins:

Oh! happy, happy Groves, witness of our tender loves;
Oh! happy, happy shade, where first our Vows were made.
Blushing, Sighing, Melting, Dying, Looks would charm a Jove;
A Thousand pretty things she said and all was Love:
But Corinna perjur'd proves, and forsakes the shady Groves.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 68.

Recorded sources:

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