Do you think I meant country matters?

[pallas_athena]

Last time I went up to Oxford to run through Scotland repertoire with my accompanist Guy, I arrived in town a little early, so I went (fatally) into an antique shop.

I was doing all right at resisting the shiny things and the bladed things and the things with barrels, but I was completely broadsided by a shelf full of music books. Specifically, by a collection of ribald songs from Pills to Purge Melancholy. As a connoisseur of historical filth, I couldn't pass it up.

Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy was a title broadly given to several collections of popular song published between 1698 and 1720. Things really perked up once Thomas d'Urfey took over as editor: sure, he took the opportunity to publish a lot of his own song lyrics, but he also showed a rare dedication to collecting the latest hits heard in streets, theatres, pubs and club-rooms around the country.

The songs themselves are witty, bawdy, funny, lyrical and topical. Today some of them fall flat, but a good many of them are still worth hearing. The political ones have dated, of course, but the ones about sex are still quite, er, relevant.

I discovered Pills in my first year at university through this CD, and quickly infected my Stateside friends. Somewhere, there still exists a recording of speedlime and fatbuttsheep singing The Jolly Tradesmen in a school concert in the Washington Cathedral. Meanwhile I was making a modest name for myself singing classics like Oyster Nan in Oxfordshire pubs. (I had fallen among folk musicians at the time. A girl's got to have a hobby...)

When I got to London and began music college, I left the folk scene to focus on classical music. Fortunately, classical musicians can still access the vast archive of historical filth-- they just have to refer to it as "early music." For example, this book of filthy catches, edited by serious early-music heavyweight Paul Hillier, also has pride of place on my shelves.

So when I saw a book entitled "Sixty Ribald Songs from Pills To Purge Melancholy," complete with rather naughty cover illustration, I knew it had to come home with me. It has guitar accompaniments rather than the figured bass of the original, but I can work around that. Mostly I want to keep it for reference, and as a souvenir of my ill-spent youth.

As a reward for reading so far, do please enjoy this text. If you saw the Globe's 2003 production of Edward II, you'll remember it being sung by a half-naked Gerald Kyd.


My mistress is a hive of bees
In yonder flowery Garden:
To her they come with loaden thighs,
To ease them of their burden.
As under the bee-hive lieth the wax,
And under the wax is honey,
So under her waist her belly is placed -
And under that, her cunny.

My mistress is a mine of gold,
Would that it were her pleasure
To let me dig within her mould
And roll among her treasure!
As under the moss the mould doth lye,
And under the mould is money,
So under her waist her belly is placed -
And under that, her cunny.

My mistress is a morn in May,
Which drops of dew down stilleth:
Where'er she goes to sport and play,
The dew down sweetly trilleth.
As under the sun the mist doth lye,
So under the mist it is sunny,
So under her waist her belly is placed -
And under that, her cunny.

My mistress is a pleasant spring,
That yieldeth store of water sweet,
That doth refresh each wither'd thing
Lies trodden under feet.
Her belly is both white and soft,
And downy as any bunny,
That many gallants wish full oft
To play but with her cunny.

My mistress hath the magick sprays,
Of late she takes such wondrous pain
That she can pleasing spirits raise,
And also lay them down again.
Such power hath my tripping doe,
My pretty little bunny,
That many would their lives forego,
To play but with her cunny.