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Bawdy rhymes that would shame the Sun
Standards in public life are not as low as some feared, according to an expert in 17th-century song. Joel Taylor has his ribs tickled
Broadside Ballads, selected by Lucie Skeaping. Faber Music. £19.95 order this book
A WOMAN mistaken for a dragon, another who poses as a man and gets married and tales of heroic military victories.
Stories fit for the News of the World, you might think, but in fact they are the subject matter from songs that were the equivalent of tabloids in 17th-century England.
A new book and record by Lucie Skeaping, singer and performer from Kentish Town, reveals this fascinating, if somewhat tawdry and almost Chaucerian world.
She says: “The obvious temptation was to include as many bawdy songs as possible.We can all relate to them and they’re very funny.
“Whenever I perform them in concert, I concentrate on the bawdy ones but here I felt it was really important that we should reflect what was really going on.”
She adds: “They were the equivalent of the tabloids.They covered everything.There were gossipy stories about milkmaids, and others about country bumpkins.
“There was always humour about country bumpkins, but in many ways it was because people rued the fact they had lost their agricultural heritage.”
At first glance, though, it is the bawdy tales that stand out. Leafing through the book it only takes until song two, The Beehive, before the crude depths to which these songwriters would sink is revealed:
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 lie and under the mould is money, Sop under her waist her belly is placed and under that her cunny.
We hear about a Fair Maid of Islington – a euphemism for a prostitute – who drags an unpaying customer through the courts.
Lucie says: “Islington features a lot because it had hot springs and wells and you would find pleasure gardens.
“And anywhere you had crowds the whores would move in, so if you see the phrase ‘fair maid of Islington’ she is a prostitute.” Then there is the charming tale of the woman who is mistaken for a dragon, Shameless Joan, because “with a lighted candle in her backside and scar’d the Watch who was amaz’d at the dismal sight”.... According, away she went, And in her brawny fundament, A lighted candle, plac’d must be, Which was a dreadful sight to see.
Lucie says: “They were really a form of newspapers. The ballads were aimed at the crowds. There were songs about ladies’ fashion being outrageous, then there would be another about welcoming the Royal couple, William and his wife Mary, to England.
“People could get the latest news and hit songs from London.”
Lucie’s attraction to this body of work stems from her interest in popular music of the past.
She says: “I was at the Royal College of Music and was very interested in the history of popular music, the idea that it was music for everyone.
“I had classical music training so was not really interested in the pop music of the day. But I have a big interest in history and this is a way of bringing my love of history and popular music together.
“I am very interested in what ordinary people listened to.
“Broadside ballads are pop songs. They were written cynically for one day, and chucked out the next. You could say it is similar to today.”
Her research saw her extensively use the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The man of letters kept more than 1,700 ballads.
“You would have thought, considering the sort of man Pepys was, that he would have liked them for their rude content, but he was an antiquarian.
“Printing presses were changing considerably at that time and he bought a job lot in an auction.”
Song writing was clearly not a glamorous trade.
She explains: “There would be a little man in the back of a print shop churning these things out – anything that happened would have a ballad written about it, you might look out and see a cat pee in a gutter and that would become a song.
“There was lots of misprints and verses were put in the wrong order, and wood cuts would be used over and over again.”
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