Editorial Postscript: 2 — Arthur o’ Bradley
(Merry Drollery, Compleat, p. 312, 395; Antidote ag. Mel., p. 16.)
“Before we came in we heard a great shouting,
And all that were in it look’d madly;
But some were on Bull-back, some dancing a morris,
And some singing Arthur-a-Bradley.”
—(Robin Hood’s Birth, &c.
Printed by Wm. Onlen, about 1650. In
Roxburghe Collection of Black-Letter
Ballads, i., 360.)
So long ago as the Editor can remember, the words and music of “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding” rang pleasantly in his ears. The jovial rollicking strain prepared him to feel interest in the bridal attire of Shakespeare’s Petruchio; who, not improbably, when about to be married unto “Kate the Curst,” borrowed the details of costume and demeanour from this popular hero of song. Or vice versa. To this day, the lilt of the tune holds a fascination, and we sometimes behold, under favourable planetary aspects, the long procession of dancing couples who have, during three centuries, footed the grass, the rashes, or chalked floor, to that jig-melody, accompanied by the bagpipes or fiddle of some rustic Crowdero. Can it be possible? Yes, the line is headed by the venerable Queen Elizabeth, holding up her fardingale with tips of taper fingers, and looking preternaturally grim, to show that dancing is a serious undertaking for a virgin sovereign (especially when the Spanish Ambassador watches her, with comments of wonder that the Head of the Church can dance at all). Yet is there a sly under-glance that tells of fun, to those who are her Majesty’s familiars. Her “Cousin James” is not the neatest figure as a partner (which accounts for her having chosen Leicester instead, let alone chronology); but we see him, close behind, with Anne of Denmark, twirling his crooked little legs about in obedience to the music, until his round hose swell like hemispheres on school-maps. “Baby Charles and Steenie,” half mockingly, follow after with the Infanta. We did once catch a glimpse of handsome Carr and his wicked paramour, Frances Howard, trying to join the Terpsichorean revellers; but, beautiful as they both were, it was felt necessary to exclude them, “for the honour of Arthur o’ Bradley,” since they possessed none of their own. What a gallant assemblage of poets and dramatists covered the buckle and snapped their fingers gleefully to the merry notes! Foremost among them was rare Ben Jonson (unable to resist clothing Adam Overdo in Arthur’s own mantle); and honest Thomas Dekker “followed after in a dream” (as had been memorably printed on our seventh page of Choyce Drollery), thinking of Bellafront’s repentance, and her quotation of the well-known burden, “O brave Arthur o’ Bradley, then!” A score of poets are junketting with merry milkmaids and Wives of Windsor. Richard Brathwaite (the creator of Drunken Barnaby) is not absent from among them; although he sees, outside the circle that for a moment has formed around a Maypole, an angry crowd of schismatic Puritans, who are scowling at them with malignant eyes, and denunciations misquoted from Scripture. Many a fair Precisian, nevertheless, yields to the honeyed pleading of a be-love-locked Cavalier, and the irresistible charms of “Arthur o’ Bradley, ho!” showing the prettiest pair of ankles, and the most delightful mixture of bashfulness and enjoyment; until the Roundhead Buff-coats prove too numerous, and whisk her off to a conventicle, where, the sexes sitting widely apart, for aught we know, the crop-eared rout sing unpoetic versions of the Psalmist to the tune of Arthur o’ Bradley, “godlified” and eke expurgated.
Cromwell, we know, loved music, withal, and it is not unlikely that those two ladies are his daughters, whom we behold dancing somewhat stiffly in John Hingston’s music-chamber; Mrs. Claypole and her sister, Mrs Rich: there are L’Estrange, who fiddles to them, and Old Noll, smiling pleasantly, though the tune be Arthur o’ Bradley. Our Second Charles (not yet “Restored”) is also dancing to it, at the Hague (as we see in Janssen’s Windsor picture), with the Princess Palatine Elizabeth, and such a bevy of bright faces round them, that we lose our heart entirely. Can we not see him again—crowned now, and self-acknowledged as “Old Rowley”—at one of the many balls in Whitehall recorded by Samuel Pepys,12 entering gaily into all the mirth with that grave, swarthy face of his; not noticing the pouts of Catherine, who sits neglected while The Castlemaine laughs loudly, the fair Stewart simpers, and the little spaniels bark or caper through the palace, snapping at the dancers’ heels? Be sure that pretty Nelly and saucy Knipp were also well acquainted with the music of “rare Arthur o’ Bradley,” as indeed were thousands of the play-goers to whom the former once sold oranges.
And lower ranks delighted in it. Pierce, the Bagpiper, is himself the central figure, when we look again, “with cheeks as big as a mitre,” such time as that table-full of Restoration revellers (whom we catch sight of in our frontispiece to the Antidote, 1661) are beginning to shake a toe in honour of the music.
So it continues for two centuries more, with all varieties of costume and feature. Certain are we that plump Sir Richard Steele whistled the tune, and Dean Swift gave the Dublin ballad-singer a couple of thirteens for singing it. Dr. Johnson grunted an accompaniment whenever he heard the melody, and James Boswell insisted on dancing to it, though a little “overtaken,” and got his sword entangled betwixt his legs, which cost him a fall and a plastered head-piece, by no means for the only time on record. It is reported that good old George the Third was seen endeavouring to persuade Queen Charlotte to accompany him on the Spinnet, while he set their numerous olive-branches jigging it delightedly “for the honour of Arthur o’ Bradley.” But whenever Dr. John Wolcot was reported to be prowling near at hand, with Peter Pindaresque eyes, the motion ceased. Well was it loved by honest Joseph Ritson, impiger, iracundus inexorabilis, acer—better than vegetable diet and eccentric spelling, or the flagellation of inexact antiquarian Bishops. We ourselves may have beheld him in high glee perusing the black-letter ballad, and rectifying its corrupt text by the Antidote against Melancholy’s. How lustily he skipped, shouting meanwhile the burden of “brave Arthur o’ Bradley!” so that unconsciously he joined the ten-mile train of dancers. They are still winding around us, some in a Nineteenth-Century garb (a little tattered, but it adds to the picturesqueness), blithe Hop-pickers of West-Bridge Deanery. There are a few New Zealanders, we understand, waiting to join the throng, (including Macaulay’s own particular circumnavigating meditator, yet unborn); so that as long as the world wags no welcome may be lacking to the mirth and melody, jigging and joustling,
“For the honour of Arthur o’ Bradley,
O rare Arthur o’ Bradley,
O brave Arthur o’ Bradley,
Arthur o’ Bradley. O!”
Having relieved our feelings, for once, we resume the sober duties of Annotation in a chastened spirit:—
In Merry Drollery Compleat, Reprint (Appendix, p. 401), we gave the full quotation from a Sixteenth Century Interlude, The Contract of Marriage between Wit and Wisdom, the point being this:—
“For the honour of Artrebradley,
This age would make me swear madly!”
Arthur o’ Bradley is mentioned by Thomas Dekker, near the end of the first part of his Honest Whore, 1604; when Bellafront, assuming to be mad, hears that Mattheo is to marry her, she exclaims—
“Shall he? O brave Arthur of Bradley, then?”
In Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, 1614, (which covers the Puritans with ridicule, for the delight of James 1st.), Act ii. Scene 1, when Adam Overdo, the Sectary, is disguised in a “garded coat” as Arthur o’ Bradley, to gesticulate outside a booth, Mooncalf salutes him thus:—“O Lord! do you not know him, Mistress? ’tis mad Arthur of Bradley that makes the orations.—Brave master, old Arthur of Bradley, how do you do? Welcome to the Fair! When shall we hear you again, to handle your matters, with your back against a booth, ha?”
In Richard Brathwaite’s Strappado for the Diuell, 1615, p. 225 (in a long poem, containing notices of Wakefield, Bradford, and Kendall, addressed “to all true-bred Northerne Sparks, of the generous Society of the Cottoneers,” &c.) is the following reference to this tune, and to other two, viz. “Wilson’s Delight,” and “Mal Dixon’s Round:”
“So each (through peace of conscience) rapt with pleasure
Shall ioifully begin to dance his measure.
One footing actiuely Wilson’s delight,...
The fourth is chanting of his Notes so gladly,
Keeping the tune for th’ honour of Arthura Bradly;
The 5[th] so pranke he scarce can stand on ground,
Asking who’le sing with him Mal Dixon’s round.”
(By the way: The same author, Richard Brathwaite, in his amusing Shepherds Tales, 1621, p. 211, mentions as other Dance-tunes,
Roundelayes, || Irish-hayes,
Cogs and rongs and Peggie Ramsie,
Spaniletto || The Venetto,
John come kisse me, Wilson’s Fancie.)
Again, Thomas Gayton writes concerning the hero:—“’Tis not alwaies sure that ’tis merry in hall when beards Wag all, for these men’s beards wagg’d as fast as they could tag ’em, but mov’d no mirth at all: They were verifying that song of—
Heigh, brave Arthur o’ Bradley,
A beard without hair looks madly.”
(Festivous Notes on Don Quixot, 1654, p. 141.)
On pp. 540, 604, of William Chappell’s excellent work, The Popular Music of the Olden Time, are given two tunes, one for the Antidote version, and the other for the modern, as sung by Taylor, “Come neighbours, and listen a while.” He quotes the two lines from Gayton, and also this from Wm. Wycherley’s Gentleman Dancing Master, 1673, Act i, Sc. 2, where Gerrard says:—“Sing him ‘Arthur of Bradley,’ or ‘I am the Duke of Norfolk.’”
It is quite evident, from such passages, that during a long time a proverbial and popular character attached to this noisy personage: such has not yet passed away. The earliest complete imprint of “Arthur o’ Bradley” as a Song, (from a printed original, of 1656, beginning “All you that desire to merry be,”) in our present Appendix, Part iv. Quite distinct from this hitherto unnoticed examplar, not already reprinted, is “Saw you not Pierce, the piper,” &c., the ballad reproduced by us, from Merry Drollery, 1661, Part 2nd., p. 124, (and ditto, Compleat 1670, 1691, p. 312); which agrees with the Antidote against Melancholy, same date, 1661, p. 16. More than a Century later, an inferior rendering was common, printed on broadsheets. It was mentioned, in 1797, by Joseph Ritson, as being a “much more modern ballad [than the Antidote version] upon this popular subject, in the same measure intitled Arthur o’ Bradley, and beginning ‘All in the merry month of May.’” (Robin Hood, 1797, ii. 211.) Of this we already gave two verses, (in Appendix to M. Drollery C., p. 400), but as we believe the ballad has not been reprinted in this century, we may give all that is extant, from the only copy within reach, of Arthur o’ Bradley:—
“All in the merry month of May,
The maids [they will be gay,
For] a May-pole they will have, &c.”
(See the present Appendix, Part iv.)
In this, doubtless, we detect two versions, garbed together. What is now the final verse is merely a variation of the sixth: probably the broadsheet-printer could not meet with a genuine eighth verse. Robert Bell denounced the whole as “a miserable composition” (even as he had declared against the amatory Lyrics of Charles the Second’s time): but then, he might have added, with Goldsmith, “My Bear dances to none but the werry genteelest of tunes.”
Far superior to this was the “Arthur o’ Bradley’s Wedding:
“Come, neighbours, and listen awhile, If ever you wished to smile,” &c., which was sung by... Taylor, a comic actor, about the beginning of this century. It is not improbable that he wrote or adapted it, availing himself of such traditional scraps as he could meet with. Two copies of it, duplicate, on broadsheets, are in the Douce Collection at Oxford, vol. iv. pp. 18, 19. A copy, also, in J. H. Dixon’s Bds. and Sgs. of the Peasantry, Percy Soc., 1845, vol. xvii. (and in R. B.’s Annotated Ed. B. P., p. 138.)
There is still another “Arthur o’ Bradley,” but not much can, or need, be said in its favour; except that it contains only three verses. Yet even these are more than two which can be spared. Its only tolerable lines are borrowed from the Roxburghe Ballad. It is the nadir of Bradleyism, and has not even a title, beyond the burden “O rare Arthur o’ Bradley, O!” Let us, briefly, be in at the death: although Arthur makes not a Swan-like end, with the help of his Catnach poet. It begins thus:
’Twas in the sweet month of May, I walked out to take the air,
My Father he died one day, and he left me his son and heir;
He left me a good warm house, that wanted only a thatch,
A strong oak door to my chamber, that only wanted a latch;
He left me a rare old cow, I wish he’d have left me a sow,
A cock that in fighting was shy, and a horse with a sharp wall eye, &c.
(Universal Songster, 1826, i. 368.)
Even Ophelia could not ask, after Arthur sinking so low, “And will he not come again?”
J. W. E.
September, 1875.
[So far as possible, to give completeness to our Reprint of Westminster Drollery of 1671-2, and Merry Drollery, Compleat, 1670-1691, we now add the Extra Songs belonging to the former work, edition 1674; and to the latter, in its earlier edition, 1661: with their respective title-pages.]
Westminster-Drollery.
Or, A Choice
COLLECTION
of the Newest
SONGS & POEMS
BOTH AT
Court and Theaters.
BY
A Person of Quality.
The third Edition, with many more
Additions.
LONDON,
Printed for H. Brome, at the Gun in St. Paul’s
Church Yard, near the West End.
MDCLXXIV.