Fellow lute folk, I am (don't ask why) taking a music appreciation class this semester. We are required to write a one-page journal entry periodically, related to one of our listening assignments. Fear not, this is not a "do my homework request." The page is done.
The song I chose is by Thomas Weelkes, variously called "When Kempe danced alone" or "Since Robin Hood Maid Marion (and Little John are gone)" from the first line. The reason I wanted to do this one is because the professor is extremely enamored of feelings, and this song startled me quite a bit. It is a three-voice madrigal (with diddle's for fa-la's or nonny-nonnys) which starts (as the second title indicates bemoaning that the named heros of legend and the Morris dance had been suppressed by the Puritanism of the Protestants, and the Hobby Horse (also a Morris fixture which had becomed unfixed) was forgotten, so that Kemp (of "Nine Daie Wonder" fame) danced alone. A bit of looking online filled in the gaps (for someone not familiar with Morris history, I have to admit that the connection between Robin, Marion, Little John and the Hobby Horse was escaping me!) The next line "He did labor after the tabor, so to dance, then into France" is what caught my attention: It is based on the first phrase of "Watkin's Ale" if I'm not mistaken. (OK, it is definitely based on Watkins Ale, but that latter song might have many more sets of words or connotations or connections than my palty research has been able to uncover.) The rest of the song (telling how he worked hard after gain, skipping it and tripping it on the toe before getting into the meat of the diddles and diddle-does.) Our book (and not a few others) refer to Weelkes as a blasphemous fellow and a drunkard, for which he was fired from his position as Organist to Chichester Cathedral. Watkin's Ale is a baudy song which uses "Watkins Ale" as an euphemism for the male aparatus of coitus (cleverly, at that) in which the Maid who is introduced at the start as "Afraid to dye a maid" is relieved of this fear, but then becomes pregnant. Before two verses of moralizing and apology to all the pious folk, it does produce this aphorism: There is no jesting with edged tools. I first heard the song done by the City Waites some 37 years ago, when I was floating around the Mediterranean in a round-bottom boat with a bunch of helicopters perched precariously on it's flat surfaces. So Weelkes' little dittie evoked both surprise and no small amount of nostalgia in me, which is pretty good for a song that has been off the charts for about 414 years. My question is this: Why Watkin's Ale? Is there some important connection between Kemp, Weelkes and someone named Watkins? (I find only one reference to someone named Watkins, "28 December [1591], Thomas Gosson, Entred for his copie under thand of Mr Watkins, the Thirde and last parte of Kempes Jigge" ) Is there a subtext here that is worth knowing about? Is Weelkes inferring that Kemp's entering France (in the end of this phrase and then repeated) has connotations? Is this just a case of an overactive imagination coupled with composer's expediency (i.e., random plaigerism?) I'd love to know more if more available to be known. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
