Beggar Boy: A Song History

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“The Beggar Boy” is one of the dances in the first edition of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master (1651), and its tune was first printed there.[1] Robert Keller’s index of the Dancing Master finds it in every edition from the first to the eighth.[2] The spelling changes along the way: “The Begger Boy” in the earlier editions, “The Begger-Boy” in two, and “The Beggar-Boy” in the last.[2] By Keller’s dating, the eighth edition appeared in 1690, and William Chappell, writing in the 1850s, also traced the tune in the Dancing Master up to 1690.[3][4] Sources differ slightly here, since the Traditional Tune Archive follows it only as far as the seventh edition of 1686.[1]

Etching of a row of men and women beggars, some standing and some seated

Wenceslaus Hollar, Six Men and Women Beggars, etching, 1630. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

The melody also served as a ballad tune, and Chappell lists several broadsides sung to it.[4] One is Martin Parker’s ditty on the proverb that the proof of the pudding is in the eating; the English Broadside Ballad Archive gives its tune as “The Beggar Boy” and has a recording of it sung to that melody.[5] Another is “The Begger-Boy of the North,” in which a beggar sets out his “linage and calling,” and whose title directs that it be sung to the tune of the same name.[6] Chappell also found Robert Guy’s “The witty Western Lasse” set to the melody, and the Traditional Tune Archive lists “Lucina” and “Witty Western Lass” as alternative names for it.[4][1] Cecil Sharp suspected that the air began as a song and was only later put to use for dancing, calling it and “Gathering Peascods” “apparently vocal airs, pure and simple.”[7]

Sharp published his reconstruction of the dance in Part II of The Country Dance Book, first issued in 1911, setting it as a longways dance for three couples in three parts.[8][7] The dance is included in The Playford Ball, and the band Bare Necessities recorded music for it on their album By Choice.[9] Recordings of the tune include ones by the Baltimore Consort and the King’s Noyse.[1]

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Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Beggar Boy (The)".
  2. Country Dance and Song Society (Robert M. Keller, The Dancing Master 1651–1728): "Begger-Boy, The".
  3. Country Dance and Song Society (Robert M. Keller, The Dancing Master 1651–1728): "Bibliography".
  4. Internet Archive: William Chappell, "Popular Music of the Olden Time," Vol. 1 (c. 1859).
  5. English Broadside Ballad Archive (UC Santa Barbara): "Tryall brings truth to light" (EBBA 30352).
  6. English Broadside Ballad Archive (UC Santa Barbara): "The Begger-Boy of the North" (EBBA 30359).
  7. Internet Archive: Cecil J. Sharp, "The Country Dance Book, Part II" (2nd ed., 1913).
  8. Cambridge University Round (Hugh Stewart): "The Country Dance Book".
  9. upadouble.info (George W. Williams V): "The Beggar Boy".