Come Follow Me: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

"Come Follow Me" is a round for three voices that appears in Catch that Catch Can, a book of catches, rounds and canons that John Hilton collected and published in London in 1652, printed for John Benson and John Playford; there it is signed "Mr. John Hilton."[1] The Lilly Library at Indiana University, which owns a copy, counts 144 songs in the book by Hilton, William and Henry Lawes and other composers, and notes, citing Grove, that it is regarded as an important later collection of catches.[2] Hilton was born in 1599, probably in Cambridge, and was organist of St Margaret's, Westminster, from 1628 until 1644, when Parliament ordered church organs removed; he was buried at St Margaret's in March 1657.[3]

Wood engraving of a sunny woodland clearing with tall trees, grazing sheep and a seated figure

Elbridge Kingsley, Under the Greenwood, wood engraving, 1860–1915. Shown for the greenwood of the round's other title; it has no connection to the round.

In the 1652 printing the singers follow one another to the gallows tree, and a second verse casts them as longtime rogues about to be hanged.[1] Playford kept the piece, gallows and all and still credited to Hilton, in the enlarged 1667 edition, retitled Catch that Catch Can: or the Musical Companion.[4] It still turns up in teaching material: Trinity College London offers it to music learners as a round attributed to Hilton.[5] The King County Library System's website gives it as a traditional three-part round, also called "The Greenwood Tree," with the greenwood in place of the gallows.[6] It should not be confused with William Hayes's "Come follow me to the Greenwood tree," a three-voice hunting canon catalogued by the University of Glasgow's To Your Rude Health project.[7]

Mark Gilston includes "Come Follow Me" in Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers, a collection of rounds, canons and circular songs meant for several players starting the same piece at different times, published by Mark Gilston.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Come Follow Me"

Sources

  1. Internet Archive: "Catch that Catch Can" (John Hilton, 1652).
  2. Lilly Library, Indiana University: "Lilly Library Catches that Catch Can from 1652".
  3. Westminster Abbey: "John Hilton".
  4. Internet Archive: "Catch that Catch Can: or the Musical Companion" (1667).
  5. Trinity College London: "Rounds & Canons: Come Follow Me".
  6. King County Library System: "Come, Follow, Follow".
  7. To Your Rude Health (University of Glasgow): "Come follow me to the Greenwood tree".
  8. Mark Gilston: "Playing-A-Round With Dulcimers".
  9. Image: Elbridge Kingsley, Under the Greenwood, wood engraving, 1860–1915. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song