Greensleeves Jig: A Song History

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A ballad called "Greensleeves" was entered at the Stationers' Company on 3 September 1580, and an answer ballad was registered that same day.[1][2] Beyond its life as a song, the melody served as a country and morris dance tune in 6/4 or 6/8 time, and John M. Ward, cited by the Traditional Tune Archive, classed "Greensleeves" as a tune type realized in many variant forms.[3] A version appears in Henry Atkinson's Northumberland music manuscript of 1695, and the 1716 edition of The Dancing Master is among those that include a country-dance form called "Greensleeves and Yellow Lace."[3]

Etching of a woman in a broad-brimmed hat, wide-sleeved bodice, apron and flowered petticoat, seen in profile

Wenceslaus Hollar, The Woman with a Mannish Hat and Flowered Petticoat, from The Several Habits of English Women, etching, 1640. Shown for its full sleeves; the print has no connection to the tune.

One setting, classed by the Traditional Tune Archive as a 6/8 double jig and country-dance tune, was titled "Green Sleeves and Pudding Pies" in the seventh edition of John Playford's Dancing Master, published in 1686.[4] The eleventh edition of 1701, a copy of which is held by the Morgan Library, still contains the dance under that name.[5] This jig version traveled widely: its first two strains were borrowed for an air in The Beggar's Opera, Burns set words to a close variant of it for Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, the Boston publisher Elias Howe issued it as "Christmas Comes but Once a Year," and Francis O'Neill printed it in his Irish collections of 1903 and 1907.[4] In the morris tradition a Greensleeves melody was also played as a lively jig for the "Bacca Pipes," a solo or two-person dance stepped around long clay pipes laid crosswise on the ground.[6] A tune called "Greensleeves" was among those Cecil Sharp collected from the Herefordshire fiddler John Locke on 27 December 1909.[7] The name was attached to more than one jig, however: a different "Green Sleeves" printed by James Aird in Glasgow in 1782 belongs to the tune family better known as "The Humors of Ennistymon."[8]

Elaine and Larry Conger include a "Greensleeves Jig," listed separately from their "Greensleeves," in Standard And Bass Dulcimer Duets, a Fingers Of Steel book of twenty pieces arranged for standard and bass mountain dulcimer, both in DAD tuning with the bass an octave lower.[9]

Our book that contains the song "Greensleeves Jig"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Greensleeves".
  2. Hymnology Archive: "What Child Is This / Greensleeves".
  3. Traditional Tune Archive: "Greensleeves (2)".
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Greensleeves (4)".
  5. The Morgan Library & Museum: "The dancing-master, or, Directions for dancing country dances".
  6. Traditional Tune Archive: "Greensleeves (1)".
  7. Cecil Sharp's People: "Locke, John".
  8. Traditional Tune Archive: "Greensleeves (3)".
  9. Fingers Of Steel: "Elaine and Larry Conger, Standard And Bass Dulcimer Duets".
  10. Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, The Woman with a Mannish Hat and Flowered Petticoat, from The Several Habits of English Women, etching, 1640. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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