The Splendid Shilling: A Song History

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"The Splendid Shilling" is an English country dance tune in 6/8 time and the key of G, and it borrows its name from a poem written nearly a century before the music.[1] Its author, John Philips (1676–1708) of Bampton in Oxfordshire, gave a debt-ridden young man's woes Milton's blank verse in this poem, his best-known work.[2] He wrote it in 1701, when it was printed in an anthology without his permission; the Traditional Tune Archive identifies that first appearance as Charles Gildon's A New Miscellany of Poems.[2][1] An unauthorized stand-alone folio followed in 1705 from the London printer B. Bragg.[3]

Engraving of a poor poet at his desk in a cluttered attic room while his wife mends and a milkmaid at the door shows him an unpaid tally

William Hogarth, The Distrest Poet, etching and engraving, 1740. A poor poet at his desk in a garret, shown for the impoverished young man of John Philips's poem, which gave the tune its name; the engraving has no connection to the tune.

The Traditional Tune Archive and a Jane Austen Society of North America ball program both date the tune itself to about 1790, and the program lists its original collection as unidentified.[1][4] It is danced as a set for three couples, in the version found in Bernard Bentley's Fallibroome collection.[4] Bentley, a founder member of the Manchester Morris Men, drew his dances mostly from eighteenth-century publications but adapted them, for instance recasting some for three couples, and Colin Hume calls the results modern interpretations.[5] Marshall Barron, Eric Leber and Charles Ward recorded the tune for Step Stately, a 1980 Country Dance and Song Society of America album of dances for two and three couples.[6] It still turns up on modern programs, from the Jane Austen Society's 2012 Regency Ball to the Cambridge University English country dance club, The Round, which called it in October 2024.[4][7]

For mountain dulcimer, Mark Gilston sets it in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, his own publication, delivered as a 39-page book along with every arrangement split out into a file of its own.[8]

Our book that contains the song "The Splendid Shilling"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Splendid Shilling (The)".
  2. EBSCO Research Starters: "John Philips".
  3. The Grub Street Project: "The splendid shilling. A poem, in imitation of Milton. By the author of Bleinheim" (1705).
  4. Jane Austen Society of North America: "Ball Dances" (New York AGM).
  5. Colin Hume: "The Fallibroome Collection".
  6. Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (EFDSS): "Step stately: two and three couple dances from 17th and 18th century England" (CDS-8, 1980).
  7. The Round, Cambridge University English Country Dance Club: "Dances Michaelmas 2024".
  8. Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
  9. Image: William Hogarth, The Distrest Poet, etching and engraving, 1740. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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