To

Top-knots and Commodes.

(A Postscript.)

O return to "Musick-à-la-Mode" (mentioned on pp. 21-23): in case we find it difficult to obtain sight of duplicate (should there be such extant), it will be something gained, in the meantime, for us here to give one of the five songs, and also the indicating opening verse of another. A copy of these was fortunately made for Mr. Fred. W. Fairholt, shortly before March, 1849, and even the little woodcut of the original was reproduced for him. They are now repeated. As we already had guessed, there was on page 72 of this first volume of Bagford Collection not a simple broadsheet, but one of the eight-paged garlands which were then popular (1691), similar to the "Midshipman's Garland" on p. 103 in the same Bagford Collection. Mr. Fairholt wrote thus:

"This ballad, to the tune of London Top Knots, is printed from a small collection of songs consisting of four leaves only, in the three volumes of old ballads preserved in the British Museum [viz. the Bagford Collection]. It is entitled, Musick-a-la-mode; or, the Young Maid's Delight; containing five excellent new songs, sung at the drolls in Bartholomew-fair. London, printed in the year 1691.' There is a small wood-cut in the title-page, here copied of the original size, representing a lady with a commode, and in the fashionable dress of the day; with a fan in one hand and a black mask in the other. In the Cambridge Jests, these monstrous headdresses, which were also called Towers, are thus alluded to: A Cantabrigian being one day deeply engaged in discourse with a gentlewoman, who condemned the weakness of her sex; 'No, madam,' replied the scholar, 'not so, for if I mistake not, it is easy to prove your sex stronger than ours, for Sampson being the strongest carried only the gates of the city away; but now-a-days, every female stripling carries a tower on her head.""-Costume, p. 197.

1 But we may question whether it happened "fortunately," when we have weighed all the circumstances. Whom did Mr. Fairholt employ to copy the woodcut and ballad at the British Museum ? And how does it befall that in the same Percy Society's vol. xxvii. p. 160, there is another woodcut, " representing a mercer in his shop, addressing his customers;" which woodcut is, confessedly, reduced from an original "in the Roxburghe Ballads," while the original itself, like the garland of "Musick à la Mode," has been mysteriously abstracted from the Collection, by some person or persons unknown? We suppose this mercer original to have belonged to the ballad formerly in Roxb. Coll., ii. 577, beginning "The gift is small, a douzen of Points." It is now lost, but it was in safety when the supplementary manuscript index was made. Are we on the right track, in noticing this "very remarkable coincidence"? Who "conveyed" these ballads from the National Collection?

[Bagford Collection, I. 72.]

The Uindication of Top-Knots

and Commodes.

TO THE TUNE OF, London Top Knots.

HE Fops and the Fools, like silly Night-Owls,
They prate, and they talk of their Top-Knots:

We are their discourse, when they drink off their bowls,
And make themselves drunk with their dram-pots.
Their Hats were once higher than now are our Tow'rs,
Because they were then in the Fashion;
Then they were more rogues than now we are w
Then let them lay by their fond passion.

's,

4

8

The fair Queen of Egypt she wore a Commode,
On the top of it was a lac'd Amber,

Which caused Mark Anthony, tho' it was odd,
At night to come to her bed-chamber:

12

Our Masks and our Vails, with our bonny Night Rails,
Which all our deformities covers,

Make us frisk up our tails, and hoist our fine sails,
And anchor at night with our Lovers.

16

The Cuckolds wear Horns, with pates that are bare,
There's many such beasts in the nation;
Why may we not likewise make use of our Hair,
And raise it in their imitation ?

Our Laces and Rings, with other such things,
We use to obtain the affection

Of all, but of Kings, for riches take wings,
But a Husband's a woman's protection.

The fumbling Old Fellows of three-score and ten,
They perriwigs wear to our sorrow :

We take them and wed them, and think they're young men, Which makes us oft instruments borrow.

28

Why may we not then (for where is the odds)
Trappan an Old Fool in his folly ?

And make him believe that old Joan, in Commodes,
Is young, to divert melancholy.

There's many short Women that could not be match'd, Until the Top-knots came in fashion;

32

Tho' they wore their shoes high, both painted and patch'd, And humour'd the tricks of Love's passion:

36

But now by the help of our rousing Commodes,1
They wheedle young Men to come nigher;

For a Wench that is short, in bed, can make sport,
As well as one twenty yards higher.

40

Then silly old Fops, that kiss but like popes,
And call us Night Walkers and Faries,

Go fumble old Joan, and let us alone,

And never come near our canary's:

44

1 In Tom D'Urfey's own Scotch Song, "De'il take the War, that hurry'd Willy from me" (before 1705), the neglected damsel recounts some of her methods employed to ensnare admirers:

I us'd alluring Graces,

With muckle kind embraces,

Now sighing, then crying, tears dropping fall;
And had he my soft arms

Preferr'd to Wars' alarms,

By Love grown mad, without the man of Gad,
I fear in my fit I had granted all.

I Wash'd and Patch'd to make me look provoking,
Snares that they told me wou'd catch the Men;
And on my Head a huge Commode sat cocking,
Which made me shew as tall agen:

For a new Gown too, I paid muckle Money,
Which with golden Flowers did shine;

My Love well might think me gay and Bonny,
No Scotch Lass was e'er so fine.

My Petticoat I Spotted,

Fringe too with Thread I Knotted,

Lace Shoes, and Silk Hose, Garter full over knee;
But oh! the fatal thought,

To Willy these are nought,

Who rid to Towns, and Riffled with Dragoons,
When he silly Loon might have Plunder'd me.

We'll wear our breasts bare,1 and curl up our hair,
And shew our Commodes to the people;
if that you talk more,

But, as I'm a w

We'll raise them as high as Bow-steeple.

48

1 The immodest exposure of the bosom had been assailed, not alone by the Puritans, but by many satirists, who could scarcely be deemed righteous overmuch. Yet none of these had exceeded the stern rebuke uttered by Dante in the Purgatorio, Canto xxiii. :

"O dolce frate, che vuoi tu, ch' io dica?

Tempo futuro m' è già nel cospetto,

Cui non sara quest' ora molto antica," etc.

Thus rendered by H. F. Cary:

"What wouldst thou have me say? A time to come
Stands full within my view, to which this hour
Shall not be counted of an ancient date,
When from the pulpit shall be loudly warn'd
The unblushing dames of Florence, lest they bare
Unkerchief'd bosoms to the common gaze.
What savage women hath the world e'er seen,
What Saracens, for whom there needed scourge
Of spiritual or other discipline,

To force them walk with covering on their limbs ?
But did they see, the shameless ones, what Heaven
Wafts on swift wing toward them while I speak,

Their mouths were op'd for howling: they shall taste
Of sorrow (unless foresight cheat me here)."

After the Restoration, in 1678, had appeared a pamphlet, "Just and reasonable Reprehensions of Naked Breasts and Shoulders."

So early as 1595, in Pleasant Quippes for upstart new-fangled Gentlewomen, Stephen Gosson assailed a similar exposure, in Puritanical pride writing thus:"These Holland smockes, so white as snowe,

and gorgets brave with drawne-worke wrought,

A tempting ware they are, you know,

wherewith (as nets) vaine youths are caught," etc.

"These perriwigges, ruffes armed with pinnes,
these spangles, chaines and laces all;

These naked paps, the Devils ginnes,

to worke vaine gazers painefull thrall," etc.

These satirists and cynics, who are perpetually decrying immodesty of feminine apparel, are invariably themselves of impure dispositions. They have a prurient longing to offensively rebuke offence.

"Fie on thee! I can tell what thou would'st do . . .

Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin:

For thou thyself hast been a libertine,

As sensual as the brutish sting itself:

And all th' embossed sores and headed evils,
That thou with licence of free foot hast caught,
Would'st thou disgorge into the general world."

-As You Like It, Act. ii. sc. 7.

OF

The Virgin's Complaint

For Want of a Husband.

F this song, another of the five belonging to "Musick-à-laMode; or, the Young Maid's Delight" (Bagford Collection, i. 72), we have as yet recovered no more than the opening verse, with its line of burden :

"'M a Lass both brisk and fair,

I'M

Sparkling Eye, and coal-black Hair;
Fine lac'd Shoes, and Top-knots rare,
Yet no man comes to woo me.

Knowing this much about it, we deem it unlikely that we shall long be baffled in a search for the remaining verses. Ballads and broadsides are so widely scattered, in private as well as in public collections, that another copy may easily escape notice for a time, unless some local help be volunteered in aid. Members of our Ballad Society can possibly help us but we invariably depend on personal research alone.

As they are connected with the literature of the subject, and because they may have been included in the lost sheet, we here give, from Playford's "Pleasant Musical Companion," 1701, two Bartholomew Fair Songs. The first belongs to Charles II.'s time, mentioning "Jacob Hall," the famous rope-dancer, who was so great a favourite with the Duchess of Cleveland (J. P. Collier's Bibliographical Account, 1865, vol. i. p. iii) :—

A CATCH.

"Here's that will challenge all the Fair!

Come buy my nuts and damson, my burgamy pear!
Here's the Whore of Babylon, the Devil and the Pope!
The girl is just a going on the rope!

Here's Dives and Lazarus and the World's Creation!

Here's the Dutch Woman; the like's not in the nation.
Here is the booth where the tall Dutch Maid is,

Here are Bears that dance like Ladies.

To-ta, to-ta-tot goes the little penny trumpet!

Here's Jacob Hall that can jump it, jump it.

Sound, Trumpet, sound! A silver knife and fork:

Come, here's your dainty Pig and Pork!"

To see ladies who dance like bears, however, might be deemed less attractive, although within the possibilities of Shows. The