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Thomas D’Urfey: “Young Collin Cleaving of a Beam”
From the album Thomas D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy: Lewd Songs and Low Ballads from the 18th Century
Thomas D’Urfey (also known as Tom Durfey) began his career as a playwright, his first plays being staged in 1676. In spite of being a stutterer, he soon made a career for himself as a singer and performer, and later branched out into music, contributing to the development of a uniquely English genre known as the ballad opera. (One of the earliest examples of this genre, the Beggar’s Opera of 1728, provided the model for the famous Threepenny Opera of Bert Brecht and Kurt Weill.)
But D’Urfey’s true musical legacy, as far as I’m concerned, is as a prolific creator of humorous and bawdy songs. His position as the 18th century’s Weird Al is based largely on his collection Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, published in six volumes in 1719-20. The set contains over 1000 songs on various off-color topics, including drinking, sex, and numerous bodily functions. (One of D’Urfey’s biggest hits was called “The Fart.”)
Unlike Weird Al, however, D’Urfey wrote most of his own music. Apparently not one for humility, he wrote in the preface to Wit and Mirth that “scarce any other Man could have perform’d the like, my double Genius for Poetry and Musick giving me still that Ability which others perhaps might want.”
The lyrics of this boisterous three-voice catch are fairly representative of D’Urfey’s literary style. The music is attributed to none other than Henry Purcell:
Young Collin, cleaving of a Beam, / At ev’ry Thumping, thumping blow cry’d hem ; / And told his Wife, and told his Wife, / And told his Wife who the Cause would know, / That Hem made the Wedge much further go: / Plump Joan, when at Night to Bed they came, / And both were Playing at that same; / Cry’d Hem, hem, hem prithee, prithee, prithee; / Collin do, / If ever thou lov’dst me, Dear hem now; / He laughing answer’d no, no, no, / Some Work will Split, will split with half a blow; / Besides now I Bore, now I bore, now I bore, / Now, now, now I bore, / I Hem when I Cleave, but now I Bore.
All six volumes of Wit and Mirth can be downloaded from IMSLP.
Played 91 time(s).
September 12, 2011, 4:37pm
