Page:Popular Music of the Olden Time, Volume 1.pdf/260



This tune is contained in Anthony Holborne’s Cittharn Schoole, 4to., 1597, and in one of the Lute MSS. in the Public Library, Cambridge. (D. d. iv. 23.) In Much Ado about Nothing, Hero says, “Why, how now! do you speak in the sick tune?” and Beatrice answers, “I am out of all other tune, methinks.” In Nashe’s Summer’s last Will and Testament, Harvest says, “My mates and fellows, sing no more Merry, merry, but weep out a lamentable Hooky, hooky, and let your sickles cry—

On 24th March, 1578, Richard Jones had licensed to him “a ballad intituled Sick, sick, &c., and on the following 19th June, “A new songe, intituled—

This was probably a moralization of the former.

In the Harleian Miscellany, 4to, 10. 272, is “A new ballad, declaring the dangerous shooting of the gun at the court (1578), to the tune of Sicke and sicke; commencing—

The ballad from which the tune derives its name is probably that printed in Ritson’s Ancient Songs, (1793, p. 139) from a manuscript in the Cotton Library (Vespasian, A 25), and entitled Captain Car. The event which gave rise to it occurred in the year 1571. The first stanza is here printed to the tune:—