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Moore, the Irisham, best known for his "Irish Melodies", is an early example of a new kind of respectable entertainer who sang self-accompanied at the piano songs of impeccable moral sentiment.
The first person to achieve public celebrity as a respectable entertainer is Charles Dibdin (1745-1814).
As a young man, in between singing in the chorus at Covent Garden and working for a music publisher, Dibdin shows himself to be possessed of versatile talent.
At the age of nineteen, Charles Didbin writes both the words and music of a pastoral "opera", "The Shepherd's Artifice".
He also takes the leading role himself at its first performance.
Didbin develops a flair for comic opera in the pasticcio ballad "opera" manner, collaborating for a while with Bickerstaffe.
Some of Didbin's most imaginative work is done at this time, particularly in the writing of dramatic ensembles.
But it is with his "table rntertainment" that he makes the greatest impact on the direction of bourgeois popular song.
The editor of the first complete collection of Dibdin's songs says of these "table ntertainments" thaty they are produced by Didbin when he was in the maturity and vigour of his powers, and in the full tide of his popularity.
And it is on these "table entertainments", that Charles Didbin seems to have put forth the utmost strength of his genius.
Dibdin runs into debt with a project to run a venue combining "opera" and equestrian displays.
He decides to emigrate to India.
When adverse winds drove the ship into Torbay, Didbin gave an impromptu musical entertainment combining songs and patter.
The success of Didbin's number in Torbay makes him abruptly change his departure plans and, meeting similar enthusiasm at performances given in various country towns, he thinks he will try the idea in London.
Charles Didbin opened at Hutchins' Auction-Room, Covent Garden, with the appropriately titled "The Whim of the Moment", in 1788.
Alas, the size and enthusiasm of the audience is both disappointing.
But a song concerning a sailor with a touching faith in providence, "Poor Jack", became immensely popular.
The use of vernacular speech in "Poor Jack", along with nautical metaphor, mainly of the 'shiver me timbers' variety, and sailors' jargon, provides a prototype for many more Dibdin "sailor" songs.
Dibdin makes a second attempt, and his next Table Entertainment, entitlted, "The Oddities".
This gives him him the acclaim and financial reward he is seeking.
Didbin now moves to a room opposite the Beaufort Buildings in the Strand, naming it "Sans Souci".
In "Sans Souci", Didbin brings out another new table Entertainment called "Private Theatricals".
Didbin's success multiplies -- enabling him to purchase a small theatre in Leicester Place in 1796, which he also named "Sans Souci".
Dibdin's appeal as an entertainer lay largely in his talent for character roles.
Didblin relies on mimicry of accent and manner rather than dress.
Didbin's fun was always at the expense of rustics, Jews, Negroes, and foreigners in general, at a time when such activity carried no trace of moral reprehensibility -- among those who were NOT rustics, Jewus, negroes, or foreigners (in general).
Didbin himself asserts that it was sacredly incumbent upon him in no instance to outrage propriety or wound morality.
His piano sounds unique.
Didbin's piano is adapted to incorporate chamber organ, bells, side drum, gong -- and tambourine.
The percussion was operated by mechanical contrivances.
Sailor songs were to prove the most popular part of Didbin's output.
Not one of them suggests any of the discontent in the navy concerning bad provisions, low pay, harsh discipline, or the resentment of the pressed men.
In June 1803, Didbin is awarded a government pension which is kept on when the ministry changed and Pitt became first lord of the treasury.
However, in 1806, the year by which all the famous naval battles had been fought, Lord Grenville decided that the pension should cease.
An offended Dibdin brings out a pamphlet in 1807, "The Public Undeceived".
In "The Public Undeceived", Didbin claims to state the material facts relative to his trifling pension.
Didbin says that its discontinuation is an insult to his public service, dating from as far back as 1793, when he had his theatre in the Strand, opposite to which lectures were given, which broached those violent democratic opinions that all good subjects held in detestation.
Didbin maintains that, despite insinuations to the contrary, he acts without government bribes.
Nevertheless, it does seem that the annuity is originally given partly in return for the production of war-songs.
Dibdin admits, that war-songs can be of no object to me, for they are sure to be pirated.
And so is was not disposed to produce them without financial inducement.
He also has an arrangement whereby he is to receive any profits from musical publications brought out at the instance of government.
The settlement of £200 per annum disappoints his expectations and he reproachfully points out in his pamphlet that he would have been a rich man if he had continued touring and entertaining instead of serving the government.
In 1793, the year to which Dibdin traces back his record of public service, he includes a new song in his table entertainment, "The Quizes", entitled 'Ninety-Three'.
It is added in January, just before the beheading of the French Royal Family.
The song was intended to check the spread of revolutionary opinions in Britain.
some praise a new freedom imported from France
is liberty taught then like teaching to dance
they teach freedom to Britons our own right divine
a rushlight may as well teach the sun how to shine
In famed ninety three
we'll convince them we're free
free from every licentiousness faction can bring
free with heart & voice to sing god save the king
The song revolves around a definition of the word "liberty", making tendentious contrasts between French and English varieties in what was to become a familiar propaganda ploy.
After the naval mutinies in the Channel Fleet at Spithead and the North Sea Squadron at the Nore, Dibdin's anger became more impassioned.
'The Invasion', in his 1798 Table Entertainment, "The King and Queen", referred to the threatened invasion by Napoleon and whipped up patriotic fervour against the 'mad liberty scheme'.
His official government backing, on the resumption of war, in 1803, bore first fruit in
"Britons, Strike Home!"
In this he had the assistance of a military band in promoting enthusiasm against the French.
This table entertainment contains many war-songs, for example:
'The Call of Honour'
'The British Heroes', and
'Soldiers and Sailors'.
It also includes 'Erin Go Bra' -- a song designed to natter and appease the Irish after the recent rebellion:
shake off disaffection to duty be true
& cherish your natural friend.
Dibdin's most celebrated song was from his table Entertainment, "The Oddities", of 1789, and was originally called
"Poor Tom"
-- "or The Sailor's Epitaph".
In the nineteenth century it was always known as 'Tom Bowling'
here a sheer hulk lies POOR TOM -- Bowling
the darling of our crew
no more he'll hear the tempest howling
for death has broach'd him to
his form was of the manliest beauty
his heart was kind and soft
faithful below he did his duty
& now he's gone aloft
Tom never from his word departed
his virtues were so rare
his friends were many, and true hearted
his Poll was kind and fair
& then he'd sing so blithe and jolly
ah many's the time and oft
but mirth is turn'd to melancholy
for Tom is gone aloft
yet shall Poor Tom find pleasant weather
when he who all commands
shall give, to call life's crew together
the word to pipe all hands
thus death who Kings and Tars dispatches
in vain Tom's life has doff'd
for, though his body's under hatches
his soul is gone aloft.
---
The tune of "Tom Bowling" has less in common with the elegant style associated with the recently deceased figures of Bach and Abel than with a robust traditional English air.
An obvious exception is the phrase which bears the repeated final line of each stanza.
This phrase is the only point at which any attempt is made musically to illustrate the words.
The rising motion offers symbolic confirmation that this is the direction in which Tom's soul has gone.
---
Of course, in a strophic (same tune for each verse) setting there is little room for word-painting.
Dibdin favours straightforward strophic treatment in his Table Entertainment songs, though some, like "Poor Jack" and "The Anchorsmiths", are more sophisticated in phrase structure than "Poor Tom".
Dibdin's typically humorous use of nautical metaphors has a wry effect, owing to the melancholy subject matter.
"Poor Tom" has widely been held to be an EPITAPH (as the subtitle of the song went) to his elder brother Tom, the Captain of an Indiaman, who was struck by lightning at sea when Charles was a boy.
The picture of the kind, honest, jolly sailor, whom death visits with the same impartiality as it may do a king, is stock Dibdin.
The situation on board ship is a microcosm of the Christian's life on earth.
The commander in the sky will one day order the whistle to be sounded to summon up his crew -- a novel departure from the more orthodox last trumpet.
To the middle class, Didbin's delightful songs seem to express natural sentiments in plain language even if they could not help but be aware that the features of the sailor's character had been elevated, refined, and united with a delicacy of sentiment and firmness of principle beyond what were met with in the realities of life
Dibdin undoubtedly has a sense of moral purpose which helps to keep his music alive in parlours and drawing rooms long after he had himself gone aloft.
In his autobiography he firmly advocates a didactic approach to song-writing:
The song, written to please, may be so managed as to instruct.
Didbin gives up his table entertainments in 1805.
But Didbin has to resume professional activity at the age of sixty-three when his pension was halted by Grenville's administration.
Alas, Didbin's career ended in bankruptcy.
A relief fund was initiated by a Mr. Oakley of Tavistock Place.
Oakley was not apparently a personal friend.
Dibdin is unable to remain on good terms with anyone and eventually dies a lonely man in Camden Town.
He deserts his first mistress, leaving her with two children, Charles and Thomas, who both grew up to write for the stage.
He is outraged when they took his surname.
Didbin seems to have entirely neglected them.
His son Thomas's "Reminiscences" barely touch upon his famous father.
Thomas Didbin actually outdid his father's patriotic popularism with
"The Tight Little Island"
-- his own song written at the time of the threatened Napoleonic invasion.
Charles Dibdin preferrs to give public entertainments on his own premises.
BAYLY -- "The drawing room or salon ballad is as dead as Bayly".
The poet Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797-1839), however, like the Irishman Tom Moore, is the darling of the "salons" (or drawing-rooms, or parlours -- although we have to distinguish between these).
Bayly, too, favours the kind of delicacy and wilting melancholy found in many of Moore's "Irish Melodies", rather than Dibdin's melodic, vigour.
Bayly is mentioned in connection with the prototype of 'Home, Sweet Home!' in the first volume of "Melodies of Various Nations, including Sicily".
Bishop was a frequent collaborator with Bayly and set over 130 of his lyrics.
The most popular of these settings were the autobiographical
"Oh! No! We Never Mention Her"
-- referring to Bayly's failed first courtship --
and 'The Mistletoe Bough'.
"The Mistletoe Bough" is a gruesome tale of a young bride who accidentally locks herself in a dis-used oak chest and is not found until years later.
A deal of speculation surrounds the origin of the story behind the Bayly's song "The Mistletoe Bough"
Houses at Bramshill and Malsanger, and Marwell Old Hall contend for its true location.
Bayly's motto at the head of his poem makes it clear, however, that his source was the story of Ginevra in "Rogers' Italy:.
The fascination with "The Mistletoe Bough" is such that it spawns a play of the same title, produced at the Garrick, Whitechapel, in 1834.
Bayly is the son of a Bath solicitor and spends a lot of his own life in Bath, having first turned down the idea of entering the law and then the church as a profession.
The majority of Bayly's songs belong to the 1820s, when Bayly gives entertainments in the fashionable salons, parlours, and drawing rooms of Bath, partly, of course, to promote sales, and partly to have tea and coffee and cakes.
Ambition to become a dramatist brought Bayly to London in 1829.
Unfortunately, a few years later, Bayly runs into financial problems with his coal-mining investments.
Further financial difficulties soon follow as the result of the fraudulent dealings of the agent looking after his wife's property in Ireland.
Bayly finds it necessary to move to Paris with his family.
Returning to England after three years, Bayly relies almost entirely on his writing.
It is not long before overwork takes its toll.
Bayly dies in Cheltenham where he had gone to take the spa water for his health.
Bayly sometimes selected airs for his own verses, as Moore had done.
All the airs of his
"Songs of the Boudoir"
of 1830 (which contained the great favourite 'We Met') were selected by Bayly and arranged by T. H. Severn.
Bayly also composes tunes himself, as is the case with
"I'd Be a Butterfly" -- a drawing-room favourite for half a century.
The first verse goes:
I'D BE A BUTTERFLY BORN IN A BOWER
where roses & lilies & violets meet
roving for ever from flower to flower &
KISSING ALL BUDS THAT ARE PRETTY & SWEET
I'd never languish for wealth or for power,
I'd never sigh to see slaves at my feet
I'D BE A BUTTERFLY BORN IN A BOWER
KISSING ALL BUDS THAT ARE PRETTY & SWEET
His wife provides the first accompaniment to this song.
The words are supposed to have been written on impulse as he watched a butterfly fluttering about in the summer-house of Lord Ashtown's villa at Chessell on the Southampton River.
The summer-house was later re-decorated and named "Butterfly Bower" in honour of the occasion.
Bayly was a friend of the Irishman Moore (of "Irish Melodies" fame).
Indeed, Bayly flatters Moore with an obvious echo of the sentiments of 'The Last Rose of Summer' in his third stanz to "I'd Be A Butterfly"
Surely 'tis better, when summer is over,
To die when all fair things are fading away.
Bayly is certainly an entomophile.
Bayly produces a whole volume of verse entitled "The Loves of the Butterflies", set to music by George Alexander Lee (1802—52).
Another popular song written and composed by Bayly himself was
"Fly Away, Pretty Moth".
Indeed, he was soon known as
"Butterfly Bayly"
-- a description which suited his dandified manner. (But then Puccini was also known as "Mister Butterfly even if less dandified).
The moral message of the drawing-room ballad "I'D BE A BUTTERFLY" (if there is one) is that being a humble butterfly and leading a life of irresponsible hedonism is preferable to the misery of being rich and powerful.
The hedonistic tone of the song later causes Bayly some concern and he choses to modify his philosophic outlook in
"Be a Butterfly Then".
But by then the mismoner, "Butterfly Bayly" had STUCK.
Bayly had been goaded by
"The Bee and the Butterfly" written by R. Morland and composed by G. W. Reeve in answer to Bayly's song, wherein they conclusively demonstrated that the busy, useful bee with a house and a home was indisputably the butterfly's moral superior.
------
Answers to songs, as well as parodies of songs, are becoming tremendously fashionable.
Bayly was so irritated with the innumerable parodies of'I'd Be a Butterfly'
-- such as 'I'd Be a Nightingale' and 'I'd Be a Rifleman' -- that he retortes with his own parody, beginning:
I'D BE A PARODY MADE BY A NINNY
on some little song with a popular tune
not worth a halfpenny sold for a guinea
& sung in the Strand by the light of the moon.
Bayly's songs are much parodied.
A few examples are given below.
Bayly's "The Soldier's Tear"
(music by Lee)
PARODIED AS "The Policeman's Tear" (by Shirley Brooks)
BAYLY'S "She Wore a Wreath of Roses" (the widow) -- music byJ. P. Knight.
PARODIED AS: "He Wore a Pair of Mittens', by W. H. Guest.
BAYLY'S "We met 'twas in a crowd" -- music selected by Bayly.
Parodied as "We Met - 'Twas in a Mob" (Thomas Hood)
Answers (as opposed to 'parodies') which usually employ a fresh tune and take issue with the original song, are also plentiful.
----
More flattering to Bayly were the translations of his verse into foreign tongues, not always a living language either.
Archdeacon Wrangham was so enamoured of Bayly's lyrics that he published a volume of translations into rhyming Latin verse
"'I'd Be a Butterfly"
became
"Ah! Sim Papilio"
ah sim papilio
The musical form of a Bayly song is usually shorter, simpler, and more regular than Dibdin's strophic settings.
Again, Moore's "Irish Melodies" make a better comparison.
Moore's "Irish Melodies" serve as a model for the sort of music Bayly composes and selects as well as for that which his musical collaborators found most appropriate to provide.
The melodic compass of a Bayly song is generally small, which undoubtedly recommended them to amateur singers of limited technique.
This is the reason that a Bayly song like the delightful "Long, Long Ago'" will still be found today in an elementary instrumental tutor.
It was Bayly's verse, however, which really earns him the admiration of his contemporaries.
The songs of Bayly obtain a popularity almost without precedent in our time.
With the exception of Moore, no living writer has been so eagerly sought after by musical composers.
(A parallel can be found with Housman in the 1890s and the rage for "Shropshire lad" art compositions).
The trio of Burns, Moore, and Bayly representa peak of achievement by songwriters who are, first and foremost, poets.
The Irishman Moore and Bayly perform as respectable entertainers in the salons, parlours, and drawing rooms of the landed gentry and the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie, whereas Dibdin had provides a "table entertainment" for the paying public on his own premises.
Dibdin, nevertheless, firmly aligns himself with bourgeois values.
Allowing for the effects of social change on these values, the same may be said of a quite different personality, who in many ways was Dibdin's successor, Henry Russell (1812—1900).
RUSSELL was not an immediate successor, of course.
Dibdin had died when Russell was a baby.
During Russell's childhood and early manhood, the bourgeoisie are struggling to become the dominant fraction of the power bloc, spurred on by a new disaffected middle-class group who had been thrown up by the events of the industrial revolution.
The element of evangelical humanitarianism in Russell's character places him in conflict with the laissez-faire philosophy which maintains that people driven by self-interest to create wealth forwarded the general good.
Ironically, social reformers at this time are often paternalistic Tories practising their code of noblesse oblige.
The Factory Acts of 1833 and 1847 and the Public Health Act of 1848 are all passed in the face of opposition from laissez-faire dogmatists.
Sometimes, as in Yorkshire, there is what amounted almost to a coalition between Radicals and Tories.
Russell's song, 'The Happy Days of Childhood' (poetry by George Pendrill), appeals more to Lord Shaftesbury than to a textile-factory owner.
Russell establishes the norm for respectable entertainers.
Russell selects verse or collaborated with poets he admirs and sings his compositions, accompanying himself at the piano.
Like Dibdin, Russell is involved with the theatre as a young man.
Having had a good voice as a boy, Russell studied in Italy under VINCENZO Bellini when his voice breaks, and becomes chorus master at "Her Majesty's Theatre" on his return.
Disillusioned with the prospects of making his living in England, Russell decides to emigrate to Canada.
After the experience of a storm in Toronto, Russell quickly moves to Rochester, New York.
Russell becomes a teacher at the Rochester Academy of Music, and organist and choir master at the First Presbyterian Church.
His New York debut as a singer is in 1836.
During that year, Russell tours with the opera composer Wallace.
The next year Russell embarks upon his career as a solo entertainer.
Henry Russell's songs about the New World, added to his popularity and influence in the United States, led to his being considered an American composer.
Russell did, in fact, write many of his well-known songs in the USA.
But the two periods of his life spent in the United States total less than ten years, only half the time that he spent as an active entertainer in England.
Russell, together with his long-standing friend Charles Mackay (later, editor of "The Illustrated London News"), is a fervent champion of the New World.
Henry Russell and Charles Mackay collaborated on emigration songs such as
"To the West"
and
"Far, Far upon the Sea
as well as a vocal and pictorial entertainment,
"The Far West; or, The Emigrant's Progress from the Old World to the New"
Their song
"Cheer, Boys! Cheer!"
became the anthem of optimism for those leaving Britain's shores.
It was even sung by the Guards as they departed for the Crimea.
Russell claims his songs induced the starving to seek prosperity by emigrating.
Russell also claims that slavery was one of the evils he helps to abolish through the medium of some of his songs.
Certainly he adopts a strong anti-slavery stance.
This is clear in his entertainment "Negro Life in Freedom and in Slavery" (words by Angus B. Reach) which includes the song
"The Slave Sale".
Russell's anti-slavery sentiment is of the Harrier Beecher Stowe variety, although it pre-dates "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
Yet he is not content with condemnation.
Russell's gran scena 'The Slave Ship' contains a call for action:
let every man arise to save
from scourge & chain the Negro slave
Russell's "gran scenas" are especially charged with moral purpose.
It was in this form taken from the "operatic" set piece for anguished prima donna, that he could bring the full panoply of melodramatic devices to the service of his own enthusiasm.
Russell's gran scena 'The Gambler's Wife' depicts a mother and child desolately waiting as the clock strikes each hour from one to four o'clock in the morning, at which point the gambling father returns to a domestic tragedy.
This scena must have influenced Henry Clay Work's famous song on a similar theme,
"Come Home, Father"
Russell's gran scena 'The Maniac' (or 'Madman') may easily appear today as a tasteless example of horror for entertainment's sake and at the expense of the mentally ill.
Russell insists however, that it is composed with the specific intention of exposing that great social evil — the private lunatic asylum where people are unlikely to be declared sane while they prove profitable inmates.
The eponymous character in 'The Maniac' is driven mad by the asylum itself.
The piece stands as an indictment to the blanket application of the principle of laissez-faire.
Russell also specializes in composing a simpler form of dramatic narrative song, and he is always delighted at his ability to command the intense involvement of his audience with these.
There are several anecdotes in his autobiography which tell how people caught up in the mood of the song would shout questions to him on stage.
For example, after singing
"Carlo, the Newfoundland Dog" -- a dog who, in the song, jumps overboard to rescue a young boy -- a gentleman in the audience asked,
Excuse me, sir, was that dog yourn?
No, it was not -- Russell replied.
Did he save the child?
He did.
On another occasion, after singing his celebrated ballad 'Woodman, Spare That Tree!', the following exchange took place:
Was the tree spared, sir?
It was -- Russell said.
Thank God for that.
Russell makes his English debut in March 1842 at the posh "Hanover Square Concert Rooms".
But he is soon to hear his tunes on barrel organs and hurdy-gurdies all over town.
Russell notes that his kind of entertainment was then practically a new idea in England.
But he does acknowledge Charles Dibdin as a forerunner.
With a work such as "The Far West". Russell is able to escape the Lord Chamberlain's proscription of plays during Lent, since it was a SUNG entertainment.
Russell takes advantage of this situation to the full in 1851, when he mounted a Lenten Entertainment at the Olympic Theatre.
Russell's social conscience takes him to Dublin, where he gives two entertainments for the exclusive benefit of evicted tenants during the Irish famine.
Russell's success in Dublin encourages him to make a tour of Ireland (places visited included Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Wexford, Drogheda, Newry, and Belfast) and he eventually raises almost £7000.
Many of Russell's songs remain favourites all century, particularly:
"The Old Sexton"
"Woodman, Spare That Tree!
"Cheer, Boys' Cheer!
and
"The Old Arm Chair"
The song which outlived every other, however, was
"A Life on the Ocean Wave"
-- words by an American, E. Sargent, based on verses by S. J. Arnold.
Its longevity is aided in our own time by its having been adopted in 1889 as the official march of the Royal Marines.
The first verse runs as follows:
a life on the ocean wave
a home on the rolling deep
where the scatter'd waters rave
& the winds their revels keep
like an eagle caged I pine
on this dull unchanging shore
o give me the flashing brine
the spray and the tempest's roar
The song has the same pioneering spirit as another Russell favourite,
"I'm afloat"
It shows an adventurous, optimistic nature, in contrast to his other common mood of sentimental nostalgia.
This emotional dichotomy is found with great frequency among the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie.
Whatever the mood of Russell's songs, however, they are generally stamped with several of the following hallmarks:
i. -- a limited vocal range
ii. -- a partiality for major keys
iii. -- a contrasting key area for the middle of the song
iv.-- a pause with, perhaps, a short cadenza (a vocal nourish) before the main tune reprise;
v. -- a fragmentation of the tune at the end.
'A Life on the Ocean Wave' contains all these features.
The fragmented ending is less common in his pathetic ballads.
But the fragmented ending does appear on occasion as, for example, in 'The Old Sexton' (incidentally, a rare example of his use of a minor key).
Though normally of no great length, Russell's melodies are skilfully crafted within a musical idiom that now achieves such autonomy as a distinctive style there is little point in tracing 'art music' influences.
Russell can be singled out as the composer mainly responsible for popularizing the maudlin, over sentimental song, the promoter of the moist eye.
Russell was enormously fond of the word old in these ballads.
Indeed, 'The Old Arm Chair' was a setting of Eliza Cook's 'The Favourite Chair' and it was Russell who requested that the title be changed.
It is hard to realize now that Russell feels there was no sentimental excess in any of his songs.
Russell believes their healthy moral tone prevents that happening.
The moral tone of a song depends upon the moral tone of the individual who writes it.
A healthy song comes from a healthy man and likewise produces healthy effects.
Sickening sentiment is born of a sickening mind and generally produces sickening effects.
Unfortunately, Russell's stricture runs into difficulties if applied to his celebrated predecessor, Dibdin.
Dibdin's first editor comments that his music was never contaminated by anything gross or licentious but alas for the infirmity of human nature.
Dibdin is added to the numerous illustrations of the maxim, that the character of an author is not to be gathered from his works.
---
REFERENCES
C. Dibdin, The Public Undeceived (London, 1807)
Note that the adjective 'democratic' is used pejoratively at this date.
The song may be found in Turner and Miall.
A "sheer-hulk" is a dismasted ship used as a floating crane-platform.
Lest it be thought that Bayly and his wife furnish a typical example of absentee landlordism, it should be mentioned that Bayly attacks neglectful absentee landlords in his poem 'The Absentee' (from Erin and Other Poems, 1822).
Bayly donates the profits from this publication to the fund for the relief of distressed peasantry in the South of Ireland.
The song may be found in Turner and Miall 1972: 101—5.
Burns offers a similar illustration of this maxim; for, though considerably lax in his own moral standards (especially concerning drink and women), he endorses bourgeois respectability in his poetry:
but Nelly's looks are blithe & sweet
& what is best of a'
her
reputation is complete
& fair without a flaw.
---- from 'My Handsome Nell'
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