"Fit to be sung in streets": song in British colonial America, 1750-1776

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Content 8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.i

“‘FIT TO BE SUNG IN STREETS:’”
SONG IN BRITISH COLONIAL AMERICA, 1750-1776

by

Jeanne Eller McDougall

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)

December 2016
Copyright 2013-2016 Jeanne Eller McDougall

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.ii

Epigraph

Dined with 350 Sons of Liberty at Robinsons, the Sign of Liberty Tree in Dorchester .... We had
also the Liberty Song-that by the Farmer [John Dickinson], and that by Dr. Chh [Dr. Church], and
the whole Company joined in the Chorus. This is cultivating the Sensations of Freedom.
John Adams, Monday, August 14, 1769
1

1
John Adams, diary 15, 30 January 1768, 10 August 1769 - 22 August 1770 [electronic edition] (Adams
Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society.
http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/ ), p. 7.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.iii

Dedication

To my parents, progeny, and partner,
especially Teresa, granddaughter of schoolteachers,
who, given the opportunity, would have written a mighty fine dissertation of her own.
I sing this song for them.

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.iv

Acknowledgements
Those who taught me how historians think distinctly, and differently, about the
world: dissertation committee members Carole Shammas, Peter Cooper Mancall, and
Adam Knight Gilbert; my qualifying committee members, above, with George J. Sánchez
and Terry L. Seip; and Steve Ross, Jack Wills, Lois and Jim Horton, Karen Ordall
Kupperman, and Helen Rountree.
Those institutions that funded, provided administrative assistance, and
otherwise encouraged my studies and research: the University of Southern California,
the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, and the Huntington Library.
The amazing archivists and librarians at the American Antiquarian Society, the
Boston Public Library, the Clark Memorial Library of the University of California/Los
Angeles, the Doheny and other libraries of the University of Southern California, the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the
Huntington Library, the Library Company, the Los Angeles Public Library, the
Massachusetts Historical Society, the New-York Historical Society, the New York Public
Library; the Smithsonian Institution, and the Swem Library of the College of William &
Mary. Your generosity and genius made this work possible.
Readers and institutions that let me share my work in progress and taught me in
return, including the American Antiquarian Society, the American Historical Association,
Bianca Hall M.D.A., the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Lois Horton Ph.D., Karen
Kupperman Ph.D., the Old Dominion University Institute for Learning in Retirement, the
Pacific Coast Council of British Studies, USC-Huntington EMSI, and Faye Weinstein, Ph.D.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.v

Scholars, researchers, and collectors who walked this way before me, leaving a
path that made mine possible, especially Arthur M. Schlesinger, Gillian B. Anderson,
Arthur F. Schrader, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller.
Every single person who made music with me these long years, keeping me
(almost) sane and reminding me to be happy. And every single friend who was willing to
be a friend, whether I finished or not.
My very best research assistants, Joe, Meg, and Alex; Nora, awesome
representative of the next generation who always reminded me why I was doing this;
Dad, for keeping things real; and Mom, who never missed a beat. They, and Bob, my
musical mentor and so much more, loved me no matter what.
This work is available to a broader committee of seven billion, whoever might
want it in their own pursuit of the mystery of song and its power. Thank you, Pete
Seeger, for never letting us forget about that.
Now let’s sing. Together.

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.vi

Table of Contents
Title Page No.
Epigraph ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents vi
List of Tables viii
List of Figures ix
Abstract x
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Song 22
Chapter Two: Source 87
Chapter Three: Tune 135
Chapter Four: Man 188
Afterward 266
Works Cited
Secondary sources:
Books 269
Articles and book chapters 278
Dissertations 288
Online resources 288
Primary sources:
Books 289
Broadsides 295
Newspapers 297
Magazines and other periodicals 300
Songsters 300
Scores 301
Images 302
Manuscripts 305

Bibliography 308
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.vii

Appendices:
Available online from the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute,
https://dornsife.usc.edu/emsi

Appendix A: Terminology used in music and scientific discourses
Appendix B: “Song” in EEBO
Appendix C: Punishment for singing
Appendix D: Rhetorical styles in song
Appendix E: Arthur M. Schlesinger song collection, 1954
Appendix F: Arthur F. Schrader “Songs Under the Liberty Tree” collection,
1976 (unpublished), as catalogued in 2011
Appendix G: Sources consulted by Schlesinger and Schrader
Appendix H: Musical items, including those with songs, advertised in print
Appendix I: Song “Instances,” British Colonial America, 1750-1776
Appendix J: Manuscript Tune Books, Military and Civilian
Appendix K: Tunes Indicated, Song “Instance” Database, British Colonial
America, 1750-1776
Appendix L: Scores and Texts, 14 Top Tunes Indicated
Appendix M: Examples of “Yankee” and “Doodle” (the “Doodlebase”)

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.viii

List of Tables

2.1 Clues for song intentionality, British Colonial America, 1750-1776 89
2.2 Freemasons Books, published or sold in British Colonial America,
1750-1776 103
2.3 London magazine song instances republished in British Colonial
America, 1750-1776 108

3.1 Identified tunes used most frequently, or for top songs,
British Colonial America, 1750-1776 158

4.1 American manliness in song: “Manly,” 1775 256

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.ix

List of Figures

Frontispiece John Adams, diary entry, Monday, August 14, 1769 ii

1.1 Examples of the progression of notation available in popular print,
1608-1777 33
1.2 Poetry and Song: Depictions of lyric poets from antiquity to 1723 34
1.3 Depictions of songs in streets, 1751-1796 38
1.4 Gendered singing spaces, 1740 39
1.5 Two views of the history of English music, 1776 47
1.6 A tripartite taxonomy of song rhetoric, 1723-1725 60
1.7 The Singing Anglers, 1653 (imagined in 1759, published in 1775) 74

2.1 Depictions of Freemasons accompanying songs in popular print,
1739-40 and 1751 101
2.2 The migration of song from popular culture to folk practice #1:
“That Jenny’s my Friend” 119
2.3 Examples of notation style: the “Old” 100 Psalm tune 120
2.4 The language of music and social order 121
2.5 Bound manuscripts with multiple functions that contain songs 122
2.6 The migration of song from popular culture to folk practice #2:
“Britons” and “Americans” To Arms 124
2.7 The migration of song from literature to religion:
“The Messiah,” adapted from Pope by Cooper 126
2.8 The migration of song from manuscript to print culture: “For a pelf” 129

3.1 Loyal singing, 1739 and 1745 163
3.2 Bound and single-sheet song, 1738-1740 and 1774 182

4.1 Singing and empire, 1740 188
4.2 Social singing settings, secular and sacred spaces, 1739 and 1770 197
4.3 Song and drinking, 1739 198
4.4 Cross-dressing, 1771 and 1779 231
4.5 Macaroni men and women, 1768 231
4.6 Collett and Macaronis, 1770-1772 233
4.7 MDarly Macaroni caricatures, 1772 234
4.8 Macaronis and the military, 1768-1777 235
4.9 Macaronis and marriage, 1772 239
4.10 English national associations, 1688 242
4.11 British “doodles,” 1775 249
4.12 American “doodles,” 1776 250
4.13 American manliness, 1775 252
4.14 Gender shifting in imperial symbols, 1730s-1770s 258
4.15 Gender shifting in American symbols, 1765 259
4.16 Britain against America in symbols, 1774-1781 260

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.x

Abstract
In the decade preceding the American Revolution, a new kind of oppositional song
increasingly appeared in print media of British Colonial America. “Liberty song” gave tune and
voice to the imperial crisis involving the British government and its American colonies. These
songs were rooted in two centuries of radical political ideology and followed decades of serious
philosophical debate about the affective qualities and proper societal role of music and –
specific to this study – song. This project explores what these songs, and others of the period,
tell us about the coming of the conflict we call “American,” and “revolutionary,” and offers
evidence as to why song may be a distinct category of evidence, something more than just
“more of the same” information coming from a different evidentiary sources The chapters
explore the genesis of this different kind of prerevolutionary song expression (in its production
as well as presentation), the role of song in articulating and, sometimes, mobilizing opposing
sentiments, and the degree to which these songs built upon British Atlantic practices honed over
the preceding two centuries, wherein familiar tunes were appropriated for their specific
associations with past social and political causes as well as the “affective” musicological
properties of the tunes chosen to animate them that may have tended to incite a particular
emotional response in the auditor. Statistical data drawn from both the songs themselves (texts
and tunes) as well as their use in print media, supported by manuscript sources that provide
first-hand testimony of uses and effects of sound in general (and music where noted) on
contemporaries’ emotions, hopes and fears, suggests development of a political functionality of
song that was documented (and, in some cases, fostered) by British American printers and
publishers and their contributors and sponsors, especially in newspapers but also in broadsides,
magazines, pamphlets, and books, whose messages, creators, and audiences overlapped. These
practices suggest that the purveyors of print culture and, in some cases, the social and political
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.xi

interests they represented, intended a specific role for song in the informing and opinion-
forming process, even to the point of explicitly calling on the population to mobilize on one side
or the other of the difficult decision to renounce British allegiance and go to war. An
exploration of reception of these songs as revealed in printed and manuscript diaries, letters,
and journals, as well as newspapers coverage of events and opinions where song had a
mobilizing effect, help unpack what John Adams might have meant when he famously described
the role of political songs – and specifically the singing of them – as “cultivating the Sensations
of Freedom,” and why and how some songs were, as a 1770 broadside proclaimed, “Fit to be
sung in Streets.”

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.1

Introduction

MONDAY AUGUST 14. – dined with 350 Sons of Liberty at Robinsons, the Sign of Liberty
Tree in Dorchester. We had two Tables laid in the open Field by y
e
Barn, with between 300 & 400
Plates, and an Awning of Sail Cloth overhead, and should have spent a most agreable Day had
not the [lined out] Rain made some Abatement in our Pleasures. – Mr. Dickinson the Farmers
Brother, and Mr. Reed the Secretary of New Jersey were there, both cool, reserved and guarded
all day. After Dinner was over and the Toasts drank we were diverted with Mr. Balch's Mimickry.
He gave Us, the Lawyers Head, and the Hunting of a Bitch fox. – We had also the Liberty Song, –
that by the Farmer, & by Dr. Chh [Dr. Church], and the whole Company joined in the Chorus. –
This is cultivating the Sensations of Freedom.
2

Cultivating. Sensations. Freedom. These three words, set in a few sentences, pose a
pair of serious historical questions: what can we discern about the role of song in the years of
imperial crisis leading up to the conflict known to succeeding generations as “American” and
revolutionary, and might song be an evidentiary source distinct from others?
In this passage, John Adams, among the most prolific in a generation of prolific diarists,
painted one of the most complete pictures of the production and reception of oppositional
political song during the years leading up to an armed conflict that would, eventually, acquire
the name of revolution. It was a profoundly aural experience of the sort that we can only now
“hear” through secondary media: the written word, the captured image, the elderly artifact.
Generations of writers have subsequently speculated upon the meaning of these words, based
upon the many clues Adams provided. He described a large gathering held out-of-doors at a

2
John Adams, diary 15, p. 7.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.2

tavern that took its name both from its proprietor and from the most flagrant image of, if not
rebellion yet, certainly a rebellious spirit of the time, the Liberty Tree. The attendees gathered
as members of the loosely connected association that, for five years, had embodied the modifier
ascribed to the Tree: The Sons of Liberty.
3
Three-to-four hundred people sat in an “open Field
by the Barn ... with ... an Awning of Sail Cloth overhead.” The program featured the laudatory
toasts and alcohol inseparable from such dinners as well as a small entertainment; not even an
intermittent rain could dampen the spirits of the assembled multitude. Whether Adams’
famous claim, “This is cultivating the Sensations of Freedom,” refers exclusively to the activity
most proximate to it – the singing of two Liberty Songs – or to the event in toto, it would be hard
to separate any part of the gathering from the overall effect it produced. Indeed, Adams went
on commend the primary Sons’ organizers, James Otis and Samuel Adams, for “promoting these
Festivals, for they tinge the Minds of the People, they impregnate them with the sentiments of
Liberty ... (and) They render the People fond of their Leaders in the Cause, and averse and bitter
against all opposers.”
4

To understand the connection between sensations and songs, and particularly the
vibrant body of songs referred to universally in this period as “liberty songs,” requires an
understanding of what song and singing meant to Adams’ generation. What would he have
meant, or even understood, about the sensorial possibilities embedded in a song, and how
could that connect to an impulse for freedom – indeed, what did that word mean, especially
when sung, especially at this place and time, in a world underwritten by an economy based on

3
A search of the online database America’s Historical Newspapers finds that the name “Sons of Liberty”
first appeared in a colonial American newspaper in an issue of the Providence Gazette published on
October 4, 1764, by William Goddard, who would later become one of the most frequent publishers of
newspaper song in general as well as oppositional song, during the period studied. William Goddard, ed.,
“Letter to Mr. GODDARD,” Providence Gazette, October 4, 1764, p. 3, col. 3, vol. II, no. 103.
4
John Adams, diary 15, p. 7.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.3

the peculiar sort of Atlantic chattel slavery that made evident and present the reality of
freedom? And in a larger context, where were these songs coming from – what ideas or other
motivations – and to what extent was their introduction into the proto-revolutionary milieu
happenstance, or deliberate? Was song just an amplification of what was being written in other
print and scribal sources, or can it tell us something more, either in its text, its production,
and/or its reception?
My interest in this topic was spurred by an article written by Arthur M. Schlesinger and
published by The William & Mary Quarterly in 1954, the year of Schlesinger’s transition to
emeritus status at Harvard University. “A Note on Songs as Patriot Propaganda 1765-1776”
listed nearly five-dozen songs Schlesinger had collected over a lifetime in the archives, songs
whose importance he clearly sensed without knowing exactly what he might eventually want to
do with them.
5
Categorizing these songs as either narrative, hortatory, or martial and
characterizing them as “propaganda” in a way that modern scholars would not, Schlesinger
encouraged further study by “later students” who would “correct any errors and fill in the
gaps.”
6
No such study was forthcoming; the article has rarely been cited in the more than 55
years since its publication. It was Schlesinger himself who abruptly closed the door he had
opened; in his next project, Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-
1776 (1958), he dismissed any value such songs might have had beyond their “scant effect” in
“greatly swell(ing) the output of Patriotic verse.” In his revised view, even the best-known of
these songs “fell sadly short of a ‘Marseillaise.’”
7
Never since that “first attempt at a
comprehensive list of these songs” has a historian of Schlesinger’s statute or a publication of the

5
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, “A Note on Songs as Patriot Propaganda 1765-1776,” William and Mary
Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Jan., 1954), pp. 78-88.
6
Schlesinger, “Patriot Propaganda,” p. 88.
7
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence; the Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-1776 (New
York: Knopf, 1958), p. 38.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.4

Quarterly’s importance in the field of early American history comprehensively examined the role
of song in the advent of the revolution.
One of the major challenges of Schlesinger’s research note is that, in the absence of an
accepted methodology for examining song data, his collection of songs included a mix of
examples documented from both contemporary sources and those published years or decades
later, sometimes by individuals who had not participated in or even been born during the third
quarter of the eighteenth century, and often without citations for their evidence or claims.
Significant nineteenth- and twentieth-century mediation of what we think we know about song
in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic, especially topical song as it relates to the imperial
crisis of the 1760s and 1770s in the British American colonies, demands that we draw a clear line
between what we know came from the study period and what we know of only from evidence
documented later. Then as now, new generations appropriate song for their own uses, telling
us as much (or more) about the documenting generation at its own particular place and time,
than the period the songs are supposed to reflect.
8
In the early national period specifically,
there was a recasting or refashioning of the songs of the revolutionary generation that actually
tells us how people of that later period wanted to think of themselves and their national
creation, often in ways that are inconsistent with the eighteenth-century record. Comparing
these later songs with extant songs contemporary to 1750-1776 illuminates those
inconsistencies and allows for a clearer understanding of how song was presented, used, and –
when we are fortunate enough to come across a rare quote like Adams’ – intended to be
received.

8
Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, in the introduction to their 2005 collection, The Rose & The Briar: Death,
Love and Liberty in the American Ballad, argued that, over time, the story-telling song form of “ballads
became a major form – musically, perhaps, the major form – through which Americans told each other
about themselves and the country they inhabited.” Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus, eds., The Rose & The
Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), p. 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.5

There is an equal challenge in the roles of (and boundaries between) academic
disciplines related to the study of these songs. By not investigating the value of studying music
in history (as opposed to music history, which is focused first on the music, rather than the
societies and cultures that produced it), Schlesinger continued a practice that has been common
among historians of the pre-modern and early-modern periods who say little or nothing about
the role (indeed, sometimes even the presence) of music, relegating what they do say to
examples that elucidate other points rather than addressing music as a significant social
phenomenon in itself. Historians who study the era from the turn of the twentieth century to
the present are able to hear and see music and song production and reception and
consequently say more about their historical dimensions. In addition to this source problem –
the inability of the recording devices of the early modern period (text, notation, visual depiction,
and oral tradition) to capture music’s aural and performative aspects – is a purely documentary
source problem: that is, a relative lack of references to music and song in everyday life in British
Colonial America. This is not to say that these references do not exist, and we can certainly
study what survives, but comments like Adams’ about the “sensations of freedom” are few, for
reasons explored in this study. A third problem for historians is a lack of musical references in
the historiography, for reasons that may include a sense that the study of music and song is a
specialization for which historians are not customarily trained.
So it is little wonder that, for most of the last century, standard histories of early
America have tended to treat music as peripheral to history rather than integral, a “garnish” to
other main courses of inquiry. Nineteenth-century histories and song collections tended to say
quite a bit about music, but presented it more anecdotally and less analytically than do histories
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.6

written later.
9
More recent examples show how music could have told us more about the
prerevolutionary moment. Rhys Isaac, in Transformation of Virginia, used the tutor Philip
Fithian as a source extensively, but treated musical anecdotes as manifestations of certain
pretentions to gentility rather than as a possible precipitant, and opted not to analyze the
significance of loud political song observed by Fithian in the very musical Carter household
during the final years and months before revolution.
10
David Hackett Fischer, in Albion’s Seed,
didn’t even include music as one of his key cultural dimensions of colonial society, and although
he mentioned numerous occasions where music was present, he avoided many more where it
had to have been, in a society that some historians of the early national period have
demonstrated used music constantly for myriad functions.
11
Daniel Walker Howe, in What Hath
God Wrought, dealing with a slightly later period yet referring back to the colonial era, made the
observation that the psalm tune “Old Hundred” had been the “heartbeat” of New England
without following up on what the social and cultural implications of that might have been.
12
If
you accept this analogy as an accurate description of the physical, emotional, and spiritual
potential of music to move hearts and minds as represented in possibly the best known example

9
Notable examples of how liberty song was documented in nineteenth-century sources include: Bernard
J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I (New York: Harper Brothers, 1851), pp. 486-487;
Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1856),
pp. 36-47; Henry B. Dawson, The Sons of Liberty in New York: A Paper Read Before the New York
Historical Society (for private circulation, 1859), p. 76; Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of
America, Vol VI, Part I (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1887), pp. 86-87; Paul
Leicester Ford, The Writings of John Dickinson, Vol.I: Political Writings 1764-1774 (Philadelphia: The
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1895), pp. 421-432.
10
Rhys Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1982).
11
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989); for early national festivities in nation-building, see especially: Simon P. Newman, Parades
and Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1997); and David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of
American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Williamsburg, VA: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early
American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
12
Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of American, 1815-1848 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.7

of the kind of long-meter tune that would have been running through people’s heads as they
worked, played, prayed, celebrated, and, specific to the topic of this project, prepared for,
engaged in, and recovered from warfare alongside the accompanying ideation of an new sort of
human polity, then the necessity of explaining this affective quality is, I believe, manifest.
The necessarily multidisciplinary nature of this study (history, musicology, rhetoric)
requires the use of a variety of methods, including the creation of some new ones. Methods
include statistical analysis of songs from all contemporary sources and with special emphasis on
certain source types, especially newspapers; the development of thematic and rhetorical
analyses of key songs; archival research on reception of songs; analysis of the performative
aspects of songs; and where necessary, methods for reuniting text and tune as well as
determining intention for whether a text could or would be sung. All are documented in
databases included in the appendices of this project and publicly published online at the USC-
Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute web site, https://dornsife.usc.edu/emsi
The largest extant body of songs that we know could have been available in British
Colonial America during the third quarter-century of the eighteenth century are in songbooks,
the vast majority of which were originally published and printed in England.
13
Many other
sources contain songs, but the largest concentration of those useful to answering questions
about song and politics appear to be in colonial newspapers, which are further helpful because
they provide the dates of publication, the names of their publishers, and, sometimes, the names
of subscribers. Less frequently do we learn the names of their creators. The statistical analysis
used in this project organizes and analyzes a dataset of more than 2,000 song “instances”
14
by
parameters including: date or event; town or region; printer or publisher; contributors or

13
Many song books were republished in the Americas, copied from English originals.
14
In this dissertation, songs are catalogued by “instances,” i.e., each individual appearance of a song in
different editions or formats.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.8

sponsors, if known; song genre (song, ballad, hymn, psalm, etc.); what page, section, or under
which title the song appeared, where applicable; whether certain common textual themes or
slogans were used; whether they originally appeared in other publications or were printed on
other presses; whether the same song appeared in different formats, especially newspapers
and broadsides (the two largest subsets of extant topical songs); specific singing instructions
that suggest how the songs were to be used; inferred singing instructions such as use of an
antiphon or refrain; and previous use of tunes in earlier topical or oppositional songs.
Relatively few extant manuscript examples mention music or song, but diaries,
correspondence, and even account books sometimes include song texts, even musical notation,
that was meaningful enough to the owner for him/her to have committed them to a precious
corner of paper. But hundreds of manuscripts typically produce single digits of song references,
unless the category consulted is tune books, civilian or military. Other manuscript sources
reveal evidence of music through the tools used to make it; the Salisbury papers, whose
correspondents were retailers, list Jew’s harps and a particular music book in their store, yet
discussions between the two Salisbury brothers never mentioned music, even when brother
Sam, in Boston, was writing about places and events where music had to have been present.
15

Many more print examples of song survive from the search period than do manuscript
sources, so the study of the colonial printers and vendors of these publications is essential. As
far back as Isaiah Thomas’ landmark volumes on printing in the British colonies that became the
United States, print historians have noted an increase in the number of new publications during
the late 1750s at the point where Pitt’s increased investment in the Seven Year’s War in America

15
Salisbury Family Papers, 1674-1916 (American Antiquarian Society: Box 1, Folder 3, business letters for
1767, 1768).

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.9

started producing British victories, and again at the onset of the revolution in 1775-1776. Much
of this increase, though, appears to be attributable at least in part to causes beyond a
readership eager to read about war. In the former case, competition and feuding between
existing printers and publishers in the three largest media markets (New York, Philadelphia, and
Boston) contributed to the increase; in the latter case, dislocations caused by the war often
forced existing printers to set up shop in a new locale, creating a “new” newspaper that was
actually a continuation of the old, rather than reflecting a dramatic entry of new papers and
players into the publishing game. Another important qualification: many of the new
publications of the search period lasted only a year or two, producing few issues and reaching
few people. Once adjusted for these factors, the story begins to look more like one of slow,
steady gain in newspaper production over the third quarter of the century with only modest
increases at the noted times, with the most singular characteristic being how few new players
there were at any given time. Most new publications came from the same people who printed,
published, and contributed to newspapers in existing publications that either, 1, offered new
products in their existing markets, or 2, started satellite publications in new locales – which
leads to a second striking finding, that is, how many of these participants turned up in multiple
publications, irrespective of town, colony, or other regional classification. Claims respective of
place can be made about some of what appeared in print (for example, there is no comparative
evidence that any song like the one about farting and pooping that appeared in Williamsburg,
Virginia, on page two of Clementina Rind’s Virginia Gazette in September 1773 had ever have
been printed on any page of any Boston paper
16
), but more striking are the many similarities in

16
Though an image of the consensual sodomizing of one Freemason by another was apparently
acceptable for the front page of the Boston Evening-Post in 1751. The song published in Williamsburg,
“The CONSULTATION; a new BALLAD,” is described by Nick Tosches as “The first erotic ballad written and
published in America.” Thomas Fleet, ed., “In Defence of MASONRY,” Boston Evening-Post, January 7,
1751, p. 1, col. 1; Clementina Rind, ed., “The CONSULTATION; a new BALLAD,” Virginia Gazette,
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.10

what was being printed by all publications as well as the formats they used, and how often they
“borrowed” from one another. This project can contribute by illustrating ways in which the
various producers of these print vehicles used, or did not use, song, especially those who
seemed to be contributing most to its dissemination. In this, the data show clear trends: some
individuals, and some papers, were far more active in song publication, and certain of those, in
providing explicitly political commentary, and in generating far more songs that were then
reprinted by others.
A comparative analysis of the topical songs of greatest interest to this study with the
mid-length pamphlets famously analyzed by Bernard Bailyn in the 1960s
17
reveals interesting
similarities and differences between the two evidentiary sources. Like the pamphlets, these
frequent-flying songs appear to have been disseminated quickly; they reached a proportionally
larger audience than other songs; they told stories; and they reported news. They were
“topical, polemical, and short,”
18
and, in large part, were “direct responses to the great events
of the time” providing “strings of individual exchanges (revealing) heated personifications of the
larger conflict,” “distinguished by the ritualistic character of … themes and language,” as in the
songs celebrating anniversaries of events.
19
The songs, like the pamphlets, were primarily
political rather than literary, and rather amateurish in presentation, especially in comparison to
print songs arriving by the shipload from London.
20
They used “all the standard tropes and a

September 2, 1773, p. 2, col. 3; Nick Tosches, Country: the Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll (Boston: Da
Capo Press, 1977), p. 132.
17
Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University
Press, 1967).
18
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, p. 2.
19
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 4-5.
20
Bailyn commented at length on the amateurism of “the American pamphleters … next to such
polemicists as Swift and Defoe,” and reserved his harshest criticism for “versification” that he found
“almost uniformly painful to read,” with “scarcely a single group of stanzas that can be read with any
satisfaction as poetry …. a kind of limping jingle-jangle in which sense and sound are alternatively
sacrificed to each other.” It recalls Schlesinger’s view that even one of the best American efforts, “The
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.11

variety of unusual figurations (satire, elusive irony, flat parody, extended allegory, direct
vituperation, sarcasm),”
21
and, perhaps most significantly, included all of the main ideological
themes identified by Bailyn: traces of classical antiquity, enlightenment ideas, covenant
imagery, common law, and eighteenth-century “country” ideology, all expressed relatively
superficially, even given the comparatively compressed format of song.
22

But the differences are illuminating. Bailyn’s core pamphlets were usually between ten
and fifty pages in length (some were even longer), while the songs studied had a limited number
of stanzas that could fit on a single broadsheet or in a few newspaper column inches.
Pamphlets were “spacious enough to allow for the full development of an argument” while
songs reemphasized key messages and themes only. Bailyn pointed out that the pamphleteers
were amateurs,
23
but increasingly the printers and publishers were not.
24
Bailyn remarked that
pamphlets were “decorous and reasonable,” their authors “profoundly reasonable,” wanting “to
convince … not … to annihilate,” and were “consequently expository and explanatory: didactic,
systematic, and direct, rather than imaginative and metaphoric … The reader is led through
arguments, not images. The pamphlets aim to persuade.”
25
By contrast, song tended to be all
about the images, metaphor, and hyperbole, appealing more readily to emotion rather than
thought. Bailyn also said pamphlets that followed 1776 “assumed and built upon … results” of

Liberty Song” mentioned in Adams’ “sensations” quote, nevertheless “fell sadly short of a ‘Marseillaise.’”
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 13-16; Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence, p. 38.
21
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, p. 9.
22
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 13.
23
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 13-17.
24
Jeffrey L. Pasley and others have pointed out the class distinction between printers and gentlemen
publishers, but by 1750-75 many papers were being produced by seasoned printers and publishers, often
in burgeoning family “dynasties,” many of whom had lifelong experience in the practice of putting song
into print; from an early age, Thomas (and others like him) knew what sold – whether a paper, or a
message. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers:” Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001); Isaiah Thomas, History of Printing in America, Vols. I
and II (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1874).
25
Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 17-19.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.12

the previous period, whereas some music historians and historians alike that political song
expression changed once the shooting started, marked by a rise in marching and morale songs.
26

As for output, Bailyn found 400 of the mid-length pamphlets between 1750-76; the more than
two thousand song instances in the database for this work would swell to many times that
number if the collection were to include every song from every song book that could have been
present in British Colonial America during the study period. The authors of pamphlets were
often known, even if only by a pseudonym, while virtually all songs were anonymous, though
the printers were often known; one major difference that came with the overtaking of
broadsides by newspapers as primary sources for news reporting was the identifiability of where
messages originated, though there are examples of printers continuing to hide their
participation regarding particularly problematic publications.
Most important of all: songs were intended to be heard and sung, meaning the auditor
or singer had a different experience of the message than the reader of pamphlet literature or
even an audience member when the latter was read aloud. Song and singing also allowed the
non-literate to participate in the message, but whether the participant was literate or not, the
message, when sung, had a transformative effect on the singer, as noticed by commentators
ranging from Isaac Watts regarding the congregational experience of singing, to John Adams, in
his comments on the public singing of “The Liberty Song.” Perhaps most important of all, the
structure of song and the experience of singing made the message more easily remembered,

26
Raoul F. Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1976); Kent Adam Bowman, Voices of Combat: A Century of Liberty and War Songs, 1765-1865
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); Schlesinger noted “three general kinds” of revolutionary-era songs,
“narrative, hortatory and martial, the last variety emerging late, with the preparations for war.”
Schlesinger, “Patriot Propaganda,” p. 79. Perhaps reflecting the knowledge being expressed as early as
1768 by John Dickinson that oppositional song was potentially dangerous in a pair of letters to John Otis
about his “Liberty Song,” and clearly illustrated in the secondary literature by Laura Mason’s work on the
French Revolution. Frank Moore, “The Liberty Song,” Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, pp.
36-37; Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.13

and more easily repeated than a more expansive, non-metered text that was not linked to a
memorable tune. In length, song was compact enough to fit on a broadside, to be read quickly,
and to be memorized, emphasizing key messages and themes that other print vehicles might
take pages to develop. And though songwriters may have suffered from the same amateurism
noted by Bailyn among pamphlet writers, half of their job was already done thanks to the nearly
limitless selection of popular song tunes already in what might be called the great Anglo-
American songbook, with more arriving on every ship.
In the century following Adams’ commentary, Ralph Waldo Emerson once mused in his
journal about various things that could entice people to take action:

“if a man can pipe or sing, so as to wrap the prisoned soul in an elysium
… or can liberate or intoxicate all people who hear him with delicious songs &
verses; ‘tis certain that the secret cannot be kept: the first witness tells it to a
second, and men go by fives & tens & fifties to his door.”
27

This “Pied Piper” effect was not exclusive to the time when Emerson wrote (1855), but
can also be seen in primary sources of the revolutionary period. In memoirs about his
childhood, the Rev. Hezekiah Packard “recalled the allure of the martial music played by patriots
during the spring of 1775 … (and) soon afterward he enlisted as a fifer.”
28

Evidence of this sort of reception can be difficult to locate in primary sources because of
its infrequency; it can be equally elusive in secondary literature as well, outside of discussions of

27
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge
MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 458.
28
Rachel Hope Cleves, “‘Heedless Youth:’ The Revolutionary War Poetry of Ruth Bryant (1760-83),”
William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 519-548.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.14

rough music parading, or church music.
29
Indeed, the way bibliographers and archivists index
the word “music” makes it exceedingly difficult to find archival materials with quotes like these
listed under that heading. Yet newspaper treatises on or mentioning music, though infrequent,
are a particularly rich source for accounts of revolutionary-era ideas about music reception, as in
a passage from a 1780 article in Dixon and Nicolson’s Virginia Gazette reprinted from Robert
Henry D.D.’s 1771 history of Britain, that, like many writings of the era, sought authority in
antiquity.
30
The author credited “the musick of the ancients so affecting” with “produc(ing) such
strong emotions of rage, love, joy, grief, and other passions in the hearers, by conveying the
pathetick strains of poetry to their hearts, in the most rousing, softening, joyous, or plaintive
sounds,” practices carried from ancient Greece across Europe, so that even laws were set to
music, “render(ing) those laws more agreeable to a poetical people, made it easier for them to
get by heart, and retain them in memory.” Examples like this reveal contemporary connections
being made between music and emotion, memory, and action, and are suggestive of what the
presence of all of these songs at this time and in this format, with singing direction, might have
meant.
The slender autobiographical materials left by newspaper publisher and American
Antiquarian Society founder Isaiah Thomas yield two valuable anecdotes about song reception.
The first, concerning a November fifth event in the “early period of my life” commemorating the
Gunpowder Plot with outdoor stages for “Effigies of the Pope and the Devil, the imputed

29
E. P. Thompson in Customs in Common and Pencak/Dennis/Newman in Riot and Revelry in Early
America give a good overview of why rough music in streets caused anxiety; E. P. Thompson, Customs in
Common: studies in traditional popular culture (New York: New Press, 1991); William Pencak, Matthew
Dennis, and Simon P. Newman, Riot and Revelry in Early America (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2002).
30
Robert Henry D.D., The History of Great Britain, Vol. 1 (London: T. Cadell, 1771), p. 368; also Kenneth
Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1976).
Silverman believed Thomas Jefferson may have contributed to this article.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.15

instigators of the plot,” describing how, “On the front of these stages, was placed in proportion
to the dimensions of the Stage a large lanthern framed circular at the top and covered with
paper.”
31
The description mirrors a November 1769 article in John Mein’s Boston Chronicle that
described the placement of “Toasts on the Front of the large Lanthorn,” and “Labels on each
Side the small Lanthorn” for a parody of the song text “Wilkes and Liberty, No. 45” that
identified Mein with the Pope and “his servant” with the Devil because of articles Mein had
published condemning certain “merchants of Boston and Salem, and notably John Hancock” for
“doing a fairly prosperous freighting business in goods made contraband by the merchants”
during the non-importation crisis.
32
The text would presumably have been illuminated by the
lanthorn so that the nighttime crowd (mob?) could sing:

See the informer how he stands,
An enemy to all the Land,
If any one now takes his Part,
He'll go to Hell without a Cart.
May Discord cease, in Hell be jam’d,
And factious fellows all be dam’d.
From -----, the veriest monster on earth,
The fell production of some baneful birth,
These ills proceed, -- from him they took their birth,
The Source supreme, and Center of all Hate.

31
Isaiah Thomas, Three Autobiographical Fragments (Worcester, MA: printed for the Society, 1962), pp.
21-22.
32
Charles McLean Andrews, “Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement,” Publications of the
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume XIX, TRANSACTIONS, 1916-1917 (Boston: Published by the
Society, 1918), pp. 229-230.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.16

If I forgive him, then forget me Heaven,
Or like a WILKES may I from Right be driven.
Here stands the Devil for a Show
With the I—p---rs in a row,
All bound to Hell, and that we know.
Go M-n lade deep with Curses on thy head,
To some dark Corner of the World repair,
Where the bright Sun no pleasant Beams can shed,
And spend thy Life in Horror and Despair.
Effigies, --- M—n, his Servant, &c.—A bunch of TOM CODS.
33

Thomas’ second example of song production and reception detailed an act of musical
political intimidation perpetrated by a troop of British soldiers:

… a british Regiment … paraded with a countryman they had tarred and
feathered for buying a musket of a Soldier – the regiment halted before my
house played the rogue’s march and threatened I should be the next so
served.
34

33
John Mein, ed., “Description of the Pope, 1769,” Boston Chronicle, November 06-9, 1769, p. 361 (front
page), col. 2; repeated in: Thomas Fleet, ed., “Boston, November 13, 1769,” Boston Evening-Post,
November 13, 1769, p. 3, cols. 1-2; and Solomon Southwick, ed., “Boston November 13,” Newport
Mercury, November 20, 1769; p.3, cols. 2-3.
34
Thomas, Three Autobiographical Fragments, p. 13. The practice survived; in 1788, Thomas would
publish a similar anecdote regarding the destruction of an antifederalist’s New York press to “The Rogue’s
March.”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.17

Tune was clearly important, and the authors knew it. Oppositional song promoting any
faction during this period is far more likely to have song direction than non-political songs,
further reinforcing the argument that political song was intended to be sung – and, therefore,
heard. Two practices predominate among the tunes selected for these songs: the use of
familiar, popular traditional tunes with rousing rhythms and refrains whose previous positive
associations, particularly with earlier political songs, regardless of faction, would presumably
have redounded to their new texts; and, the appropriation of tunes to British national songs
reworked for use in prerevolutionary America, a practice that would continue into the early
national period.
But equally interesting is the way that so many of the songs carrying American messages
tended to cross over divides between song types, producing a blend of rhetorical styles and
using the particular affective power of each to persuade and motivate. These rhetorical styles
would have been familiar to residents of this world, though the songs themselves, when
categorized by contemporaries, are not done so along rhetorical lines. The most obvious
difference during this period is the use of rhetorical styles in text or tune usually reserved for
religious, royal, and imperial song in certain liberty songs that seems out of step with more
accepted text and tune pairings for oppositional messages. Evidence shows that songs
promoting oppositional themes of any kind tended to be acceptable when using witty rather
than ardent language, or using merry melodies rather than the majestic settings of anthems,
sacred or secular, or the rousing strains of a category known as “loyal song.” Rhetorically
speaking, without the authority of God, king, or country to use these song styles, liberty song
became a new, and potentially dangerous, way of expressing dissatisfaction. And when these
high-toned themes were coupled with the peaceful, primal power of the pastorals of simple,
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.18

virtuous “low”-toned rhetoric, the resulting song expression could be nothing short of
transformative.
Just as the phrase “cultivating the Sensations of Freedom” requires considerable
unpacking, so does the title of this project, “Fit to be sung in Streets,” a description or direction
given on a single broadside example from 1770 believed to have been published in either
Philadelphia or New York concerning matters of excise. What made a song “fit” in a way that it
could be “sung” rather than just read, and why might the phrase have specifically mentioned
“streets” as a place to sing it? The words suggest a shift in where and how songs could be sung,
by whom, and with what rhetoric and messages, at a time when the political climate was
changing in the midsection of British Colonial America, before a “tipping point” toward rebellion
or revolution had been reached. This project attempts to provide tools that help facilitate that
discussion.
The four dissertation chapters that follow this introduction are part of a larger, nine-
chapter project that investigates this cultivation of sensations of freedom and their fitness to be
sung in streets and elsewhere, in three sections: the songs, the themes, and the times. The first
section on the songs includes, first, an analysis of early modern Anglophonic song that suggests
what constituted a song and what was understood about it; second, source types for songs
during this period; and third, how the application of tunes transformed the texts into something
new. The second section looks at the three dimensions favored by cultural historians: race,
class, and gender; and the third section applies all of these understandings to evaluate the
places, spaces, and times in which the traditional ways that song had been understood and used
by participants in this culture was transformed.
35

35
This dissertation covers the first four of nine projected chapters of a larger project: the first section,
“The Songs,” comprised of the first three chapters here on song, source, and tune; the second section,
“The Themes,” three chapters covering the dimensions of race, class, and gender (only gender, treated in
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.19

Of the four chapters included in this dissertation, Chapter One, “Song,” explores, first,
what people in living British Colonial America during the third quarter of the eighteenth century
could have thought or known about the uses and functionality of music in general, and song in
particular, as a way of suggesting not only the meaning of the limited surviving comments about
song and singing, but also why early-modern commentators and collectors began to distinguish
the texts that were sung from the poems that were not.
Song data is presented in Chapter Two, “Source,” which analyzes a database of
thousands of songs instances examined in this project, searching for what the different sources
reveal about the use of certain song themes and rhetoric, and to what extent the extant song
data suggests where, when, and by whom these songs were being used, and to what end.
Chapter Three, “Tune,” investigates the element that delineates songs from other texts,
and examines, through the songs and tunes that appear in the most instances, how the texts,
when sung, became something different from other text expressions.
Chapter Four, “Man,” uses an emphasis on manliness to decode a significant gender
dimension of the songs of an Anglophonic world engaged in virtually constant warfare, in which
an overwhelming focus (almost obsession) on masculinity and a particular kind of manliness
necessary when facing an enemy emasculated that enemy in song before a single shot was fired.
The pursuit of answers to questions about aural practices in a world predating audio and
video recording, in which participants said relatively little about those practices in the
documentary evidence that remains, may seem daunting, but not impossible. Had the Arthur
Schlesingers of the world had access to the vast digitized archives of our present day, they
undoubtedly would have made short work of the problem, and in Schlesinger’s case, his sense

Chapter Four with a discussion of manliness, is part of this dissertation); and the third section, “The
Times,” includes chapters covering place, space, and time.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.20

that something was important about the songs he kept tripping over during a life spent in the
archives would have been rewarded.
If anything, this project raises even more questions than it answers, and I believe that's
a good thing. Just as Schlesinger had the generosity and the courage to leave his research note
for other scholars to follow on, I hope that this work is suggestive, even provocative, of ways
historians can and must use song as its own category of evidence to access different
understandings of an era whose evidence is not visual or auditory in the ways we have come to
expect; the documentary evidence that remains is not as silent as it might seem. Song was a
distinct category for people living in British Colonial America during the tumultuous third
quarter of the eighteenth century, as much as it is for people in our own place and time, and it
can, indeed, tell us distinct things about the imperial crisis – if we listen, and maybe even dare to
sing along.
P.S. If this project ended up being too bibliographic, guilty. The surface has been barely
scratched in so many places. Have at it. There is fodder here for a million dissertations. Or
close. I'm 58+, and have less time to work on the topic than do my younger colleagues, but that
could be true of any of us, yes? I've only attempted to answer what I can in the scope of this
work, but there is so much data (and more to add), and there are so many trails to follow. I
would be happy to send anything I have to anyone who's interested. Email me.
jeanne@songhistorian.com
Bottom-line: please take this data and make something of it! Generations are counting
on you. No exaggeration – people keep dying with their work unfinished, unpublished, or
unconnected to the work of others. Please collaborate – enlarge this work and keep it going!
Lots of fruitful ground to cover, many dissertations, books, and articles to write. And lots of
songs to be sung. Sing them, please, and help others to do the same, for the sheer joy of it as
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.21

well as knowledge we can gain from song as a distinct category of evidence. Sing it for those
who left these songs behind. Be their voice.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.22

Chapter One: Song

One of the first questions that occurs to a modern reader of eighteenth-century
Anglophonic verse is how to tell whether (or why) a text might have been intended to have been
sung – in other words, what was song at this place and time? This question might not have been
relevant to inhabitants of that world, if only given the relative lack of discussion in extant
sources about what could have been sung. If anything, the emphasis would not seem to have
been on whether to sing, but on the latitude allowed for the many ways one could sing a variety
of text types – rhymed or not – in any way one saw fit, if one saw fit.
36
This project examines
verses that could have been sung, and where and for what purpose – and, often, why.
Clues as to what was sung are scant. For authors of early-modern source materials,
whether a text was singable or not seems to have been a personal choice not worthy of
comment. But even instances of not singing can be revelatory; indeed, it is the absence of song
in certain places where you might otherwise expect to find it that is, at first, puzzling.
The ability of music to move human beings to particular passions was acknowledged
throughout the early-modern period, but the physical reasons and mechanisms for why that was

36
Examples of this exist in both sacred and secular songs, inviting the reader to become a singer to any
tune s/he liked. Many broadsides of the seventeenth century had no tune direction at all, and “the
broadside’s relationship with music became more tenuous as the eighteenth century advanced,”
according to Claude Simpson; across the early modern period, tunes “identified” included frequent
references to “what you like,” or “what you will” – tune name, or option? In the 1698 edition of Tate and
Brady’s New Version of the Psalms of David, Fitted to the Tunes Used in Churches, the instruction implied
by the title – sing the tunes you already sing in church – assumed there was no need for musical notation
for most singers, though a supplement with notation was available to teachers. But a review of
“DIRECTIONS About the TUNES and MEASURES” is consistent with psalm-singing practice dating to the
earliest Calvinist psalters, i.e., grouping psalms by meter around a limited number of known, named tunes
and offering the singer a choice in how they wanted to express the text in song, as any could “be sung to
any of the most usual Tunes.” Claude Mitchell Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1966), pp. xv, 508; Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, New Version
of the Psalms of David (London: Printed by T. Hodgkin, for the Company of Stationers, 1698).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.23

so, were not.
37
For those who chose to investigate this problem in earnest, largely during the
seventeenth century, the fundamental questions seem to have been, first, whether scientific
method could offer something in the way of physical explanations for music’s productive and
affective qualities in place of familiar metaphysical explanations dating back to Pythagoras,
Aristotle, and Plato, and second, how to apply those qualities to societal needs, often expressed
in religious terms but also for reasons of productivity and community, especially in time of war.
Though not published until after his death, the first text written by René Descartes, in
1618, was a Compendium of Music, and certain of his colleagues in the early-to-mid-
seventeenth century, particularly Marin Mersenne and Athanasius Kircher, also produced major
works without really answering these questions conclusively or satisfactorily.
38
Yet by the end
of the century, such scientific inquiries were known well enough for their authors’ names to
appear in popular texts easily available in London print media. In 1680, Synopsis of Vocal Musick
offered singing instruction, referencing music’s “profound mysteries, which have many times

37
The questions linger. Even today, scientific interest in music’s effect on the brain leads to studies like
the one using fMRI on newborns to determine whether responses to music are, put simply, nature or
nurture; the study showed that newborns have “a hemispheric specialization in processing music as early
as the first postnatal hours” as well as sensitivity “to changes in tonal key” and “differences in consonance
and dissonance.” Daniela Perani, et al, “Functional specializations for music processing in the human
newborn brain,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, ISSN:
0027-8424, 03/09/2010, Vol. 107, Issue 10, p. 4758.
38
Renatus Des-Cartes (René Descartes) Excellent Compendium of Musick: with Necessary and Judicious
Animadversions Thereupon (London: Thomas Harper, 1653). Marin Mersenne, known for 1637’s
L’Harmonie Universelle, “regarded music as a discipline that could be analysed and explained” and made
“discoveries about the behaviour of sound which are fundamental to the science of acoustics.” Alison
Latham, “Mersenne, Marin,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, (accessed September 30, 2011).
Athanasius Kircher, though he “often erred by failing to evaluate the accuracy of his scientific data,” is
nevertheless considered to be “essential to an understanding of 17th-century music and music theory,”
largely through his “massive” Musurgia Universalis,“a compendium of musical facts and speculation.”
George J. Buelow, “Kircher, Athanasius,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, (accessed April 1,
2012). Johann Heinrich Alsted considered music to be a “mathematical (discipline)” and his work, though
“derivative,” was significant for “its comprehensiveness, systematic presentation, wide distribution and
easy accessibility;” a correspondent of Descartes, Alsted’s Compendium – his “masterwork” – was “the
largest, most comprehensive and systematic encyclopedia assembled to that time (1630).” Ingo Schultz
and Howard Hotson, “Alsted, Johann Heinrich,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press, accessed August 20, 2016.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.24

put the most learned Professors thereof into great admiration.” “Alstedius, Des Cartes, and
Kircherus” were cited by name without any further elaboration about their methods or findings,
suggesting perhaps their greater value as names-to-drop in the peddling of books.
39
These
popular reductions of serious scientific inquiry, available in pamphlet form, confirm the
existence of a conventional wisdom that something was up with music and, especially, its
affective properties, in a way that could alternately suggest opportunity, or cause concern.
This insistence that song was a diversion to be handled carefully, or marginalized in
favor of more productive pursuits, may also have been a way to avoid or assuage anxiety about
early-modern singing – an anxiety revealed in commentary on music and singing practices as
well as in various regulations, and, curiously, in the absence of singing in visual depictions of
places where it was implicitly or even explicitly known to have been practiced. A central
concern emerges: how to determine and, if needed, regulate, who could make music and
where or when, and to what end. In no case was this question as urgent as when it came to the
hybrid of music and oration, the song, a potent and presumably risky combination, especially if
practiced in the absence of accepted societal expectations for its presentation.
Early-modern writers in a surprising variety of disciplines generated abundant discourse
on these questions, and even more evidence arises anecdotally from both print and manuscript
sources, suggesting that singing had well known societal uses and functions. But in examples
where singing was said to be a problem, a pattern emerges as successive commentators on song
presented their own agendas regarding what song was, or what it should do, each devising and
privileging certain song types and uses while denigrating or even ignoring others. None
satisfactorily explained the relationship of their categorization schemes to others – though some

39
A.B. Philo-Mus, Synopsis of Vocal Musick : Containing The Rudiments of Singing Rightly any Harmonical
Song .... (London: Dorman Newman, 1680), preface.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.25

were clearly in dialogue with others that came before – or to unwritten but evident
categorizations at play which the anecdotal evidence makes abundantly clear existed. In these
cases, the song commentators’ rhetoric just doesn’t line up with the song practitioners’
behavior.
But Anglophonic song of the early-modern period can indeed be described by its
rhetorical style – and was, by participants – in ways that, though inconsistent or even tacit in
song commentary, would have been readily understood not only by students of elite academic
institutions that gave rhetoric a privileged position in their respective curricula, but even the
proverbial man on the street – and certainly by those who disseminated it through myriad print
culture sources. Rhetorical style helps explain the motivations and hopes of the disseminators
of political song during the years leading up to the break of nearly all of the coastal North
American colonies from the British Empire. Moreover, differences in rhetorical style
demonstrate how the liberty songs that are sometimes said to have provided a soundtrack for
the coming of a rebellion that became known as an American revolution operated differently
from other political song expression in the Anglo-Atlantic world.

-----------------------

Historians refer to most of the sixteenth-to-eighteenth centuries as the early-modern
period, but music disciplines use different names for their periodization of the same centuries.
Beginning with the late Renaissance period in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and ending
with the advent of the Classical era that accompanied the so-called age of revolutions and
emergence of modernity, the largest portion of the era that historians call “early-modern” falls
into the musical period that came to be referred to as “baroque.” This backward-looking
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.26

sobriquet first used in the later eighteenth-century (and more prominently in the nineteenth)
disparaged music, art, and architecture dating to the seventeenth century that was considered
old-fashioned, or even imperfect or irregular, suggested by the Iberian root barroco, a rough,
irregularly shaped pearl.
40

Across Europe, composers and theorists of this period continued Renaissance efforts to
achieve perfect counterpoint, balancing many voices into a unified harmonic whole, increasingly
relying on a dominant melody voice that, by the end of the period, was more likely to be
accompanied by, rather than integrated with, other voice parts. Musical forms including opera,
sonata, and concerto reflected a growing emphasis on contrast, such as between choirs and
soloists, or recitative and aria, and the frequent use of continuo accompaniment founded on
bass lines that had evolved over centuries would be surpassed by the evolution of new
orchestral structures – so much so that the word continuo all but disappeared from printed
music by the early 1800s.
41

Understanding what early-moderns thought about the music they created, consumed,
and received tells us something larger about the way they understood their world, in distinct
ways that contribute to what can be accessed from other evidence and disciplines. During the
early-modern period, a world of music that had once been concerned with making the pieces fit
in a way that was orderly, harmonious, and beautiful gradually transformed into one more
concerned with achieving a certain kind of contrast that was not always beautiful, but which

40
Michael Kennedy, ed., “Baroque,” The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed. rev., Oxford Music Online,
accessed 19 Jun. 2012.
41
Leonard G. Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980). The
advent of the piano-forte in the third quarter of the eighteenth century also contributed to a changing
role for continuo, due to a “softer tone” that made it “less useful for supplying the harmonies, guiding the
singers and directing the instrumental ensemble,” while basso continuo became part of an enlarged string
section. John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw, “Orchestra,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed
20 Jun. 2012.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.27

could facilitate the achievement of certain ends, with an emphasis on the individual rather than
the collective, and where some notes, projects, or people were more important to the larger
production than others, requiring those “others” to be in service to them. In ways peculiar to
the early-modern British Atlantic, this new sort of musical order resonated with the societal
tension created by the clash of rationalism with passion, of democratic impulses with elitist
realities, and of freedom amid enslavement.
There have always been music specialists who dedicated their lives to the practice and
study of music and song, even making their living from it. However, a good deal of seventeenth-
century inquiry into music came from some surprising sources – people not ordinarily known for
their connection to music who nevertheless wrote significant works on the topic.
42
For early-
moderns, music was not reserved for specialists alone; if you wanted music, you often had to
make it for yourself, meaning many people were at least somewhat involved in the production
of music in ways we can hardly conceive of today. It is not surprising, then, that seventeenth-
century discourse on music was an interdisciplinary affair.
One of the most fascinating ways examples of this is the overlapping language
participants in the scientific and musical discourses used.
43
Musical terms intersected with
larger conversations about art, invention, creativity, genius, etc., and that, in turn, connected to
scientific method (proportion, regulation, method, invention, composition, conduct [the verb]).
Even the term applied to the delivery method of music – instrument – suggests science and
experimentation. All of these terms, in turn, intersected with ideas about the social and natural

42
An example is Francis Bacon, who lamented that music practice had flourished at the expense of music
theory, causing it to be “reduced into certain Mystical Subtilties, of no use, and not much Truth;” he
considered music as a sound with potential for concord, discord, and unison that could affect the spirit
“more immediately, than” through inputs derived through “the other Senses.” Francis Bacon and William
Rawley, Sylva Sylvarum: or, a Naturall Historie (London: John Haviland, 1635), pp. 35-38.
43
See Appendix A on overlapping terminology used for science and music.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.28

worlds in which society existed (harmony, order, service, freedom, liberty, enslavement), and
the relationship of people to it. These connections must be considered when decoding what
was understood about music in general, and song in particular, in the Anglo-Atlantic world.
A 1667 example of this congruence demonstrated the centrality of harmony and
concord in music as being of simultaneous importance to science, society, and beauty.
According to the “Defence of Musick,” which served as the preface to composer John Gamble’s
Ayres and dialogues (but likely written by fellow composer Thomas Jordan):

Musick is Harmony, whose copious bounds
Is not confined onely unto sounds :
Tis the eyes object, for (without extortion)
It comprehends all things that have proportion ;
Musick is Concord, and doth hold allusion
With every thing that doth oppose confusion :
In comely architecture it may be
Known by the name of uniformitie ;
Where piramids to piramids relate,
And the whole fabrick doth configurate
In perfectly proportiou'd creatures, we
Accept it by the title symmetrie.
44

44
John Gamble, Ayres and dialogues for one, two, and three voyces (London: Printed by W. Godbid,
1659).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.29

The Gamble preface agrees with Christopher Simpson, another Royalist composer
(whose fans in the Caroline-era pantheon included Stuart censor Roger L’Estrange and composer
Matthew Locke) who understood music to be a science of sound “regulated by the Scale,” tune
and time, and defined by its “Discords” and “Harmony,” the latter being the desired object, with
the former allowed only in passing, with concord, or consonance, as the ultimate goal.
45

By the time that Samuel Johnson’s 1766 edition of the Dictionary of the English
Language defined usage (at precisely the moment that liberty song emerged), these linguistic
conventions were long embedded in the culture. Even the word “vocal,” as defined by Johnson,
had nothing to do with music in any sense; his definitions using “vocal” dealt with putting other
things to the voice without once mentioning music, even though all types of song are always
defined by their vocality. In popular uses, though, the term “vocal” appears as a modifier in
book titles and instructions to define what kind of music or poetry was being discussed.
46

Over time, as impulses for specialization grew, harder lines formed where soft ones had
once existed, and scientific inquiry into music largely gave way to the application of earlier
theories and the imposition of categories. Specialization may have contributed to a shift in the
availability – or lack thereof – of musical notation in secular print culture over the seventeenth
century. Specialists tend to work largely from manuscripts, and print culture provided notation
for sacred song texts for the specialist only,
47
for secular song texts rarely, and in various series
of dance tune books.

45
Christopher Simpson, A Compendium of Practical Musick in Five Parts (London: Printed by William
Godbid for Henry Brome in LIttle Britain, 1667).
46
Samuel Johnson, “Vocal,” Dictionary of the English Language (London: printed for A. Millar et al, 1766).
While the word “vocal” appears in numerous printed titles to distinguish music produced by voice rather
than other instruments, citations of “vocal” as a noun referring to singing or sung parts did not emerge
until the twentieth century.
47
For psalms, the handful of tunes used for the 150 psalm texts were familiar and passed down orally, and
were categorized by and used for their rhythmic meter (e.g., common meter, long meter, short meter,
etc.); for increasingly popular hymns, the hymnal became more evident into the eighteenth century but
again often reserved notation for the teacher or specialist until late in the century. Elsewhere, directions
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.30

But something else was happening in secular song culture. The seventeenth century
began awash in print scores for part-singing, from madrigals (based on Italian song), consort
song by composers like Byrd, and lute-song such as those by Dowland. Over the decades, a shift
toward “Italian monody” with more elaborate accompaniment gave England “declamatory and
‘tuneful’ or dance-like songs” by composers including Henry Lawes, “raised” by the end of the
century “to new heights and made ... the vehicle for intense expressiveness” by masters like
John Blow and his star pupil, Henry Purcell.
48
The style crossed over into the songs of the street,
as composers like Blow and Purcell produced settings for the court but also for affordable,
plentiful music publications that, in London, were primarily produced by the Playford family for
dancing and singing alike, with ayres, glees, and catches for singers. Yet by 1700, secular music
appeared without notation routinely, often in cheaply made broadsides but also in song
collections called garlands, the forerunners of the songsters of the following two centuries.
Some broadsides carried a melody line, but even these sometimes were merely artistic
woodcuts, iconic representations of music rather than genuine, playable, musical notation.
49

What this meant for songs on the street and even in public gathering places and private
homes – the realm of the non-specialists – is that people were expected to know how to sing
popular songs without a notational prompt. Whereas at the beginning of the seventeenth

were easy to find for sacred song notation in “cheap print,” when required; for example, Tate and Brady
followed up on their New Version of the Psalms of David with a supplement containing musical notation
which was advertised on its cover to be “Very useful for Teachers and Learners, either of the Old or New
Version.” Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, A Supplement to the New Version of PSALMS (London: W.
Pearson for D. Brown, 1704). In Boston, Zechariah Fowle and Samuel Draper sold the twentieth edition of
Watts’ Hymns and Spiritual Songs with Daniel Bayley’s Psalm-Singer’s Assistant bound into the back with
musical notation for 56 psalm tunes as well as several pages of singing instruction and a gamut, or “Scale
of MUSIC.” Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Boston: Fowle & Draper, 1762).
48
Geoffrey Chew, et al, “Song,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed 8 Aug. 2012,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.libproxy.usc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/50647 .
49
Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, pp. xii-xv; Vincent Harris Duckles and Franklin B.
Zimmerman, Words to Music: papers on English seventeenth century song read at a Clark Library seminar,
December 11, 1965 (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1967).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.31

century, it had been possible to buy songbooks with multiple parts and good musical scores in
the popular press, by the end of the century, unless you were in the market for a dance book
with a single melody line, musical scores tended to be prepared for specialists, often in
manuscript, a trend prevalent in the British colonies up until, a recent dissertation argued, “the
growth of the nascent American music business” at the dawn of the early American republic.
50

Twentieth-century music historians noted this shift, and tended to attribute it to an
increasing emphasis on text, similar to an increasing inclusion of text with images.
51
However,
the effect of that shift on song and the people who sang it is unanswered by both contemporary
scholars and the contemporaries of these songs. The voices were there, however muted and
almost apologetic, when suggesting there was something more to music than diversion. Thoinot
Arbeau in his 1589 dance text Orchesography – widely read in European courts including those
of Elizabeth I and James I – found contemporary worth for “the valuable function” of an
indivisible blend of music and dance to meet important societal needs ranging from “a spur to
action in battle” to the choice of a spouse, making music “essential in a well-ordered society.”
52

But by 1667, John Playford had to reach back to “Antient times” to find “Estimation Reverence
and Honour (by the most Noble and virtuous persons)” for music “as any of the Liberal Sciences
whatsoever for the manifold uses thereof conducing to the life of man.”
53
Catholic printer
Nathaniel Thompson argued in 1685 that ballads and loyal songs had influence beyond what a

50
Peter S. Leavenworth, “Accounting for taste: The early American music business and secularization in
music aesthetics, 1720—1825” (PhD diss., University of New Hampshire, 2007), p. 5.
51
Duckles and Zimmerman, Words to Music, 1967.
52
Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography (Langres: 1589). Arbeau also claimed dance to embody a “mute
rhetoric,” one that allowed skilled practitioners like Elizabeth I – “a master rhetorician” in her own right –
to show themselves “‘gallant and worthy to be acclaimed,’” or “also a youthful, competent, in-control,
and virtuous female ruler.” Bella Mirabella, “‘In the sight of all:’ Queen Elizabeth and the Dance of
Diplomacy,” Early Theater, Vol. 15, No. 1, Special Issue: Access and Contestation: Women’s Performance
in Early Modern England, Italy, France, and Spain (2012), p. 67.
53
John Playford, Philo-Musicae, A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Music (London: William Godbid, 1667),
preface.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.32

preacher or judge could exercise from pulpit or bench, and that armies of “flying Choristers” in
the streets could bring to understanding and “Obedience” a “mis-inform’d Rabble … who
otherwise had never been brought under the Discipline of Obedience or Government.”
54
You
can almost hear the insistent, strident tone of a man who was accustomed to having his
argument ignored, and not just because of his religion.
This commentary fell in deaf ears in the brave, new Whig world as the seventeenth
century drew to a close. By the time John Locke wrote on education in the 1690s, he dismissed
music as an “accomplishment” or “recreation” bearing little value, and posing a certain danger:

Musick is thought to have some affinity with Dancing, and a good Hand,
upon some Instruments, is by many People mightily valued. But is wastes so
much of a young Man’s time, to gain but a moderate Skill in it ; and engages
often in such odd Company, that many think it much better spared : And I have ,
amongst Men of Parts and Business, so seldom heard any one commended, or
esteemed, for having an Excellency in Musick, that amongst all those things, that
ever came into the List of Accomplishments, I think I may give it the last place.
55

Even Samuel Pepys, an enthusiastic “amateur composer and performer” who played a
half-dozen instruments and tried to teach himself from easily available books by Morley and
Playford, “there is no evidence that he could write in tablature himself” – possibly why his
diaries, a rich trove of Restoration song examples, does not share a single note of music.
56
Not

54
Nathaniel Thompson, A Choice Collection of 180 Loyal Songs (London: N. T., 1685), preface.
55
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1699), pp. 354-355.
56
McDonald Emslie. "Pepys, Samuel." Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press,
accessed August 20, 2016. Emslie identified many print sources for songs in Pepys’ diaries; MacDonald
Emslie, “Pepys’ Songs and Song-Books in the Diary Period” The Library, 5th ser., xii (1957), 240–55.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.33

until the advent of glee singing – a mid-eighteenth century retro-revival in homage to the
madrigal style – did part music again proliferate in popular song publishing.
57

Figure 1.1. Examples of the progression of notation available in popular print, 1608-1777

 1608: One of the six parts
available in individual pamphlets.
“A remembrance of my friend M.
Thomas Morley,” in Thomas
Weelkes, Ayeres or Phantasticke
Spirites. London: John Windet for
William Barley, 1608.
 c. 1613: An example of music printed at angles so that
different voice parts could be sung from different seats at a
table. “Her Rosie Cheekes,” in Thomas Campion, Tvvo bookes of
ayres ... in two, three, and foure parts: or by one voyce to an
instrument. London : Printed by Tho. Snodham [1613?].

 1684: A rare Playford songbook
example providing a bass as well
as a melody line; many other song
and dance books produced by the
publishing family provided only a
melody. Capt. Simon Pack, ed.
Choice Ayres and Songs ... The
Fifth Book. London: John
Playford, 1684.
 1689: A broadside with a
woodcut representing music,
but which is unplayable. The
Lord chancellors villanies
discovered, or, His rise and
fall in the four last years tune
of Hey brave popery, &c. ,
London printed : [s.n.], 1689.
 1777: A new generation of
part-singing in the glee.
Thomas Arne, “GLEE,” in The
Essex Harmony: being an entire
new collection of the most
celebrated songs, catches,
canzonets, canons and glees,
for two, three, four, five, and
nine voices. London, 1777.

57
Archival sources seem to suggest, too, that this is more than just a statistical anomaly or a fluctuation in
the circulation of song. A survey of “song” in Early English Books Online for the seventeenth century
suggests there may be more songs in circulation – or more that survive – but the increase in total volume
would only seem to confirm the drop in notation. The average for 1600-1699 is 45 extant song sources
per year, and though the total varies from 33 to 66 song documents per year, it averages out slightly
higher at the end of the century, but not dramatically so. See Appendix B, “Song” in EEBO.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.34

As notation became more infrequent in popular
print, eighteenth-century discourse on song, too, while
acknowledging its musical component, was most
concerned with song texts’ connection to poetry,
especially lyric poetry, and textual rhetoric. One
songbook frontispiece in 1723 suggests both the debt of
song to poetry as well as the fluidity of the genres:

It would be endless, to prove

that the several Poets whose Bustes I

have put in my Frontispiece, were

Ballad-Writers : For what else can we

make of Pindar’s Lyrics ? Anacreon

would never sit down contented without

his Bottle and his Song. Horace could
Figure 1.2. Poetry and Song:
Depictions of lyric poets from
antiquity to 1723.
Frontispiece from [Ambrose Philips’] A
collection of old ballads, Vol. 1 (1723) shows a
progression from Homer, Pindar, Anacreon, and
Horace to early-modern poets Suckling and
Cowley.

drop the Praises of Augustus and Mæcenas, to sing the Adventures of his Journey to
Brandusium … Cowley had left too many Works of this Kind to need quoting ; and
Suckling’s Wedding will never be forgot.
58

It is not surprising, then, that it can be difficult to tell in early-modern texts whether or
not you are looking at a song, the hybrid that lived somewhere in both (or in between) the
realms of music and text.

58
[Ambrose Philips], A Collection of Old Ballads, Vol. 1 (London: printed for J. Roberts, 1723), pp. v-vi.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.35

Jean Jacques Rousseau – another multidisciplinary soul who wrote a significant
dictionary of music – defined song as “A kind of very short lyric poem, which generally acts in
agreeable subjects, to which a tune is added, to be sung on familiar occasions.” To Rousseau,
singing was “a natural consequence” of the human capacity for language, “for wherever they
speak, they sing.” As singing predated “the art of writing,” Rousseau reasoned, “laws and …
histories, the praises of … gods and heroes, were sung before they were written,” resulting,
“according to Aristotle, that the same Greek name was given to the laws and songs.”
59

“Poem” as used here must be understood loosely, for no line existed between poetry
and song, or even prose; such distinctions would not have been relevant to members of a
society who, as previously noted, largely made their own music and would have been familiar
with non-versified song forms such as recitative. It cannot be stressed strongly enough that
countless examples make clear that the choice of what to sing, whether to sing, and what tune
to use, was up to the user, perhaps explaining why a broad understanding of the appropriate
uses of song might have been important, and emphasized.
Whether song mattered more for either of its indispensable elements – text, or tune –
really depended upon who was talking about it. Music specialists had one opinion, poetry
commentators another, and scientific, political, and social commentators something else
altogether. But what does become clear – in print, in laws, and in practice – is the increased
emphasis on which texts were promoted for singing, where they would be sung, and why.
The identification of a text as a “song,” or by other text forms known to have been sung
– hymn, psalm, ballad, catch, glee, ditty (from the French “to say”), lied, and so forth – was
common in print and scribal sources alike. Sometimes songs would be collected together with

59
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A dictionary of music. Translated from the French of Mons. J. J. Rousseau. By
William Waring (London: J. French [1775?]), p. 369-370.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.36

other verse forms under the broad rubric of poetry and/or by specific poetic forms including
odes, a poetical form which, when one included tune direction or lent itself to singing, further
blurs the reader’s understanding of what texts are to be supposed to have been sung. But
certain terminology could be very specific; no one would have called a hymn a “song,” even
though the Bible refers to the act of singing and songs of praise. Even the term “psalm” comes
from the Greek for “song.”
Understanding this, the historic record begins to make sense – the blending of poetry
alongside myriad song-forms, the coupling of singable prose with unsingable pages of dense
rhymed verse, the seemingly haphazard assignment of texts to tunes. The choice of a song
tune, like the decision to sing at all, was entirely up to singer.
When looking at extant examples of print sources, by sheer numbers it would appear
that nowhere was song more welcome than in church. The earliest text printed in British
Colonial America was The Bay Psalm Book, and even as recently as 2007, Peter Leavenworth’s
dissertation “redefine(d) popular music in early America as sacred music sung and performed in
most churches” – a conclusion that resonates with certain nineteenth-century assessments.
60

While it is difficult to ascertain print runs and imports of songbooks, it does indeed seem
fairly likely from advertisements and extant archival collections that the most plentiful
songbooks in the British colonies before the imperial crisis were psalters and hymnals. If a
family had one book, it was likely a bible, but if they had two, then depending on location and
affiliation, the second, based on advertising and extant copies, might well have been a well-
worn copy of Watts, Bayley, Tate and Brady, or Tans’ur.
61

60
Leavenworth, “Accounting for Taste,” p. xi; George Hood claimed “The history of music in New England,
for the first two centuries, is the history of Psalmody alone.” George Hood, A History of Music in New
England (Boston: Wilkins, Carter & Co., 1846), p. 1.
61
Collections of psalms and hymns like these were reissued in annual editions and are plentiful in colonial
archives.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.37

Sacred song used the affective qualities of music to suspend disbelief, literally, like a
balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. A poignant example of this comes from the diary of
Experience Wight Richardson, who wrote of her life from the early days of settlement in
Sudbury, Massachusetts to the revolutionary era. She repeatedly testified to the power of
psalms to bring her back from depression and suicidal ideation, as on March 19, 1748:

“My Spirit much sunk this day fearing I was two desious to Live and not
willing to submit to God’s will but at night ... we sung the three first staves in the
Psalm in our famely I thought I could fell every word of it upon my heart & it
was swet to me.” Psalm-singing helped her to “trust him and he’ll it bring to
pase,” or “comforted by the 18 Psalm 30 verse. the word of God is tryed I
thought I had tryed it & found it true & I hope I trust in in his word now for help
in a trouble I meet with” ….
62

But when it came to the secular world, people may have been singing up a storm, but
you wouldn’t know it by looking at the historical record. As already mentioned, it is rare to find
references to songs and singing in manuscript or print, even in descriptions of places and events
where it had to have taken place. Even in visual depictions of song, singing was missing. Psalms
and ballads were “read,” rather than sung, and fishmongers and balladmongers held song
sheets but were not shown singing them; not only are people’s mouths closed in these images,
but even their bodies do not move in the way that people who sing are represented as moving.
But choristers, apparently, could be shown singing in church.

62
Diary of Experience Wight Richardson 1728-1782 (Massachusetts Historical Society, microfilm).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.38

Figure 1.3. Depictions of songs in streets, 1751-1796

A rare example of a London “cry” being sung, though its
appearance at the very beginning of the book may as
likely be a call to buy the book as a representation of
actual singing in the streets. In most of the 62 woodcuts
that accompanied the 1796 edition, the vendors, men and
women alike, were depicted with closed mouths. The
Cries of London. London: printed for E. Newbery, 1796,
frontispiece

Detail from William Hogarth’s Beer Street (1751) shows
fishmongers reading, rather than singing, a song about Britain’s
herring fishery, as part of a “healthy” city street scene.
 John Collet’s The Female Orators (1768) do not sing
street “cries.” These female vendors produce a dissonant
caterwauling, upsetting commerce and gentility.
“Silence” was the prescriptive offered by the man
pointing to the sign on the wall: “Theatre Royal Covent
Garden: Epicoene or the Silent Woman.”

Though these balladmongers display and vend (and the man on
the right reads) a songslip, none sing “An irregular Ode to Wilkes &
Liberty,” outside the Fleet Prison (n.b., John Wilkes was held in the
King’s Bench Prison 1768-1770). The image shows the danger of
singing spaces in streets that were female, secular, and urban.
By contrast, this satire of a church choir  suggests that it
was permissible to depict singing when the space and use
were male, sacred, rural – and indoors. Engravings after
John Collet, The City Chanters, 1771, and The Country
Choristers, 1773.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.39

Figure 1.4. Gendered Singing Spaces, 1740


When dispensing “Good Advice,” well-dressed men
could be shown singing decorously in an iconic
sociable setting of men at a table with alcohol and
pipes used frequently to depict male company,
singing or not. Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740,
vol. II, p. 87. 

Even men in less elevated social surroundings could be depicted as
singing indoors in an organized group, such as these members of “a
social and convivial society” singing “a lyric from … (a) burlesque
opera.”
63
Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. II, p. 64.

 This woman, though possessing “Beauty and wit,”
is warned in the song entitled “The Melodious
Songstress” not to sing, lest “The Magick of your
Voice” should cause some man “dye by pleasure not
by pain.” Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. I,
p. 30. 

This “Ballad Singer” of the “Nightly Choir” of the streets schemes
with her accomplice “to bung our Eyes;” though the lyrics attest that
the “Alleys shall resound,” these thieving “true Turtles of a feather” are
not shown singing. Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. II, p. 83.

These images of permitted and forbidden singing parallel the written record. A number
of articles in colonial newspapers reported from London told of ballad singers being whipped or
imprisoned for singing in streets, especially in cases where the targets of songs were “persons of
distinction.”
64
In Amsterdam, too, some singing was sometimes verboten:

63
Alfred Moffat and Frank Kidson, The Minstrelsy of England: A Collection of 200 English Songs ... (London:
Bayley & Ferguson, 1901), p. 204.
64
“London, June 17,” South Carolina & American General Gazette, August 12-19, 1768, p. 2, col. 2, vol.
11/515. Similar stories appear in Appendix C, “Punishment for singing” reported in newspapers.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.40

“… no Person shall keep a House for People to assemble in purposely for
Singing, under Pain of paying 100 Florins for the first Offence if on a Week-Day,
and 300 if on a Sunday, with the Addition of corporal Punishment for the second
Offence.”
65

Song publishers, too, could be punished, as in the case of “a printer in Rosemary Lane”
sent to Whitechapel Gaol “for printing ballads reflecting on a high personage and selling them to
two women who were committed to the Poultry-Compter for singing them on Wednesday.”
66

Even an unfounded accusation of singing could be punishable, if this (likely) satire in the
London Chronicle is to be believed – and even if it is a satire, the item identifies the punishable
offense as singing. The anecdote came from a travel narrative describing a visit to a
marketplace:

… where we observed a man, tolerably well drest, confined in a cage,
and a prodigious concourse of people dancing round him, shouting Liberty!
Liberty! On asking the meaning of all this, “That man in the cage, said our
conductor, is the genius of Liberty, our chief idol: contradiction is our primum
mobile, the spring of all our actions, and therefore we always worship Liberty in
a cage.”—“And pray, Sir, I replied, does the genius submit to this confinement

65
By comparison, the same ordinance punished the sale of liquor after 9 at night with only a 25-florin fine.
James Parker, “London, October 7,” New York Gazette & Weekly Post, February 12, 1750, p. 2, col. 2, iss.
369; Henry DeForeest, “Amsterdam, Oct. 20,” New York Evening Post, February 26, 1750, p. 2, col. 2, iss.
249.
66
“London, July 14,” South Carolina & American General Gazette, September 06-13, 1768, p. 3, col. 1, vol.
12, iss. 569.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.41

volentarily? No, I was answered, we accused him of singing a ballad, which we
proved he did not sing, and therefore, according to our first principle of
contradiction, we condemned him to the cage.”
67

Sanctions for singing were also present in British Colonial America. Though the 1712
Massachusetts Act against Intemperance ultimately proved to be “a stunning failure,”
68
its
authors took care to list singing at the top of the list of forbidden pub activities:

That no singing, fiddling, piping, or any other musick, dancing or
revelling shall be suffered or exercised in any tavern or other publick licensed
house, on penalty of ten shillings, to be paid by the master or keeper of the said
house as shall suffer the same, and five shillings by each person offending in any
of the said particulars.
69

Such examples demonstrate how illicit singing was permitted to be described –
especially if it provided an example of, or admonition against, wrongdoing – but the words and
tunes of the forbidden songs were not given, presumably lest someone might sing them. And it
can be inferred that the more clues were given as to the singability of a text, such as the
inclusion of textual or tune instruction, the easier it is to make a case for song identification and

67
“From the London Chronicle of Nov. 18,1769,” New York Gazette & Weekly Post Boy, March 12, 1770, p.
2, col. 1, iss. 1419.
68
Peter C. Mancall, “Review: ‘The Art of Getting Drunk’ in Colonial Massachusetts,” Reviews in American
History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), p. 385; Mancall called the act “a frontal assault on a vital element of
popular culture,” drinking.
69
“Acts Passed at the Session begun and held at Boston, on the Twelfth day of March, A.D. 1711-1712,
Chapter 6. An Act Against Intemperance, Immorality and Prophaneness, and for Reformation of
Manners,” Sect. 8, Court Records [6
th
Sess.], Province Laws 1711-12, p. 680.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.42

singing intent on the part of the publisher or scribe. This method provides a way to track what is
different about how songs – and which songs – were being introduced into British Colonial
America in the 1760s and 1770s amid growing documentary and visual evidence of the presence
(and problem) of song and singing as well as the creation of new song genres and performance
venues.
Cataloging all of the significant collections is beyond the scope of this chapter, but an
examination of who was collecting traditional Anglophonic song during the eighteenth century –
and why they said they were doing so – sheds light on what members of the liberty song
generation might have been saying and not saying about their own song production and use.
Dianne Dugaw’s assessment of the Anglo-American ballad identifies Joseph Addison’s
commentary on ballads in the Spectator in 1711 as “the onset of an aesthetic and scholarly
interest in popular traditions ... from which ... cultural study would develop.”
70
Central to
Addison’s discussion were Sir Philip Sidney’s 1595 observations about the ballad “Chevy Chase,”
particularly regarding the feelings even Sidney admitted were roused in his own breast by a
song concerning an ancient Scottish border dispute.
71

The 1723 collection of old ballads containing the frontispiece discussed above,
published in London and attributed to Ambrose Philips, was supplemented later the same year
with a second edition that included “not only historical but also drinking songs”
72
and a third
edition in 1725 with “a far better Collection of Scotch Songs than that in either of the former
Volumes.”
73
This author, too, seemed to be apologizing for taking music seriously, thinking of

70
Dugaw, Dianne, The Anglo-American Ballad: A Folklore Casebook (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1995).
71
Sir Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie (London: [James Roberts] for Henry Olney, 1595); Joseph
Addison, “No. 70, May 21, 1711,” The Spectator (London : printed for S. Buckley [1713]), pp. 397-405.
72
[Phillips], Collection, Vol. 2, p. xi.
73
[Phillips], Collection, Vol. 3, 1725, p. ix.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.43

the “many who perhaps will think it ridiculous enough to enter seriously into a Dissertation
upon Ballads ; and therefore I shall say as little as possibly I can.”
74
The emphasis remained on
“antique Songs” written by English forebearers that would “transmit” to “Children the glorious
Actions which happen’d in their Days.” The value of such songs was increased for children “who
never would have learn’d to read” without such songs, and for “several fine Historians (who) are
indebted to Historical Ballads for all their Learning.”
75

Thomas Percy’s “famous manuscript” that formed the foundation of Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry was proclaimed as “that invaluable document” by Francis James Child, editor of
various series of nineteenth-century ballad collections that have since so completely defined the
genre that the songs in his collections have come to bear his name, rather than those of the
people, places, and periods that produced them.
76
Percy, in 1765, saved a collection of songs in
manuscript form whose leaves he famously claimed were being used to light fires by servants;
Percy came to interpret these ballads historically, devoting his three volumes to “minstrel
ballads,” “ancient song and ballads,” and “romantic” or “heroic” ballads, suggesting stylistic,
chronological, and rhetorical considerations.
77
His expressed purpose for creating the collection
was to show “the gradual improvements of the English language and poetry from the earliest
ages down to the present,” but is widely interpreted as a commentary on English national
character.
78

74
[Phillips], Collection, Vol. 2, Roberts, 1723, pp. vi-vii.
75
[Phillips], Collection, Vol. 1, Roberts, 1723, pp. vi-vii.
76
The folk revivals of the twentieth century knew these songs as the “Child Ballads.” Child’s extensive
bibliography of sources includes earlier collections – Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, for
example, as well as the late-seventeenth century collections of Samuel Pepys and Anthony Wood overlap
with Bishop Percy’s, but Child did not live to complete the introductory materials that could have shed
light on his methods and rationale for collecting, categorizing, and critiquing as he did. Francis James
Child, ed., English and Scottish Ballads (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1857).
77
Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1765).
78
Percy, Reliques, 1765, p. x.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.44

Rousseau, in his 1768 Dictionary, divided song into three categories: “love,” either
romantic or “pastoral and rustic songs” that he associated with dance;” “wine,” devoted to the
world of sociability and reserved for the table and the male;
79
and “satyric songs” or
“Vaudevilles” that dwelled in a paradoxical state between “vice and virtue,” deserving of
“proscri[ption] ... from the lips of morality.”
80

But a fourth category crept into Rousseau’s assessment: parody.
81
At least one
contemporary observer has referred to Rousseau’s Dictionnaire as a work of commentary as
much as a work of music scholarship,
82
and the entries related to song reveal a particular animus
toward parody, the form that, in his view, destroyed both text and tune. Of interest to this
project, parody is the form most often used in topical song, though in Rousseau’s judgement,
“All the couplets of a song, except the first, are kinds of parodies,” which would include virtually
all strophic song.
83
To Rousseau, parodies were “rhymed either well or ill, without paying
attention to the measure of the verses, or to the character of the air, or to the sense of the
words, or even often to common delicacy.”
84
He went so far as to refuse to discuss parody
alongside what he considered to be the more acceptable song genres, and instead redirected
the reader to a separate dictionary entry for “parody:”

79
Rousseau specifically warned against women singing this sort of song, commenting that “few are made
for the treble (voice), for there is not a viler and more disgusting idea of debauchery than a drunken
woman.” Rousseau, Dictionary, p. 373.
80
Rousseau, Dictionary, pp. 369-373.
81
Musicologists refer to the reuse of an existing tune for a new text “contrafactum.”
82
Rousseau’s writings were “subjective,” making his work unlike the “rationalism” of other contemporary
musical expression literature that sought “objective pinpointing of expressive content.” Ratner, Classic
Music, 1980, p. 1.
83
Rousseau, Dictionary, p. 309; strophic songs are those that are metered in a regularized way, especially
those having repeated structures like verses and refrains, as opposed to “through composed” song such
as recitative, which does not require a regularized meter.
84
Rousseau, Dictionary, p. 373.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.45

In music, well-composed, the air is made on the words ; and in the
parody, the words are made on the air … and this is, in general, what is felt too
much by the method of murdering the prosody.
85

If Rousseau was concerned enough to segregate parody from other song expression,
John Aikin was even more worried about what the “dullness” and “indecency” of such topical
songs said about the state of Englishness in 1772. Aikin – son of a Unitarian minister and a
medical doctor who wrote on many topics ranging from histories to biographies to geographies
– was especially disgusted by the incubator of these practices – the theater – and particularly
comic opera, “that vile mongrel of the drama, where the most enchanting tunes are suited with
the most flat and wretched combinations of words that ever disgraced the genius of a nation.”
Aikin saw the songwriter as a “miserable versifier … the hired underling of a musical composer,”
and sought to preserve examples of songwriting excellence “against the modish insipidity of the
age, and to gratify such real lovers of genius as yet remain amongst us.”
86

Aikin’s categorizations reflected a belief in a progression of song that mirrored the
rhetorical hierarchy found in preceding centuries of English literary criticism, beginning with
“Ballads and Pastoral Songs,” which he called “the native species of poetry in this country” and
the “language of nature, simple and unadorned;”
87
moving next to “Passionate and Descriptive
Songs,” in which “NATURE, farther refined” had been “improved by a more studied observation
of the internal feelings of passion and their external symptoms,” producing “the natural
philosophy of the mind, and the description of sensations;”
88
and finally, arriving at the advent

85
Rousseau, Dictionary, p. 309.
86
[John Aikin], Essays on song-writing: with a collection of such English songs as are most eminent for
poetical merit (London : printed for Joseph Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul's Church-Yard [1772?]), p. iv.
87
Aikin, Essays on song-writing, pp. 26, 22.
88
Aikin, Essays on song-writing, p. 22.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.46

of “Ingenious and Witty Songs … formed upon an artificial turn of thinking, and the operation of
fancy … (where) sentiments arise from cool reflection and curious speculation, rather than from
a present emotion.”
89
In this, Aikin claimed wit to be “the latest growth of the mind,” for which
the “antients” deserved no credit, citing deficiencies in Ovid, Martial, and the lyric poets
Anacreon and Horace in support of his argument.
90

Two general histories of English music were produced in the years leading up to the
imperial crisis. John Hawkins told a more historical, national, and scientific story, while Charles
Burney’s history sought to situate English composition in a larger European context. Burney was
more popular at the time, but Hawkins would be championed by nineteenth-century song
collectors.
91

Music historian Percy A. Scholes observed that:

A comparison of the histories by Burney and Hawkins is inevitable,
although they are complementary rather than conflicting. Hawkins’s contains
valuable information about early 18th-century musical society in London, largely
collected from survivors of the period, and emphasizes the achievement of
16th- and early 17th-century composers, who were treated condescendingly by

89
Aikin, Essays on song-writing, pp. 23-24.
90
Aikin, Essays on song-writing, pp. 180-182.
91
Hawkins promised “an explanation of fundamental doctrines, and a narration of important events and
historical facts, in a chronological series, with such occasional remarks and evidences, as might serve to
illustrate the one and authenticate the other;” he also acknowledged music could be a double-edged
sword: “there is no science or faculty whatever that more improves the tempers of me, rendering them
grave, discreet, mild and placid, so is there none that affords greater scope for folly, impertinence, and
affectation.” John Hawkins, A general history of the science and practice of music (London : printed for T.
Payne and Son, at the Mews-Gate, MDCCLXXVI [1776]), preface. Burney's initial "intention" had been "to
trace the genealogy of Music in a right line, without either meddling with the collateral branches of the
family, or violating the reverence of antiquity," but found "ancient Music so intimately connected with
Poetry, Mythology, Government, Manners, and Science in general” that he could not bring himself
“wholly to separate it from them.” Charles Burney, A general history of music, from the earliest ages to
the present period (London, MDCCLXXVI. [1776]), p. xx.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.47

Burney. Burney, on the other hand, had a considerably greater knowledge and
insight into European musical trends and society and his musical analyses are
technically superior to those of Hawkins. His literary style also was celebrated
for its grace and wit, qualities which Hawkins lacked; and his work was better
organized than Hawkins’s. In many respects, however, Hawkins was a pioneer,
to whose work Burney owed a great deal although he publicly ignored
Hawkins’s accomplishment.
92

Figure 1.5. Two Views of the History of English Music, 1776

 The frontispiece of John Hawkins’ A
general history of the science and practice
of music (1776) portrayed Guido Aretinus
presenting his work on scale and notation
to Pope John XX, providing both historic
and scientific contexts for the evolution of
an English national music.
 Charles Burney chose his frontispieces and other images for the four volumes
of A general history of music, from the earliest ages to the present period (1776-
1789), from a series of prints engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi after Giovanni
Battista Cipriani, situating English musical practices within a larger, European
context rooted in classical antiquity. Subjects include (upper left, vol. 1) Apollo
singing to the Muses; (lower left, vol. 2) Apollo with lyre and Pan with pipes are
judged by King Midas (seated); (upper right, vol. 3) Six muses surround
Polyhymnia; (lower right, vol. 4) Apollo with Daphne as she turns into a laurel. 

92
Percy A. Scholes, “Hawkins, Sir John (i),” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, accessed March 20,
2012, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.libproxy.usc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/12604 ;
Scholes also noted that “Some sections of Burney's History are, in fact, based in whole or part on
Hawkins's work,” and that later, collector/compiler William Chappell would not be alone in believing that
Burney “‘copied especially John Hawkins, without acknowledgment, and disguised the material by altering
the language.’”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.48

Although his work was not published until 1783, it is relevant to include antiquarian
Joseph Ritson and his assessment of categories as his work began many years previously and has
come to be regarded as the beginning of a new approach to song collection and assessment that
would provide a model for nineteenth-century collectors.
93
In it, Ritson promised three main
sections, but gave more, and omitted even more than that.
Love, the largest category, filled the entire first volume of three, and was further
separated into five classes, the first being so general it is hard to describe, followed by passion,
troubled love, love from the female point of view, and a fifth combining “chaste delights of
mutual affection” with “connubial felicity.” As difficult as may be to understand the rationale
behind these categories, suffice it to say that, in Ritson’s view, “love” in all its possible
permutations was the major concern of English song.
94

Drinking, the second category, included “Anacreontics” and “Bacchanalian” song, “most
of which may be reasonably allowed to have merit in their way,” and a miscellaneous category
appeared to include anything that didn’t fit into the other two.
95
These were followed by a
fourth section of “Ancient Ballads” that mentioned a debt to Percy’s work, emphasizing “the
genuine effusions of the English muse, unadulterated with the sentimental refinements of Italy
or France.”
96

93
Joseph Ritson, A Select Collection of English Songs. In Three Volumes (London: Printed for J. Johnson in
St. Pauls Church-yard. MDCCLXXXIII [1783]).
94
Ritson, in fact, made a big deal that the manner in which he categorized these love songs had been
“reformed altogether” so as not to be indelicate. Ritson, English Songs, vol. I, iii-v.
95
Ritson, English Songs, vol. I, p. iv.
96
Ritson, English Songs, vol. I, p. ix.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.49

Ritson specifically left out three groups of song popular in England: Scottish songs,
which, though written in English, belonged to a different “country;”
97
Freemason songs,
deemed “absurd, conceited, enigmatic, and unintelligible” to non-members (and whose
members would “know where to find them” if they wanted them);
98
and, significant to this
project, political song. According to Ritson, “The insertion of songs on political topics, the best
of which are not only too temporary, but too partial to gain much applause when their subjects
are forgotten, and their satire has lost its force, has here been studiously avoided.” However,
Ritson did make an exception for those political songs that somehow managed, through wit or
pathos, to transcend their topicality: specifically, the humorous “Vicar of Bray,” and the
“elegant and pathetic HOSIERS GHOST,” both of which were distributed and/or parodied to
great effect in prerevolutionary British Colonial America.
99

To summarize these eighteenth-century commentators’ and collectors’ categorizations,
certain labels figured prominently: love, in all its forms; ballads (often historical), pastorals and
other “simple” reflections of the past; and songs for drinking and socializing. Topical or political
songs – almost always in the form of parody – needed to be safely sequestered not only from
religious music but from other print categories, or omitted entirely.
100

97
However, Ritson did include Irish songs because, he said, “the only civilised and cultivated inhabitants”
were the Anglicized ones. Ritson, English Songs, vol. I, vi-vii.
98
Ritson, English Songs, vol. I, viii.
99
Ritson, English Songs, vol. I, viii.
100
Religious song developed its own sub-categories over the eighteenth century. The earlier conflict
between psalmody and hymnody didn’t seem to have affected the popularity of two different sacred song
collections sold under the name of Isaac Watts in new editions that were released virtually annually;
Watts, Hymns, 1762; Isaac Watts, Psalms of David, Imitated in the language of the New Testament
(Boston: Printed by Rogers and Fowle for D. Henchman, in Cornhill, 1750). These primary sacred vocal
forms – psalms (literal Biblical texts) and hymns (paraphrases of same) were supplemented by the related
song forms of anthem (also prominent in loyal song) and fuguing-song, each with its own specific liturgical
role. Singing schools for sacred music formed earlier in towns like Boston than in rural areas, amid
growing interest in instructional books and also more “florid” types of church music and more ornate
hymn books during the second half of the century. Karl Kroeger’s mastery of the subject in his 1976
dissertation documents all “tune supplements published in America from 1698 to 1785,” tracing the
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.50

Also embedded in these categories was a continuing understanding that the rhetoric of
song texts represented a hierarchy of values and expression – the simplicity of pastoral ballad,
the heroics of national or “loyal” song, the conviviality of sociable song designed for male
consumption. The categories also connected song to its functionality, as when sociable songs
were situated in specific spaces such as public houses and the theater or activities including
drinking and hunting – but not to the sort of sociability experienced at home or church.
“Love” as a song category could include all things domestic, yet in practice, a song about
marriage might be a love song, a religious song, or a sociable song, depending on who was
singing it and for what purpose. Similar overlap can be seen in any of the stated categories –
especially as relates to the religious influences that crept into all categories, no matter how the
categorizers attempted to segregate it into its own conversation. This is particularly true of the
relatively small number of ceremonial songs used at commencements, dedications, and other
public gatherings and observances, and in “meditative” songs that, while not explicitly religious
in text, shared a certain tone and language with hymns and psalms – sometimes referred to as
“hymns” themselves, but definitely not liturgical.
Even the commentators themselves allude to the impossibility of imposing categories,
as in the introduction of 1788’s Convivial Songster:

Classing the songs, it was thought, would add to the elegance and
perspicuity of the book ; but, in doing this, it was almost impossible to

trends. Karl Kroeger, “The Worcester Collection of Sacred Harmony and Sacred Music in America, 1786-
1803” (PhD diss., Brown University, 1976).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.51

determine to which particular class some of them belonged : an error of this
kind, therefore, may easily be pardoned.
101

So what was going on here? Why the disproportionate emphasis on “love” song? Why
the segregation of religious song forms? Why the minimizing of didactic and sociable song, and
the banishment of topical and political song? Why delineate categories at all, given the ubiquity
of overlap?
One way of understanding early-modern Anglophonic secular song is suggested by the
rhetorical discourse of previous centuries regarding lyric poetry – including some song texts –
which, when applied to eighteenth-century song, provides contemporary language for
categories for which there was no consensus, but which would have been understood by all.
102

The liberty song writers of prerevolutionary America lived in a world informed by
curricula in which the study of rhetoric was central.
103
Colonial American colleges, were
“smaller and poorer counterparts of the universities of Great Britain, rather than indigenous
institutions.” Beginning in Cambridge in the mid-seventeenth century, Harvard College’s
curriculum was based on its British namesake college’s program of:

“the medieval trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and quadrivium
(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) and … the three philosophies (natural,

101
The Convivial Songster, Being a Select Collection of the Best Songs in the English Language: Humourous
Satirical Bachanalian &c. (London: Printed for John Fielding, NO. 23 Pater-noster Row, 1788), p. vii.
102
Appendix D provides a matrix of seventeenth- to eighteenth-century rhetorical styles in song.
103
Not all writers of liberty song are known, but those who are tended to be members of professions –
lawyers, doctors, ministers, writers – whose members attended elite colonial educational institutions or
kept company with those who did; printers and most publishers typically did not, but a common body of
knowledge and understanding is reflected in these songs and other print culture outputs of the period.
Bailyn described the pamphlet writers similarly: “lawyers, ministers, merchants, or planters heavily
engaged in their regular occupations. For them political writing was an uncommon diversion, peripheral
to their main concerns.” Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp. 13-14.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.52

moral, mental) … governed by the Elizabethan statutes of 1561, which required
that each student be proficient in rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, and that they
be tested in these subjects by public disputations before being admitted to a
degree.”
104

In the beginning, the entire day of Friday was devoted to rhetoric “studied from a
number of florilegia and by declamations in Latin and Greek given before small groups and in
monthly programs before the entire school.”
105
Not only the study but the practice of rhetoric
would have been essential to achieving a degree. Over time, the role of rhetoric was
deemphasized both academically and methodologically, as rhetoric became a first-year subject
and/or adjunct to other disciplines, and “The tutorial system gave way to a faculty with teaching
assignments by subjects.” Rarely was an instructor hired to teach only rhetoric, and “the
syllogistic disputation was replaced by exercises with less rigid rules of procedure and a wider
range of subjects” that included “modern foreign languages, science, and political education.”
106

These changes coincided with the progress of the “three stages in the development of American
science: the formative period (1642-1723), the transition period (1723-45), and the established
pattern (1745 to the end of the century).”
107

104
Joe W. Kraus, “The Development of a Curriculum in the Early American Colleges,” History of Education
Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jun., 1961), p. 64; Kraus says the forerunners of Yale and Princeton would be
formed on similar curricula; Kraus, “Development of a Curriculum,” p. 67.
105
Kraus, “Development of a Curriculum,” p. 65.
106
Kraus, “Development of a Curriculum,” p. 75; “The forensic method” adopted gradually over the later
eighteenth century “was both more flexible in performance and more conducive to treating questions of
current interest; syllogistic disputations were limited to the traditional groupings,” including rhetoric (p.
70.); "Latin and Greek texts gradually came to be studied as models of rhetoric and eloquence rather than
as manuals for other subjects (p. 72).”
107
Kraus cited Theodore Hornberger in Scientific Thought in the American Colleges, 1638-1800 (Austin,
1945). Kraus, “Development of a Curriculum,” p. 72.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.53

There were exceptions to the Cambridge model. In Philadelphia, the college as
established in 1751 offered “the earliest American collegiate studies not following medieval
tradition nor having specifically religious objectives,” but even under this arrangement, rhetoric
remained part of the first-year program.
108
And at the re-formation of Columbia University in
1784, under “an ambitious plan” for a total of 16 paid and unpaid professorships,
“Appointments were actually made” in a number of disciplines in the arts program, including
rhetoric.
109

Central to the study of rhetoric in British Colonial America was Virgil’s Aeneid. Using
Harvard and Boston Latin School as his “models and standards,” Meyer Reinhold argued that,
from the beginning, “Vergil was a household word to numerous Americans, for study of his
works was by tradition prescribed for those who pursued the academic curriculum in the
grammar schools, academies, high schools, and colleges.” Prospective college students were
usually expected to have read the Aeneid already, and “were likely to read the Eclogues and
Georgics” after they arrived.
110
Not every student was thrilled at the prospect, which Reinhold’s
sources blamed on the same evolution of rhetoric’s role in the curriculum noted by Kraus.
Members of the liberty song generation including John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson noted
this, but while Trumbull satirized Virgil in The Progress of Dulness, Hopkinson instead lamented
the treatment of the poet and his works: “What would Virgil think could he hear his beautiful
poems frittered into its grammatical component parts in one of our schools?”
Reinhold also noted moral critics. One late-seventeenth-century Congregationalist
worried about “the dangers of exposing children to ‘Heathen writers’ (including) ... ‘the

108
Kraus, “Development of a Curriculum,” p. 68.
109
Kraus, “Development of a Curriculum,” p. 70.
110
Meyer Reinhold, “Vergil in the American Experience from Colonial Times to 1882,” Vergil at 2000 :
commemorative essays on the poet and his influence (New York: AMS Press, c1986), p. 185.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.54

pernicious works of pagan learning in Virgil, Ovid, and Homer’” when instead “‘I may be showed
it from Scripture or sound reasoning, and not by quotations out of Virgil.’”
111
The following
century, a Quaker critic in 1769 warned that:

… tho Virgil commonly is excepted from this guilty list yet with the
impious Notion of both the 2nd and 8th Eclogues & his representing the
Ungrateful Lustful Perfidious Aeneas as the particular Friend & Favorite of
Heaven are shocking to every System of Morality.
112

Yet the idea of patterning one’s life, or “career,” after Virgil’s literary triad – envisioned
by premodern Europeans as “the rota Vergilii or rota Vergiliana,” literally “Virgil’s Wheel” – was
an idea still understood during the early-modern era. Beginning with the lyrical (Eclogues),
moving on to the didactic (Georgics), and finishing with the philosophical (Aeneid), Andrew Laird
notes that the “arrangement of the poet’s works and their respective themes and styles in a
circular diagram seems to have developed from the use of rota as synecdoche for the Classical
image of the Muses’ chariot, an image mediated by the schoolmasters of late antiquity,” but
whether the poet himself would have conceived of such a scheme is doubtful:

Virgil gives no more explicit indication of his poetic programme from
one work to the next …. Taken as a whole his compositions really only indicate a

111
Reinhold, “Vergil,” p. 186.
112
Reinhold, “Vergil,” p. 187.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.55

de facto progression from the bucolic to didactic poetry, and then from didactic
to epic.
113

But later writers would understand a rhetorical hierarchy in poetic and song expression.
Writing on “Genre” in 2011, Anna Solin described attempts to classify “literary texts” from
classical antiquity that, though they “did not provide any comprehensive coverage of existing
literary genres,” nevertheless gave “a ‘prescriptive taxonomy’ of valued forms,” with
“approaches … common also in rhetoric and the study of folklore.”
114
One such taxonomy she
cited came from Philip Sidney’s posthumous “apologie” that had posited a role for poetry as
“moderator” between philosophers – who taught virtue through “Definitions, Diuisions, and
Distinctions” with the goal of destroying “enemie vice … and his combersome seruant Passion” –
and historians who, with a “speaking picture” that, though a imitative representation of reality,
nevertheless could bring life to the elephant or even a virtue, in ways unavailable to other forms
of expression. Mimesis, in the Aristotlean sense, was presented by Sidney in three categories:
imitation of God, whether “Dauid in his Psalmes” or “Homer in his hymnes;” representations of
“matters Philosophicall; eyther morrall … os Astromonicall …. or historical,” whose value as
poetry was limited by being “wrapped within the folde” of the respected discipline; and that
which relied solely on the “invention” and “wit” of “right Poets,” the only ones worthy of the
name, in Sidney’s estimation, whose work could be further subdivided into “speciall

113
Andrew Laird, “Re-inventing Virgil’s Wheel: the poet and his work from Dante to Petrarch,” Philip
Hardie and Helen Moore, eds., Classical Literary Careers and their Reception (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), pp. 138-139; Laird dissected the punning use of “carriera,” as applied to both the
wheeled carriage and the career.
114
Anna Solin, “Genre,” Jan Zienkowski et al, eds., Discursive Pragmatics (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 2011), p. 120.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.56

denominations. The most notable bee the Heroick, Lirick, Tragick, Comick, Satirick, Imbick,
Elegiack, pastorall, and certaine others.”
A number of Sidney’s terms appear frequently in other early-modern literary
taxonomies that relate to song or lyric poetry. In his “Answer to D’Avenant’s Preface to
Gondibert,” Thomas Hobbes argued, similarly to Sidney, that “Poets … worke it is, by imitating
humane life in delightful and measur'd lines, to avert men from vice and incline them to
vertuous and honorable actions.”
115
Hobbes offered “a taxonomy of poetic genres” as a way of
“asserting his competence in matters of poetry,” one with “a distinctly mathematical character”
that “fuses the aspects of matter (‘Heroique, Scommatique, and Pastorall’ subjects) and form
(‘Narrative’ and “dramatique’ modes) into one consistent formula” that “functions like a
mathematical equation in that it expresses a quantifiable identity” in a way that no classification
had ever “insist(ed) so emphatically.”
116

A tripartite taxonomy similar to Hobbes’ “subjects” was proposed in 1713 by Joseph
Addison, writing in The Guardian, not in a discussion of poetry or song but in a tribute to an old
friend. Playwright and songwriter Thomas d'Urfey had fallen upon hard times in his old age
after a lifetime of service to the nation in three “sectors” – court, country, and city – service that
Addison compared favorably to that of the service of lyric poet Pindar to ancient Greece:

115
Thomas Hobbes, “Answer to D’Avenant’s Preface to Gondibert,” J. E. Spingarn, ed., Critical Essays of
the Seventeenth Century, Vol. II 1650-1685 (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1908), pp. 54-55.
116
David L. Sedley, “Nasty, Brutish, and Long,” Zahi Zalloua, ed., Montaigne After Theory, Theory After
Montaigne (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 162-163; Sedley argued that “By subjecting
poetry to mathematical science Hobbes proposes to deploy poetry as a civilizing device that makes its
readers (as Davenant puts it in his Preface) ‘more discreet,’ ‘more manly,’ and thus more susceptible to
‘easy government.’”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.57

he has obliged the Court with political Sonnets, the country with
Dialogues and Pastorals, the City with Descriptions of a Lord-Mayor's feast, not
to mention his little Ode upon Stool-ball, with many others of the like nature.
117

While not perfectly aligned, Hobbes’ Heroique, Scommatique, and Pastorall “subject”
classifications share similar spaces and styles with Addison’s “sectors” of court, city, and
country, and recall the earlier scheme – philosophical (Aeneid), didactic (Georgics), and lyrical
(Eclogues) – or, in reverse, the “de facto” progression “from the bucolic to didactic … to epic”
attributed to Virgil by Laird, implying a hierarchy of low-to-high rhetoric on three levels.
Descriptors used by eighteenth-century categorizers are resonant of modifiers used by
those who went before. Rousseau’s definitions of the categories of love song – with its “tender”
and “serious” airs – and “pastoral and rustic songs” associated with dance, share similarities
with Hobbes’ “Pastorall” and Addison’s country sector; his “wine” category of male sociability
suggests Hobbes’ “Scommatique” and Addison’s “City,” as do his “satyric songs” of “Vaudevilles”
and even the “murderous” parody. But Virgil’s epic, Hobbes’ heroic, and Addison’s “Court”
sector – the “high” rhetorical styles – are missing from Rousseau’s definition for “SONG” and
given entries of their own.
Similarly to the way sacred song was segregated from the secular in contemporary
songbooks, so did Rousseau remove sacred song forms from his definition of “SONG”
altogether. But he clearly understood as songs the “HYMN,” “A song in honour of the gods, or
of heroes,” and relating to persons, and the “CANTIC,” “a Hymn sung in honour of the divinity”
and relating to actions. Moreover, he understood that “The first airs of all nations were either

117
Joseph Addison, The Works of the late right honorable Joseph Addison, Esq; Vol. 4 (Birmingham:
Printed by John Baskerville, for J. and R. Tonson. At Shakespear's Head in the Strand. M DCC LXI [1761]),
No. 67, Thursday, May 28, 1713), p. 122.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.58

cantics or hymns,” and that cantics “may well be reckoned as the most ancient historical
monuments,” giving as an example Solomon’s “Song of Songs … which some authors pretend to
be his epithalamium only …. But the Theologicians discover (to be) … the union of Jesus Christ
and the Church.”
118

Opera, too, figured among Rousseau’s song forms to be reverenced, the only song type
in which he said the music and text were composed for one another – indeed, he claimed that
Louis de Cahusac, celebrated librettist to the great composer of French opera Jean-Philippe
Rameau, believed the “Song of Songs” to be “nothing more than a well composed opera, the
scenes, the dialogue, the duo, the choirs, were intirely perfect ; nothing was wanting, and he
made no doubt but that the opera had been represented.”
119

In Rousseau’s estimation, opera brought together three elements – poetry for the mind,
music for the ear, and stage decorations for the eye. Reserving his critique for the music alone,
Rousseau found a higher purpose in this song form:

The art of combining the sounds agreeably, may be viewed under two
different aspects. Considered as an institution of nature, music bounds its
effect by the sensation and physical pleasure which results from it, by the
melody, harmony, and rhyme. Such is ordinarily the church-music ; such are the
tunes for dancing, and those of songs. But as an essential part of the lyric scene,
whose principal object is the imitation, music becomes one of the fine arts,
capable of painting every picture, of exciting every sentiment, of harmonizing

118
Rousseau, Dictionary, pp. 54, 194-195.
119
Rousseau, Dictionary, p. 54.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.59

with poetry, giving it a new strength, embellishing it with new charms, and
triumphing by its means at the time that it crowns it.
120

The tripartite models suggested – loosely but consistently – in Virgil, Sidney, Hobbes,
Addison, and Rousseau also found their way into songbooks of this period, virtually all of which
contain elements from all three categories. Phillips, the presumed compiler of the series A
Collection of Old Ballads that eventually numbered three volumes, ultimately named three song
categories – “Historical,” “Drinking,” and “Scotch” – with examples of all three song types
sprinkled across each volume. Not only do the heroes of historical ballad, the bacchanalian
drinkers, and the pastoral Scots
121
correspond with Hobbes’ heroic, scommatic, and pastoral,
and Addison’s court, city, and country, but they were visually augmented by frontispieces in
each respective edition that align closely with each of Hobbes’ “subjects” and Addison’s
“sectors.”

120
Rousseau, Dictionary, pp. 289-290.
121
An exploration of the connection of “Scotch” song with pastorals deserves a dissertation of its own.
Scottish songs proliferated in eighteenth-century Britain especially following the union of the Scottish and
English crowns in 1707 and the subsequent rebellions of 1715 and 1745; song, like other Scots cultural
traditions, was appropriated as a way of domesticating its potential use for service to empire, and to
prevent its use for cultural coherence among Scots.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.60

Figure 1.6. A Tripartite Taxonomy of Song Rhetoric, 1723-1725

The Frontispiece of [Ambrose
Philips’] A collection of old ballads,
Vol. 1 (1723) depicts the god Apollo
composing music animated by a band
of cherubs, under the watchful eyes of
the great lyric poets of antiquity and
the early-modern era in England.
 The Frontispiece of [Ambrose
Philips’] A collection of old ballads, Vol.
2 (1723) shows a crowded street scene
populated by various ranks of urban
life – soldier, churchman, criers; the
ballad-seller holds a song slip but does
not appear to be singing, though a tune
appears to be played by the fiddler.
 The Frontispiece of [Ambrose Philips’] A
collection of old ballads, Vol. 3 (1725) shows
a classic pastoral scene where couples
recline against what appears to be a
hedgerow on a river bank as nature couples
in the form of swans, while gods and
fantastical creatures above survey the scene
and, perhaps, plot the couples’ fates.

Percy, in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, promised “an independent SERIES of
poems” for each of his three volumes – each divided into three roughly chronological parts –
and while the series and parts were not segregated by categories, he used descriptors
previously used by Sidney and Hobbes to label many of his songs, including satire, heroic,
pastoral, comic, and dramatic.
122
Aiken’s three categories, too, shared some (but not all)
important characteristics with the other models, but he ranked “Ingenious and Witty Songs” –
similar to Sidney’s Comick and Satirick, Hobbes’ Scommatique subject, and Addison’s City sector
in their value of wit and learning, but not in their lewd aspects – as the highest form of song
style, draw from “sentiments aris(ing) from cool reflection and curious speculation, rather than

122
Percy, Reliques, 1765, p. x.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.61

from a present emotion,”
123
proof that English wit was indeed “the latest growth of the mind.
124

And while Ritson’s various categories of love songs bear characteristics of all of the categories
defined by his predecessors, his second category – Drinking
125
– mates well with Hobbes’
scommatic, while the fourth, “Ancient Ballads,” contains many examples of the heroic style.
The seeming inconsistency of some of the classifications becomes less troublesome
when listening to songs suggested by the designators for each. For example, Addison
characterized the “sonnets” of the “Court” sector as “political,” but the example he provided
was solemn and majestic:

I myself remember King Charles the Second. leaning on Tom d'Urfey's
shoulder more than once, and humming over a song with him. It is certain that
Monarch was not a little supported by, Joy to great Caesar, which gave the
Whigs such a blow as they were not able to recover that whole reign. My friend
afterwards attacked Popery with the same success, having exposed Bellarmine
and Porto-Carrero more than once in short satirical compositions, which have
been in every body's mouth. He has made use of Italian tunes and sonata's for
promoting the Protestant interest, and turned a considerable part of the Pope's
music against himself.
126

123
Aikin, Essays on song-writing, pp. 23-24.
124
Aikin, Essays on song-writing, pp. 180-182.
125
The 1813 second edition of Ritson’s works noted that “Dr. Aikin, in his late republication, has more
happily characterized” drinking songs “under the term Convivial Songs,” a descriptor that appears with
more frequency toward the end of the eighteenth century. Thomas Park, F.S.A., ed., A Selection
Collection of English Songs … by the late Joseph Ritson, Esq. (London: F. C. and J. Rivington et al, 1813), p.
vi.
126
Addison, Works, No. 67, p. 122.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.62

D’Urfey is best remembered today for a collection that grew over a quarter century and
eventually encompassed a thousand songs, with editions most often referred to as Wit and
Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy.
127
Though his witty, sociable songs are perhaps the most
familiar of his work, each style described by Addison can be found in these pages, from pastorals
and love songs celebrating (and often winking at) the virtue of the land and common English
men and women who lived on it, to witty commentary on the foibles of humans of all ranks and
stations, and majestic loyal song in service to king and country. “Joy to Great Caesar” is perhaps
the foremost example of the latter, with its anti-Catholic text and appropriated tune based on
La Folía, a "theme" or "progression" that emerged around 1500 in Spain and Italy and
associated, in this case, with Catholic musical composition.
128
The majestic song produced by
this combination of text and tone is heroic, extolling and drawing its authority from God, king
and country, and connecting to a certain kind of passion, wonder, and awe founded in the things
that mere mortals were incapable of understanding and therefore had to accept on faith. This is
the style to which much religious song belonged as well as certain of the political and national
songs referred to in early-modern British song culture as “loyal” song – which “Joy to Great
Caesar” surely was.
In contrast, a “lower” song style exemplified by the pastoral and the love song, was, in
its own way, heroic, too, when it extolled the English common man and woman as the products

127
Thomas D’Urfey, Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vols. I-VI (London: W. Pearson for J.
Tonson, 1719-1720).
128
La Folía was first published in Anglophonic print as "Faronells Division on a Ground" in 1685 in The
Division Violin, the same year, British historian Thomas Babington Macauley grudgingly allowed, that “Joy
to Great Caesar” had been “almost as popular as Lilliburlero became a few years later” when used in
service to the crown during various religious monarchal crises of the 1680s. Macauley suspected Addison
of some irony in his praise of d’Urfey’s “utterly contemptible” work; he called it “an instance of
benevolence delicately flavoured with contempt.” Playford, “Faronells Division on a Ground,” The
Division Violin (London, Printed by J. P. and are sold by John Playford, near the Temple-Church : 1685),
tune 5; Charles Babington Macauley, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, Vol.
I (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1854), pp. 477-478.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.63

of a simpler time, with the terms “low,” “common,” and "simple" suggesting a certain virtue
connected in this period and place with “country” ideology.
129
This is the pastoral of Hobbes,
the country of Addison.
Between these two styles was a middle path, the realm of just about every other kind of
song concerned the world and materials things, unable to transcend them and therefore unable
to achieve the true virtue of what could be, rather than what was. Hobbes called it scommatic;
Addison situated it in the City. Here is where the sociable songs, the instructive songs, and
especially the political songs of a non-loyal nature resided, songs that relied on wit and humor
(sometimes allowing risqué overtones) rather than passion and awe to make their point – likely
the reason they were tolerated.
It is important to note a distinction between the words “wit” and “genius.” In early-
modern texts, genius, while inborn and extraordinary, was also described as somewhat freakish;
whereas “intelligence” was more about understanding information that could be taught or
made clear, or just something relating to the mind. It is also worth pointing out that “genius”
come from Latin and is often specifically cited in dictionaries as “French.”
130
Wit, however, had
an Anglo-Saxon root, and is the most common Anglophonic way of describing superior intellect
in a song text – not just smart, but English smart. Moreover, commentators like Aikin cast wit as
a product of recent time, while passion, and especially anger, was cast as primitive and a mark
of a deficiency in intellect as well as taste.
131

129
William D. Paden’s classification of the characteristics of The Medieval Pastourelle (1987), a form that
evolved into the broadside ballad tradition known to early moderns; the contributors to the essay
collection Paden subsequently edited, Medieval Lyric: Genres in Historical Context (2010), both
historicized the genre and at the same time called the very classification into question. William Doremus
Paden, The Medieval Pastourelle (New York: Garland, 1987); William Doremus Paden, ed., Medieval
Lyric: Genres in Historical Context (Urbanna, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010).
130
Johnson, “Genius,” Dictionary, 1766, page headed GEN-GEN.
131
Carol Zisowitz Stearns, Anger: the Struggle for Emotional Control in America's History (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986); Peter N. Stearns, An Emotional History of the United States (New York:
New York University Press, 1998).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.64

These conventions would make witty expression in oppositional song superior to liberty
songs that presumed a heroic role for their singers and themes that their authors did not have
the authority to usurp, and furthermore made them arrogant in privileging their passion instead
of employing wit – marking their singers and writers as less intelligent, and in bad taste, too.
As tutor to the children of Virginia planter Robert Carter, Philip Fithian had an
opportunity to observe many instances of musical production and reception in this very musical
household. But he took a very dim view of an outbreak of liberty song singing on Tuesday,
January 18, 1774, at a gathering given by the Carters’ Westmoreland County neighbors, the
Lees, including “young Mr. Lee,” who would gain the nickname “Light Horse Harry” in the
coming conflict. Fithian praised the “Good Order … preserved” throughout dinner, and the
elegant ball that followed.

But all did not join in the Dance for there were parties in Rooms made
up, some at Cards; some drinking for Pleasure; some toasting the Sons of
america; some singing “Liberty Songs” as they calld them, in which six, eight, ten
or more would put their Heads near together and roar, & for the most part as
unharmonious as an affronted - -.

The singing “Vociferators” included “a young Scotch-Man, Mr. Jack Cunningham ; he
was nimis bibendo appotus; noisy, droll, waggish, yet civil in his way & wholly inoffensive,” and
several others including Fithian’s hosts as well as another of the younger Lees, who “with great
Rudeness as tho half drunk,” pressed the tutor with an “Impudence (that) moved my
resentment.” Fithian was “glad” to be able to escape into the “Evening sharp and cold,” though
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.65

the party apparently followed him back to the Carter home where he was “exceeding happy
that I could break away with Reputation,” though “awaked now & then with a midnight Yell!”
132

Fithian, who was in training to be a minister before he took the tutorial post at the
Carter plantation, later became a military chaplain who died in uniform, so he may not have
been expected to provide the most charitable review for boisterous, drunken liberty song
singing. But his choice of the word “unharmonious” to describe this singing could have referred
to the crudeness of its presentation – in a company accustomed to the fine art music such as
that being presented in the ballroom – but it also suggests the sort of singing that encouraged
participation by all within earshot, even by people who might not normally sing in public. Yet
the popularity of these impermissible, ignorant, bad taste songs was undeniable, whether in
their prominence in certain forms of print culture that grew over the years leading up to the
imperial crisis, or in the descriptions left to us by observers like Fithian and Adams.
John Dickinson provided perhaps the best evidence of a case where a liberty song writer
knowingly attempted to tap into this popularity with an end in mind. In a letter to Boston
lawyer James Otis (himself a reputed liberty song writer and a leading voice during the
prerevolutionary period), Dickinson described his motivation – and hope – in writing what
became the most popular, most parodied parody of the entire prerevolutionary period, “The
Liberty Song.”
133

“I enclose you a song for American freedom. I have long since
renounced poetry, but as indifferent songs are very powerful on certain

132
Philip Vickers Fithian, Journal and Letters, 1773-1774 (Princeton, NJ: The Princeton University Library,
1900), pp. 94-97.
133
Of the liberty song authors revealed by the time of the early national period, many, like Dickinson and
Otis, were lawyers, and graduate of the colleges that required the study of rhetoric in their curricula, a
skill needed for success in the disputation process on which the awarding of a degree depended.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.66

occasions, I venture to invoke the deserted muses. I hope my good intentions
will procure pardon, with those I wish to please, for the boldness of my numbers.
My worthy friend, Dr. Arthur Lee, a gentleman of distinguished family, abilities
and patriotism, in Virginia, composed eight lines of it. Cardinal De Retz always
enforced his political operations by songs. I wish our attempt may be useful.”
134

In this extraordinary, and literally singular piece of evidence, Dickinson indicated that
song, even “indifferent” song, could be “very powerful on certain occasions.” He claimed to
follow a precedent where song “enforced … political operations.” He hoped to be “useful.” A
clearer statement on the intentionality of liberty song, right from the moment of its creation,
and the power believed to be embedded in this sort of high-toned rhetoric, could not have been
scripted – and this, in the hands of a master of rhetoric, not only as a successful practitioner of
the legal profession but also as one of the finest writers and thinkers of his generation. This
letter, together with the description of reception of this very liberty song from Adams’ 1769
diary entry, presents a diptych allowing “The Liberty Song” and its production and reception to
serve as a model for how to decode early-modern forms of song recording, in the absence of
audio or visual forms of evidence.
Given the extent to which rhetorical style was discussed in relation to text as well as the
inextricable link between text and music across the early-modern era, one would assume that
this discussion would extend into descriptions of song, either in the theorizing of the
seventeenth century, or in the collecting of the eighteenth. It did not. In short, every major
work on song classification seemed to have pursued other social and cultural objectives –

134
John Dickinson letter to James Otis, July 4, 1768, in Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American
Revolution, p. 36.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.67

politics, religion, nation – that tended to privilege the identification of certain song categories
over others, especially the “love” and pastoral songs that predominate in most eighteenth-
century Anglophonic song collections as a shorthand way of describing the foundational
characteristics of the English nation and race, while denigrating topical and political song. It is
indeed tempting to refer to all print culture songs as “political” – whether explicitly or implicitly
– since no one ever went to the expense of printing without a motive. But it is true that those
songs having explicitly political themes can be separated out, regardless of their rhetorical style,
and – particularly intriguing to this project – is the hybrid use of various styles in explicitly
political song expression, such as the potent combination of high-toned “loyal” textual rhetoric
with tunes often associated with middle rhetorical style songs of sociability defined by their wit,
and used in spaces such as public houses and the theater. “The Liberty Song,” and its model,
“Heart of Oak,” belong to this hybrid group.
Loyal song was present by that name throughout seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Britain, appearing as frequently in times of factional strife as in peacetime, and could either
signal allegiance to a monarch or, in the case of the mid- and late-century monarchal crises, to
its opposition – depending on how the author defined who or what they were loyal to.
135
Loyal
song also related to service to a monarch, as in time of war,
136
or commemoration of a
monarchal event such as the birth of a new prince, or the death of a king. The mere sound of
one of these songs could incite warm reactions pro or con, as in the case of a man, objecting to

135
For example, “loyal song” was used in earnest both for and against the future James II during the
Exclusion Crisis of the early 1680s, on the one hand emphasizing “the evils of the papists” while
attempting to influence opinion on James’ behalf "through the medium of song itself (by) hearing his loyal
tunes." Michael Burden, “‘For the Lustre of the Subject:’ Music for the Lord Mayor’s Day in the
Restoration,” Early Music, Vol. 23, No. 4, Music in Purcell's London I (Nov., 1995), p. 600; Elliott Visconsi,
“A Degenerate Race: English Barbarism in Aphra Behn's ‘Oroonoko’ and ‘The Widow Ranter,’” ELH, Vol.
69, No. 3 (Fall, 2002), p. 676.
136
See discussion of a loyal song “appeal(ing) to age-old English hostility to ‘Sawney’ in his “Scotch’ plad”
in 1745 in: Stephen Conway, “War and National Identity in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century British Isles,” The
English Historical Review, Vol. 116, No. 468 (Sep., 2001), p. 873.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.68

a “very loyal song” being sung in the streets in 1790s London, who was sent “muttering away”
by a loyal adherent who “had the satisfaction to see the crowd, which was numerous, were on
my side.”
137
Loyal songs adopted the high-toned rhetoric, appealing to passion over wit, and
love of country and king over more prosaic concerns like personal safety or interest, especially
when called upon to serve. To paraphrase Sidney, even when sung by a blind fiddler, a loyal
song could move a heart more than a trumpet, and be one of the best kindlers of courage.
138

Loyal song as a form was also parodied in mocking satirical songs, but these belong to
traditional forms of oppositional song. A Loyall Song of the Royall Feast provides a good
example of a “loyal” song satire mocking Charles I and his court while imprisoned during
“August last” of 1647.
139
But this type of song, like oppositional song in general, lacked the high,
heroic style of loyal song, relying instead on wit – often, because the only way to express such
opinions in public had to be with a nod and a wink. To a modern observer, nothing John Wilkes
published in issue 45 of the North Briton was any more disrespectful than what was said in a
satirical “advertisement” from the London Packet reprinted in at least two colonial newspapers,
accusing the king of hypocrisy and his ministers of worse.
140
But whereas Wilkes’ tone had been
in earnest and his words chosen to bring down a government, the Packet’s “ad” was presumably
styled to amuse; though both texts made similar royal criticisms, only Wilkes went to prison.
141

137
Mark Philp, “Vulgar Conservatism,” The English Historical Review, Vol. 110, No. 435 (Feb., 1995), p. 59.
138
Sidney, Poetrie, 1595.
139
Written in the favored middle-rhetoric form of the sociable toast, this song imagines a series of toasts
offered to and by Charles I and his imprisoned courtiers and family members. A loyall song of the royall
feast, kept by the prisoners in the Towre in August last, with the names, titles and characters of every
prisoner. By Sir F.W. knight and baronet, prisoner (London: [1647]).
140
The so-called “Catalogue of New Books and Plays, just going to be published” began its long list of
“authors” and “publications” with “The Hypocrite, A Farce--- by His Majesty.” The “ad” appeared in
Timothy Greene (3)’s Connecticut Gazette on January 3, 1772, and four days later in Charles Crouch’s
South Carolina Gazette. Timothy Green, “Catalogue of New Books and Plays, just going to be published,”
Connecticut Gazette, January 3, 1772, p. 2, col. 3-p. 3, col.1; Charles Crouch, South Carolina Gazette,
January 7, 1772, p. 1, col. 3.
141
There could be a chronological explanation, too; issue 45 was published nine years earlier than the
“ad.” Could it have been not okay to call the king a liar in 1763, yet okay to call him a hypocrite in 1772?
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.69

It has already been suggested that when oppositional song was not witty, there could be
trouble. An example in colonial New England concerned ballads written about the 1750
devaluation of “Old Tenor” money in Massachusetts. Joseph Green, the minister regarded as
“the greatest wit of provincial Boston,”
142
wrote a witty ballad opposing the currency policy and
got away with it, yet a close parody of his ballad (the titles are nearly identical, though the
actual broadside of the latter has never been found) expressing the same message but in
apparently in the wrong tone and/or terms, prompted a multi-colony investigation to find and
punish the authors. The “acceptable” song survived in the historic record, but the
“unacceptable” one did not, despite an intensive search by nineteenth-century numismatists to
locate it.
143

Similar toleration was extended to risqué songs that were clever, but not to the purely
obscene. The brief introduction of the 1749 songster The Charmer promised:

The London Packet, edition is only known because of the citation; the issue doesn’t appear on
bibliographic lists. Without actually having seen the song in print in the cited London source, we must rely
on the word of two colonial printers – but even if they made it up themselves and ascribed it to an earlier
source, how could they get away with printing it? Date, distance, or drollness?
142
David S. Shields, “Nathaniel Gardner, Jr., and the Literary Culture of Boston in the 1750s,” Early
American Literature, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1989), p. 197. Green's reputation for writing anti-Masonic texts
opened him to suspicion that he, not John Hammock (who Green “was apparently engaged in a dispute
with”), wrote the verses accompanying the image of consensual Masonic sodomy that appeared on the
cover of the Boston Evening-Post in 1750, requiring that Green go “to lengths to distance himself from the
slur” by publishing denials in two Boston papers soon after. Thomas A. Foster, “Antimasonic Satire,
Sodomy, and Eighteenth-Century Masculinity in the ‘Boston Evening-Post,’” William and Mary Quarterly,
Third Series, Vol. 60, No. 1, Sexuality in Early America (Jan., 2003), pp. 176-177.

143
“Early Massachusetts Paper Currency,” American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. V, no. 4, April, 1871, pp.
78-81; “The Dying Speech of Old Tenor, 1750,” American Journal of Numismatics, Vol. VII, no.4 , April,
1873, pp. 91-93; Samuel A. Green, et al, "November Meeting, 1882 ... Death of Old Tenor," Proceedings
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 20 (1882 - 1883); William P. Trent and Benjamin W. Wells,
eds., Colonial Prose and Poetry (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1901, pp. 30-34; 240, 243-246;
Robert S. Rantoul et al, January Meeting, 1910 ... Broadside on Old Tenor, 1751; Proclamation by Spencer
Phips, 1751, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 43 (Oct., 1909 -Jun.,
1910), pp. 255-260.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.70

“I HAVE been extremely careful, in this Work, to collect those Songs that
are most esteemed, both for Music and Poetry ; and though several of the
humorous kind have a Place in it, obscene and Party ones are equally
avoided.”
144

Similarly, the introduction to 1788’s Convivial Songster warned the reader that:

… this book is a manual of the bon vivant, and not the parlour. Songs
that have no merit but what consist in obscenity have been carefully excluded,
and those only admitted where wit or humour are predominant.
145

By 1840, a volume published by The Percy Society closed the “wit” loophole:

“The Editor has found it necessary to omit a few ballads of the sea,
which might have been introduced, owing to their occasional grossness. He is
aware that this fault is not generally considered sufficiently valid to exclude
documents of any value, but daily experience convinces him of the necessity of
making some attempt to restore that Platonic respect which is due to literature,
and the immediate progenitors of its influences. Those principles of
utilitarianism which are so universally adopted at the present day, when applied
to subjects of historical interest and curiosity, will readily seize hold of any

144
The Charmer; A Choice Collection of Songs, English and Scots (Edinburgh: Printed for J. Yair, 1749),
introduction.
145
The Convivial Songster, p. vii.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.71

apparent defect in the system, and will be used as an argument against the
value of any collateral researches.”
146

Prerevolutionary song culture after the Seven Years War shows a shift in oppositional
song expression. Some liberty songs may have displayed wit, but they more prominently
displayed passion, even anger, in a way typical of loyal song but not of oppositional song of the
preceding decades. Instead of a monarch, their loyalty was expressed through their English
birthright to freedom – which, in song (and unlike other forms of documentary evidence),
allowed them to be free with their words as well as in their ideals. In sheer numbers, this type
of warm oppositional song would hijack periodical song culture for the next decade, infecting
and even overtaking other categories of song.
In this mix, another type of oppositional song evolved, one that was in dialogue with,
and against, the liberty songs. These songs were often characterized in hindsight as “loyalist”
even though they are not loyal song directed to the monarch and state or even necessarily
congruent with government policies. Their writers employed the witty approach of traditional
oppositional song but directed it not toward the powers-that-be but rather to the passionate
oppositional voices of “liberty.” These songs appeared at times and places where liberty songs
emerged in print culture during the prerevolutionary period, generated by individuals who are
sometimes difficult to place in either of the convenient, comfortable categories that later came
to be known as “Patriot,” “Tory,” and/or “Loyalist.” This oppositional song culture tells us that
certain factional lines that were defined later on did not exist until they did; draw the line
where you will, right up to the moment of Declaration (or in some places even later, or never),

146
J. O. Halliwell, ed., The Early Naval Ballads of England (London: Percy Society, 1841), pp. viii-ix.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.72

everyone was “loyal” right up until the moment they weren’t. Song culture suggests that,
except for the most radical elements in society, no one on any side ever wanted or intended an
armed conflict or an overthrow in their form of government; song documents it all, one stanza
at a time.
Finally, a word must be said about songs that just don’t fit into any convenient mold.
For example, a certain didacticism runs through many songs in this period, and while any song in
any category had the potential to both delight and teach – as Sidney posited for poesy two
centuries earlier – some song texts were more blatantly instructive than others, especially in
songs intended for children (and, often, women), but also on matters of politics. There were
also topical songs about events such as earthquakes that don’t feel particularly political or
religious, unless, of course, the objective of the song in question was to use the event for some
sort of persuasion.
An example of what British Colonial Americans could have been reading about song in
1775 was one recycled from the previous century, with new images recalling resonant impulses
by earlier Englishmen. The Compleat Angler is a collection of fishing tales that provided an
excuse for a narrative songbook in which “royalist writers developed a polemically charged
psalmic poetics that allowed them to appropriate the discursive authority of their Puritan
enemies, reestablish their own cultural standing, and prepare the way for religious and political
return” of the Stuarts.
147
Isaac Walton’s 1653 masterwork was constantly republished for more
than a century by the time this 1775 version appeared like many before it. In a chapter that “Is
of nothing ; or, that which is nothing worth,”
148
Walton’s anglers sing:

147
Isaac Walton, The Complete Angler: or, Contemplative Man’s Recreation (London: John and Francis
Rivington, 1775); Paula Loscocco, “Royalist Reclamation of Psalmic Song in 1650s England,” Renaissance
Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Summer 2011), p. 500.
148
Walton, The Complete Angler, p. 226.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.73

Musick, miraculous rhetorick, that speakest sense
Without a tongue, excelling eloquence ;
With what ease might thy errors be excus'd,
Wert thou as truly lov'd as th'art abus'd?
But though dull souls neglect, and some reprove thee,
I cannot hate thee, 'cause the angels love thee.
149

Here again is the constant sense of persecution expressed by so many commentators on
music, the shared belief that the power or value of music was under-appreciated, suggesting a
conventional wisdom even as the John Lockes of the world warned against wasting one’s time
on it. But Court, City, and Country alike turned to music – especially in the form of song – when
its capacity for passion and unreason was needed to “(enforce) … political operations by songs,”
or when the generation that would set into motion actions that would, before the century
ended, form a fourth sector beginning the letter “C” – citizen – needed to “cultivate …
sensations of freedom.” And they said so, in language that can be teased from the texts of
thousands of song instances. But no one really wanted to document it, the expression of
passion being contrary to the conduct literature of the day (not to mention dangerous), so they
wasted no time slamming the genie back into the bottle, at least until they needed it again.
But Isaac Walton knew its value, and said so, in the acceptable rhetoric of male sociable
singing in a virtuous pastoral setting as the anglers fished and sang their way through Cromwell's
military dictatorship as the social and political beggars they were (and not unlike the actual

149
Walton, The Complete Angler, p. 238.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.74

beggars they sang about), reminding themselves of an English political and cultural heritage that
was their birthright, and which would come again. The image of the anglers (pun certainly
intended) in the Puritan garb of Walton’s day, retired to the pub and singing their “Angler’s
Song,” had been reimagined by an engraver a century after Walton, in 1759, the biggest year of
the biggest imperial war of the century to date:
Figure 1.7. The Singing Anglers, 1653
(imagined in 1759, republished in 1775)

Man’s Life is but vain for tis subject to Pain
and Sorrow and short as a Bubble
tis a Hodge Podge of Business and Money and Care
and Care and Money and Trouble
But We'll take no Care when the Weather proves Fair
Nor will we vex now tho’ it rain
We’ll Banish all Sorrow and sing till to Morrow
And angle and angle again.
150

Though the “singing” anglers hold sheet music with notation, their posture does not
suggest singing even though they occupy an acceptable space for doing so: male, sociable,
indoors, in the country, all indicators of safe places for songs – if they were the “right” songs.
The song text that accompanies the image suggests a strategy of waiting out the current storm;
by the publication of this version in 1775, the storm had already arrived, and in British Colonial
America, there would be no waiting.

150
“The ANGLER's Song Set by Mr. H. Lawes,” Walton, Compleat Angler, between pp. 136-137.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.75

The emergence of liberty song in the decade leading up to the onset of organized armed
hostilities in 1775-1776 showed how song functioned differently in British Colonial America after
the Seven Years War than it had in previous decades, hijacking periodical and “cheap print” song
culture for the next decade and, if not fueling the slow, angry, unintentional slide toward war, at
least providing a cohesive and coherent language to describe and track it, as well as possible
explanations for how the participants gradually talked themselves into certain things (for
example, armed resistance and independence), and rationalized others (notably, the paradox
between freedom and slavery). These songs were, in turn, in dialogue with yet another new
form of oppositional song related to but distinct from traditional oppositional songs, that was
often in unison with the liberty songs on objectives and ideology, yet diametrically opposed on
tactics. The singers of liberty songs clung to a usurped heroic song rhetoric that accessed the
power of passion that had been reserved for kings since the time of Virgil – even though the use
of it would seem to backfire on them in some cases – while the counter-oppositional voices
stuck to the witty repertoire that had worked well for centuries of dissident songs, and which
marked them, in the conduct conventions of their time, as more composed, refined, and
intelligent than the liberty song writers, with whom they shared so many of the same political
ideals. For most of the prerevolutionary period, everyone was “loyal,” and everyone sang – or
even printed – “liberty songs,” regardless of membership in any political faction, just as
ministers sang love songs, and sinners sang psalms. Most bound books were not composed in a
way that suggested this cross-genre consumption, but periodicals give many examples, as do
manuscript sources. And while nobody at the time wrote about this as it related to song
definitions or categories, a look beyond the early-modern categorizations and particularly into
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.76

criticism of text rather than song, makes it apparent that the discussion was being had, if only in
the songs themselves.
151

In a strophic song culture that observed these styles in practice, the liberty songs were
oppositional songs out of their stylistic place in the larger order of things. As oppositional songs,
the liberty songs should have occupied the middle style – the sociable, often scommatic,
frequently didactic, sometimes bawdy, and always witty space of English men – expressing
discontent with wit instead of the passion that liberty song writers hadn’t the authority of God
or king to use. These writers – many of them professional men who had been trained in rhetoric
and knew exactly what this all meant – chose to usurp the high rhetorical style of God and
kings, even to gloat about it. But it is not the anger seen in, for example, anti-French loyal song
of the 1750s, that characterizes these songs, but a passion that infuses them, as well as the use
of specific tunes and textual tropes associated with other loyal song expression of the past – and
in some very important cases, the very recent past.
Liberty songs also had relatively little wit. Their arguments were presented intelligently,
and they were often well written, but like other high-tone songs they displayed very little
humor, especially of the specific variant of English wit that combined humor with smarts. In a
certain sense, this also made them stupider – a point constantly stressed in the oppositional
songs in dialogue with them. But the liberty songs sought the same willing suspension of
disbelief in order to get a job done, or a point across, similar to the effect of song in reconciling
Experience Wight Richardson with the God who had taken her four-year-old son. But as distinct
from God, who you had to worship and obey even though he regularly took your small children
away, or a King who occasionally asked you to give up your life, your land, or your son, the high

151
Even modern-day musicologists are unlikely to connect musical rhetoric with strophic song, i.e., the
familiar verse/chorus type used in folk expressions, as differentiated from “through-composed” song
familiar in opera and other compositional forms that use narrative and/or prose in their work.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.77

rhetorical style of religious and loyal song is not what you were allowed to deploy just because
your thought your tax burden was unjust.
Perhaps of greatest significance is that this “usurpation” or even revolution of song style
came long before any actual declaration in other text forms, at a time when only the most
radical thinkers could even have conceived of a split from empire. And yet the writers of liberty
songs launched this deliberate, knowing attempt in song at a time when they specifically did not
attempt to do so in other vehicles, such as the pamphlets so closely observed by Bailyn. The
distinction between middling and high rhetoric would have been obvious to anyone in that
culture who had any understanding of song style, but on some level, even the simplest example
of street singing, such as the loyal song anecdote related previously, was understood by all
present. The liberty songs would have been recognized as loyal song out of their imperial place,
relying not on the crown but on English nationhood for their authority, and predating the
Declaration by a decade.
This makes persuasive the argument that most people involved in this argument really
didn't want a war, didn't want to leave the empire, didn't think of themselves as anything other
than Englishmen – but that's not the way they sang about it. Perhaps that was the point;
maybe this new kind of loyal song – loyal to an idea of Englishness rather than an English king or
his ministers – was intended to be a bit threatening in a way that pamphlets stressing
reasonableness could not.
Tellingly, when William Almy of Newport wrote to his friend, Elisha Story, in late August
of 1765, he described in great detail a violent Stamp Act demonstration involving the
destruction of property and the hanging of an effigy, and even carefully wrote down every word
of a song urging murder and mayhem (to the tune of an otherwise sociable theater song) and
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.78

nailed to the gallows erected for the effigy, yet wrote about the song being read, but not
sung.
152

The absence of song tells us one more thing about the conflict. Liberty song was
deployed from 1764 up until the beginning of the hostilities, in every colonial town, on nearly
every colonial press, including many of the official presses. Those who didn’t print liberty songs
tended to be those who didn’t print any songs. But every time a big event where song was
involved produced an unexpected reaction – the “Liberty Song” being condemned in Parliament,
the Boston Massacre occurring two weeks after the publication of “The Massachusetts Liberty
Song” in a Boston broadside and almanac – those involved in song dissemination often stopped
doing it, at least for the moment. Whatever the role of song in these events – and it would be
overstating the case to think that song caused a massacre on its own – nevertheless, the
printers and songwriters involved backed off. But liberty song never really went away during
the prerevolutionary period, erupting at telling times and places where discontent over British
colonial policy recurred, and disappearing only after an actual rebellion was underway.
If all of this is so, then why haven’t historical accounts of the past two and a half
centuries told us so?
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, accounts of Anglophonic popular song on
both sides of the Atlantic was heading into at least four overlapping yet distinct threads: folk
song collection of the sort begun in the eighteenth century by collectors from Percy to
Ritson;
153
art song adopted by classical and romantic composers and integrated into orchestral
and operatic works; religious song expression that grew from a dialogue between psalm and

152
William Almy, Letter to Elisha Story, 29 August 1765. (Massachusetts Historical Society, manuscript).
153
Examples include: William Chappell, ed., Popular Music of the Olden Time: a Collection of Ancient
Songs, Ballads, and Dance Tunes, Illustrative of the National Music of England (London: press, 1855-
1859); and Child, English and Scottish Ballads, 1857.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.79

hymn to embrace forms and movements including shape-note singing to spirituals and,
eventually, gospel; and the articulation of national songs that performed the same function of
loyal songs of previous generations, but finding its authority in the corporate nation-state rather
than a personal monarchy, sung by citizens rather than subjects.
154
Each of these threads
figures into larger nineteenth-century historical moments and movements, all of them
ultimately caught up in national concerns of their own times. But it is the fourth type that helps
explain where the prerevolutionary songs “went.” The way that songs of this period are
remembered – and understood –was largely formed over the course of the nineteenth century,
as part of a larger impulse to explain the American national experiment.
There is also an element of timing as to when the collection and re-casting of American
national song began – not surprisingly, it was at exactly the time one might expect, when the
last people who lived during the revolution were dying, their legacy in danger of being lost along
with them. Though many thousands of examples had survived in broadsides, songsters, and
other print editions generated in the intervening years – and, in the case of the War of 1812,
provided a basis for the soundtrack for a new war
155
– in terms of context, a new generation of
collectors and journalists set to work to preserve what they could from what was left of the
original documents and from fading memories, in volumes collected after the period.

154
Examples include: William McCarty, Songs, Odes, and Other Poems, on National Subjects: Patriotic,
Naval and Military, Vols. I-III (Philadelphia: William McCarty, 1842); Moore, Songs and Ballads of the
American Revolution; and George Cary Eggleston, American War Ballads and Lyrics: A Collection of the
Songs and Ballads of the Colonial Wars, The Revolution, The War of 1812-1815, The War with Mexico, and
The Civil War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, 1889).
155
Vestiges of revolutionary-era songs are everywhere in songs of the War of 1812, as indeed the conflict
itself dealt with unfinished business between the same combatants. A number of recent works deal with
the ongoing nature of Anglo-American tension (some of them using song as evidence), including: Alan
Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2010); Sam W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British
World (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Kariann Akemi Yokota, Unbecoming British:
How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (Oxford University Press, 2011).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.80

One of the earliest collections of early-republic songs, The Isaiah Thomas Broadside
Ballad collection (ITBB), was purchased by its namesake in 1813 from impoverished Boston
ballad-monger Nathaniel Coverly and includes “298 distinct broadsides” of “365 song, ballad,
and hymn texts and 30 prose texts,” described as topical, religious, “folk,” and popular “stage
and parlor” songs. While the broadsides topically cover the years and events from revolution to
the date of purchase, the texts, described by Thomas as representative of what was “in vogue
with the Vulgar,” could have been printed at any point during the intervening three decades.
For purposes of this investigation, the collection cannot be used in and of itself to pinpoint a
particular text or tune before 1813, though it offers confirmation as to some of the ballads or
themes that survived from the revolutionary era into the next generation, and in what textual
(and sometimes graphic) form.
156

Extant examples of another source type, songsters, date from the last decades of the
eighteenth century into the first decades of the nineteenth. Only a few colonial examples
remain, but these collections of songs proliferated in the early national period and exist in
sufficient numbers to track specific song titles and tunes as well as where they were used at that
time in that source type.
157

An early extensive treatment of revolutionary-era song was in a collection that, like the
ITBB, were not drawn exclusively from the revolutionary era. In 1842, William McCarty
assembled three volumes spanning song drawn largely from “cheap print” sources – periodicals,
pamphlets, and broadsides – relating to the entire Anglophonic history of the continent. In

156
Publication in 2014 of this long-awaited collection by the American Antiquarian Society followed
articles providing information on its content, notably: Arthur F. Schrader, “Broadside Ballads of Boston,
1813: The Isaiah Thomas Collection,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Vol. 98, Iss. 1,
1988, pp. 69-70. The songs were never categorized until the mid-twentieth century, but the mingling of
thematic categorization (topical, religious) with functional (stage, parlor) and dissemination (folk) suggests
the same kind of taxonomy challenges faced by earlier collectors.
157
Robert M. Keller. Early American Songsters: 1734-1820 (online resource, 2009).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.81

practical purposes, that meant material produced largely from the late-eighteenth century
forward, and most of that since the turn of his own century. The categories identified in these
volumes – patriotic, naval, and military – suggest a bellicose view of “songs, odes, and other
poems.” McCarty’s sense of urgency to capture something fleeting was palpable.

The compiler … cannot flatter himself that he has all that may be
obtained. Many copies of songs and ballads from the revolution, and of the
war of 1812, he is persuaded yet remain in private hands. He would
respectfully solicit from persons possessing such productions, the loan of
their copies for publication : it being his intention to publish all that can be
obtained. Some of the ballads included in this work, may be deemed of
small poetical merit ; but the present and future generation of Americans
will hardly disdain those strains, however homely, which cheered and
animated our citizen-soldiers and seamen, ‘in the times that tried men’s
souls,’ at the camp-fire or on the forecastle.

McCarty stressed that certain of his song introductions had been provided by a witness
to the events “a short time before his death,” making clear that song was a threatened national
asset to be preserved, and its collection, a duty.
158

One of the last works that had the assistance of the passing generation – or at least
those who had known some of its members – was published as the nation prepared to enter yet
another war caused by questions of nation left unanswered by the revolution. Frank Moore, a
journalist and the son of the librarian of the New-York Historical Society (and brother to his

158
McCarty, Songs, Odes, and Other Poems, p. 6.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.82

successor), combined the skills of academia and the fourth estate to search out the increasingly
scarce stories behind the songs of the revolution and to place them into a historic context. His
was the first major work to deal exclusively with the revolutionary era, producing not only a
song collection but a history of the songs, similar to what William Chappell was doing for British
folk song an ocean away.
159
Though most of his sources came from “newspapers … periodical(s)
… (and) original ballad-sheets and broadsides,” Moore also used “recollections of a few surviving
soldiers, who heard and sang them amid the trials of the camp and field.”
160
The ninety-two
songs, arranged chronologically and dated from 1765 to 1783, are not categorized, each given
its own short chapter and providing far more detail than any similar edition before.
Unfortunately, even with his familial connections at New York’s finest archive and
extensive support from a network of other repositories across the northeastern United States,
Moore did not have the benefit of modern historical methods that would only emerge later, so
the collection is plagued by missing citations, elementary factual errors, and maddening missed
opportunities.
Mid-nineteenth-century historians continued to use song as anecdote, and though this
approach largely would be jettisoned by later historians, these early histories remain useful to
inquiries into song culture for the tantalizing hints they sometimes drop, almost in the same way
a novel might.
161
Working across the second half of the century, it is possible to get a more
complete account of liberty song in them than in any modern history. Some were written by

159
Chappell’s Popular Songs of the Olden Times was written in the late 1850s as was the earliest edition of
the pioneering scholarship conducted by Francis James Child, contributing to the aforementioned growth
of the field of ballad collection into true ballad studies.
160
Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, p. v.
161
A good summary of the professionalization of the discipline can be read in Van Tassel, David D., “From
Learned Society to Professional Organization: The American Historical Association, 1884-1900,” The
American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Oct., 1984), pp. 929-956; the article describes Lossing as
among the “professionally literary (man)” who had once populated the field, and Winsor, a member of
the new breed that came “‘to organize a new society, and fill a new field.’”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.83

authors who, like Moore, had actually had access to the last survivors, yet it is still not possible
to sort out which “Massachusetts Liberty Song” Mercy Otis Warren wrote (if at all), or even how
anyone knew or thought she had, because the author didn’t cite his sources, and those who
came later didn’t ask.
162

Inquiry into revolutionary song culture during the long nineteenth century ended with
one final attempt to identify and explain the meanings behind the best-known national songs as
part of a larger, long-running debate over the need for, and selection of, a U.S. national anthem.
Oscar Sonneck, Librarian of Congress for the music division, produced a lengthy report on
leading national songs. Among them was the best-remembered song of the revolutionary era,
“Yankee Doodle,” which Sonneck reported had passed into use primarily as an instrumental
tune by the time of the report and probably shouldn’t have been considered a song at all.
Nevertheless, he complied the most exhaustive research ever on the song, tracing every
mention of the text or tune he could find going back into the early eighteenth century.
The problem, as Sonneck acknowledged, was that the sources were less than “reliable …
crumbl(ing) under the slightest critical pressure,” specifically referring to one account as a
“bouquet of historical gossip and blunder.” Significantly, Sonneck found no discussion of the
song’s existence prior to the prerevolutionary period except in post-revolutionary sources.
163

Though “Yankee Doodle” had been among the most prominent and widely used tunes and
tropes of the early national period, it could never be considered a serious candidate for a

162
Lossing claimed the “Massachusetts Liberty Song” published in several Boston almanac and broadside
examples in 1760-1770 “was believed to have been written by Mrs. Mercy Warren,” but gave no citation
supporting that belief. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I, pp. 486-487. The authorship
of “The Massachusetts Liberty Song” has been attributed to Benjamin Church as well (suggested by
Adams in his “Sensations” letter); Warren biographer Nancy Rubin Stuart posited that “Even if … Church
authored it, Mercy’s exasperation with the British and American Tories was already spilling over into her
correspondence” in a way consistent with the song. Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The
Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009), pp. 36-37.
163
Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner” “Hail Columbia” “America”
“Yankee Doodle” (Washington Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. 5, 97.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.84

national anthem, as it did not “direct itself to our sense of majesty, solemnity, dignity.” But
Sonneck did identify what he saw as the true value of the humorous, spirited song to national
objectives, quoting from this 1799 songster version of the lyrics: “It suits for peace, it suits for
fun, / It suits as well for fighting.”
164

In the same year as the Sonneck assessment, National Magazine, a relatively new
Boston publication that succeeded Good Cheer, undertook to identify the “heart songs” most
“dear to the American people,” and boasted the contributions of 25,000 people to the collection
of more than 350 songs that the four-year search produced.
165
The publisher, Joe Mitchell
Chapple, ran into the same sort of taxonomical challenges that had faced his predecessors when
he attempted a categorization of ten “classes:”

“It was soon discovered that no balanced classification could be made—
the tremendous preponderance of love songs, hymns, college songs, ballads,
operatic and patriotic airs, any one of which might have been adjudged correctly
to two or more classes, soon convinced the judges that to make the book a true
reflection of the contributors' tastes and feelings—a Heart Song book in the true
sense—some classes would have to be abridged, and selections made with a
view to securing those songs about which cluster personal and heartfelt
associations.”
166

164
Sonneck, Report, 1909, p. 79.
165
Joe Mitchell Chapple, ed. Heart Songs: Dear to the American people, And by them Contributed in the
Search for Treasured Songs Initiated by the NATIONAL MAGAZINE (Boston MA: The Chapple Publishing
Company, Ltd., 1909). Online resource: the Hathi Trust Digital Library
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000055388 .
166
Chapple, Heart Songs, pp. iii.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.85

The first of these “abridged” categories, “Patriotic and war songs,” includes 54 songs, of
which several used themes from the revolutionary era or claimed tunes contemporary to the
period, yet possibly only three of them would have been recognizable to the generation that
lived as the third quarter of the eighteenth century moved into the fourth: “The British
Grenadiers,” given in its British form; “Free America,” the 1774 parody of the same attributed
to Dr. Joseph Warren; and “Yankee Doodle,” unattributed but with a dozen verses apparently
based on several versions of the song first printed in the nineteenth century, included under the
categories “lullabies and child songs” and “dancing songs.”
167
If National Magazine’s collection
process for Heart Songs indeed captured something representative of what Americans
remembered and held “dear” of their national song heritage at the beginning of the twentieth
century, then it confirms that what remained of revolutionary era song culture following more
than a century of collection and revisionism owed more to the century just concluded than to
the one that actually produced the songs.
In short, all these nineteenth-century efforts to explain the significance of
prerevolutionary song culture composed in the authors’ own times for their own reasons did as
much to obscure as to elucidate any meaningful insight into the use of song leading up to the
American Revolution, as the participants would have understood it, instead relying heavily on
repetition of what people said about it after the fact.
Moreover, the lack of a roadmap toward understanding the significance of rhetorical
style as understood but not disclosed in the third quarter of the eighteenth century meant that
the misunderstanding of what the songs meant to the coming of the American Revolution would
continue into the next century. If not Yankee Doodle, then what?

167
Chapple, Heart Songs, pp. iii, 44-45, 382, [514-515]; “The British Grenadiers” and “Free America” only
appear under the “patriotic” song category.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.86

To unlock that meaning, one must go to the source – or, as it turns out, the sources.

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.87

Chapter Two: Source

Historians often face “source problems.” For example, where only limited
contemporary sources survive to answer particular historical questions, some of those that do
exist may be considered “compromised” because their creators or compilers might be thought
to be not credible for some reason, or possibly misinformed. Even in cases where credible
sources are plentiful, sometimes materials that could provide context for understanding them
did not survive in the documentary record.
For prerevolutionary Anglophonic song, an additional problem exists: even the very
best assessments of the past gave equal weight to sources first documented in the nineteenth
century along with those of the eighteenth. This may have been an attempt to compile a
sufficiently large data set from which to draw conclusions, or perhaps a lack of secondary
scholarship examining the problems attendant on the use of song sources compiled only when
the revolutionary generation was passing on, or even later. Without the great access afforded
to present-day researchers by way of large digital collections and modern methodological
practices, earlier authors could not have known the extent to which the early song collections of
the nineteenth century (and the survivor accounts they relied upon) were not always consistent
with documentary evidence from the actual period they attempted to describe.
168

168
Arthur Schlesinger’s 1954 William and Mary Quarterly note attempted to make sense of sixty-five
songs the author had collected over a lifetime in the archives and encouraged future scholars to take this
“first attempt” and “correct any errors and fill in the gaps.” Schlesinger, “Patriot Propaganda,” p. 88.
Schlesinger’s songs and categorizations can be found in Appendix E. Appendix F lists 647 revolutionary
era songs assembled by Arthur F. Schrader in his massive, unfinished undertaking with the working title
Songs Under the Liberty Tree; like Schlesinger, Schrader comingled sources contemporary to the period
with those documented during the century that followed, a pattern followed by countless other scholarly
and popular histories of revolutionary era songs from the early nineteenth century up until the present
day. The sources consulted by Schlesinger and Schrader are listed in Appendix G.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.88

Today, thanks to the existence of databases that include large numbers of songs printed
or scribed in the eighteenth century – cataloged by institutional archives and individual
collectors and compilers alike
169
– historians seeking something like critical mass no longer have
to rely on mediated nineteenth-century assessments complied by individuals who had
comparatively few sources to consider and compare, and who, in some cases, had personal
connections to the stories they told that may have affected their views.
170
Using the large
number of sources available today, it is possible to cast a very wide net and consider far more
print and manuscript texts than could have been attempted in the past, allowing us to leave the
nineteenth-century materials to be considered for what they actually are – evidence of how the
eighteenth-century story was received and reframed by the generations that followed. The
songs collected and categorized or explained at a later date can provide a useful comparison to
contemporary material – but wherever versions disagree, there is no substitute for the original.
British Colonial Americans had access to songs from many sources in the third quarter of
the eighteenth century, as attested to by the presence of extant documents themselves as well
as newspaper and broadside advertisements of the period.
171
An eight-step methodology helps
in interpreting whether a text might have been intended to be understood as a song.

169
In addition to growing online archives such as the Archive of Americana, Eighteenth Century Collections
Online (ECCO), and Early English Books Online (EEBO), large numbers of songs from the pre-revolutionary
period can be found in the databases Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, assembled by
Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller; Early American Songsters, complied by
Robert M. Keller; and Gillian B. Anderson’s Music in New York during the American Revolution. These
sources use data contemporary to the period only, the same method used in this dissertation.
170
Frank Moore, John F. Watson, and Benson J. Lossing are representative of nineteenth-century writers
who repeated stories about songs but did not cite how they knew them. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of
the Revolution, Vol. 1, pp. 486-487; Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution; John F.
Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time … in Two Volumes (Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott & Co., 1870).
171
Advertisements provide long lists of mostly unidentifiable song and music sources available for
purchase from colonial booksellers and even ship captains at their vessels or lodgings, but unless a title
matches a known source or a documented reference, it is difficult to evaluate the scope or impact of
these sources on Anglo-American song culture, other than to say that they were there. Appendix H lists
musical items, including books and single sheets containing songs, advertised in print. N.B., while oral
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.89

Table 2.1. Clues for song intentionality, British Colonial America, 1750-1776
172

Structure: stanzas or other clues in the structure that look singable (as opposed to long lines
of rhymed verses with no break or refrain – though there are examples of these indicated for
singing, too); N.B., song does not have to rhyme or have regular meter, either, as in
“through-composed” song (common in opera, recitative)
 

Meter: recognizable meter (common, long, short, etc., or the initials CM, LM, SM); it was up
to an individual whether to sing or read
implied Genre: identification in title or text by the inclusion of a song genre (song, psalm, hymn,
anthem, lied, ballad, recitative, aria, catch, glee, etc.)

Name: use of the name of a known song in a title or a text

explicit
Refrain:
173
use of a repeated element of any sort whether familiar or not, but especially a
familiar one repeated at the end of a line or stanza at regular intervals

Notation: the inclusion of musical notation to enable it to be performed, though not
necessarily sung

Tune direction: instructions like "to the tune of ..." or “to its own melody” provide more
active direction to sing

Singing direction: the most active clue to singing intention is where singing directions were
provided, or where instructions were given for song performance such as how to project
song lyrics to large groups; N.B., the direction "Fit to be sung in Streets” not only suggests
singing but where to do it

The study of song in British Colonial America is necessarily an Atlantic story, given the
fluidity of sources crossing the ocean, in all directions – so the inclusion of all Anglophonic print
song instances is part of the story. Each unique “instance” of an identified song is, for purposes
of this investigation, considered to be distinct – even an identical text, reprinted verbatim and

transmission of song would certainly have been a major conduit for song, it is beyond the scope of this
project except in cases where instances of oral song transmission are documented in contemporary print
or manuscript sources.
172
Many modern schemes for reanimating songs through the reunion of song texts to tunes have been
devised to allow present-day performers to know what to do with them; examples include: Ross W.
Duffin, Shakespeare’s Songbook (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004); Dianne Dugaw, Warrior Women and
Popular Balladry, 1650-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); David Atkinson, The English
Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, and Practice (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002). This project explores
where contemporaries of these songs would have known what to do with them, and also (to the extent
that we can know), who was telling them what to do with them, and why. The intentionality chart
provides a spectrum of possibilities, ranging from texts that merely look like they could have been sung to
examples of explicit direction for singing. Even examples of passive intent are important, given the lack of
documentary evidence of singing, even in places and cases where singing likely would have been present.
173
Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou argued that as early as the 13
th
century the presence of a repeated refrain
(like the burden in poetry, or the chorus of a broadside ballad), is one of the key ways of determining
whether texts in Middle English lyric poetry were intended to be sung. Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou, “I have
a yong suster:” Popular Song and the Middle English Lyric (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.90

cited from another source, is a separate “instance” of that song’s presence in that culture, if it
was the work of a different disseminator and/or reached a different audience at a different
place and time. The criteria for inclusion in the database, first, is songs that appeared in
documents published, advertised, or written down in British Colonial America between 1750-
1776;
174
second, is songs in documents published in Britain but mentioned in other sources as
existing in the American colonies during that period; and lastly, songs in any document that
could have reached British Colonial America during the period. The most useful examples, of
course, are those for which there is a rationale to believe they were present in the Anglo-
American colonies, but the other songs are useful because of what they contribute to a larger
cultural understanding of song’s intersection with these people at these times.
Of the nearly two thousand surviving song texts that comprise the database of song
instances examined in this project, the overwhelming majority come from print sources. These
print songs will be addressed first, while the relatively small set of extant manuscript song
instances will be considered afterward.
175
Though small in number, it is the manuscript sources
that suggest how individuals might have thought about, and used, the songs they made an effort
to document, in ways that differed from the documents produced in print culture.
176

The print sources are considered in two categories: bound and unbound materials.
Bound materials – which include both sacred and secular songbooks – took more time, material,
and effort to produce, and could be expected to have had a longer shelf life. Less durable
unbound publications could be produced in single sheets as broadsides or folded to make
newspapers, or even cheaply and quickly stitched together in handfuls of up to a few dozen

174
Some leeway allowed for manuscript sources to 1780 given the small number of extant manuscripts
relating to song that were located; post-1776 materials are clearly identified and considered as such.
175
Appendix I comprises this database of song instances.
176
A smaller set of military manuscript song tunes will be examined in Chapter Three, “Tune.”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.91

sheets and sold as pamphlets, with songs being found in pamphlet formats including songsters
(including freemasonry collections), plays, almanacs, and magazines, as well as in topical
pamphlets that sometimes contained a song or two.
177

These distinctions are important to a discussion of song rhetoric because certain
rhetorical styles are more commonly found in certain source types.
178
Songs that fell into more
accepted or conventional rhetorical styles found their way into longer-lived sources; those that
didn’t, did not. Moreover, of the more “acceptable” songs, those having more general, less
topical, themes, were also more likely to appear in books of larger runs, which presumably had a
longer shelf life.

177
There is relevant scholarship on this distinction to be cited, none of it relating to song. Lawrence
Wroth situated bookbinding within the printing shop during the colonial period, a complex chore involving
wood or pasteboard, leather, and glue or paste for creating a cover, and different kinds of thread for
horizontal “bands” on the spine, and sewing – and a matter of great labor and pride for the entire family.
Wroth called book production “The most tedious and difficult task that confronted a colonial printer,”
though the simpler process of printing a weekly newspaper was the “chief burden of any typical printing
office” that undertook one, because each issue “should count fifty-two items, each representing many
hours weekly of editorial and typographical labor.” Similar rationale can be applied to London printing,
from whence came a significant percentage of songbooks and magazines sold by American booksellers.
N.B., simple stitching of shorter print forms such as the pamphlet is not considered “binding.” Lawrence
Wroth, The Colonial Printer. Charlottesville: Dominion Books/The University Press of Virginia, 1964,
especially pp. 191-198; and Lawrence Wroth, “Book Production and Distribution from the Beginning to
the American Revolution,” in Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, The Book in America (New York: R. R. Bowker
Company, 1951), especially pp. 26-29.
178
Being somewhat hesitant to impose categories not specified by actual participants in song culture of
the third quarter of the eighteenth century, I nevertheless believe that, by inferring rhetorical
understandings common among those participants and applying them to song categories in a way they
never specifically did themselves is indeed helpful in understanding the otherwise tacit intent and
usefulness of songs. Most complicated is the way the categories can overlap, as in a pastoral song like
“Collinet and Phebe” taking on the rhetoric of liberty song. But it is exactly this overlap of liberty song
“liberties” into other categories of song that was perhaps the greatest impact of this “revolution” in
songwriting; the number of individual songs with characteristics like Dickenson’s “The Liberty Song” is
relatively small, but they were among the most frequently repeated in other publications. The following
comment from 1788’s Convivial Songster on the classification of songs is resonant of these concerns
about imposing such classifications. The subtitle of the book makes clear the content – “Humourous,
Satirical.Bachanalian” – but the preface nevertheless apologizes that “Classing the songs, it was thought,
would add to the elegance and perspicuity of the book ; but, in doing this, it was almost impossible to
determine to which particular class some of them belonged : an error of this kind, therefore, may easily
be pardoned.” The Convivial Songster, p. vii.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.92

High rhetorical style, appealing to passion, often demanding a willing suspension of
disbelief, and drawing its authority from God, king, and country, is represented in: all forms of
religious song, even those that overlap with the pastoral or didactic; civic ceremonial songs such
as those composed for college commencements; and “loyal” song, ranging from national types
of anthem to songs commemorating the king’s birthday. Into this category crept the “liberty
songs” that claimed their authority based on the rights of freeborn Englishmen.
179

The mid-level rhetorical style of song, appealing to reason, concerned itself with the
temporal sphere, and included political songs of the traditional style – those that relied on wit
and reason rather than passion to carry their point, with examples that account for a greater
percentage of oppositional song in the earlier part of the search period and continued to be
present throughout the period, and include a specific set of “counter” oppositional songs in
dialogue with the liberty-song writers. Mid-level style was also used in topical and didactic
songs of all sorts, and in sociable songs of the theater and the tavern.
The low rhetorical style of Addison’s “country” sector with their pastoral themes and
many forms of “love” song was, again, not “low” in the sense of obscene or mean, but in its
simplicity and purity – even though country themes sometimes entered into the realm of lewd
song. These songs appealed not to passion or reason, but to a certain virtue argued to be
embedded in the very nature of the trueborn Englishman, extolling and encouraging certain
behaviors particularly as regarded love and war.
Songs in any of these categories could be “political,” in that their subject matter could
enter into the political discourse of the moment. For example, the 23
rd
Psalm might have meant
something very different to a society at peace than it might have to one at war. But while any

179
I include liberty songs in this rhetorical category because, with very few exceptions, song texts carrying
these messages are not humorous, even when paired to tunes otherwise associated with sociable texts.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.93

song could be political in theme or tone, a distinction can be drawn based on what a song text
asked the singer or audience to do: to laugh, or be angry; to fight, or love; to despair, or drink.
Many of the songs examined here straddle multiple categories, but it is the various ways that
songs could present a specific political problem, and encourage a specific response, that reveal
the most about the coming of armed conflict and the break with empire.
By far, the richest print troves for explicit political song were the unbound formats that
could be produced cheaply, and quickly (and, often, disposed of or repurposed just as quickly):
newspapers and broadsides, and certain pamphlets where the inclusion of a song could amplify
the meaning of the main text, and even make the larger text easier to remember, and repeat.
Observations by Rousseau and Ritson regarding the short-term value of “parodies” and
“topical” songs ring true in the song data, meaning that representations of a topical nature that
tended to lose currency over time may not have been the best bet for an investment in binding,
for reasons of profit as well as politics or pragmatism. Less persuasive is the argument that
printers in the search period worried about getting “caught” publishing controversial texts,
except in extreme cases like the 1750 “Old Tenor” ballads. All newspaper printers, regardless of
political leanings – and sometimes even official newspapers – published all kinds of political
material, including liberty songs, and were tied to all by name and place. But in bound examples
during the third quarter of the eighteenth century, it is rare to find political songs in extant
bound books other than loyal songs.
180

No song type was represented more widely in the bound print medium than religious
song, nor can its significance in early American print be overestimated. The first complete book

180
It bears noting that political songs that were not explicitly “loyal” songs were not necessarily disloyal;
sentiments expressed in song are generally and consistently favorable to king and country until very late
in the crisis, when contingent circumstances (the outbreak of shooting, the adoption the Declaration, etc.)
was accompanied by different song language.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.94

published in British Colonial America, 1640’s The Whole Booke of Psalmes (more commonly
known as the Bay Psalm Book), was deemed by Lawrence Wroth to be not only a sacred
songbook but “a work of literature expressive of the intellectual and spiritual interests of the
community which produced it,” and a harbinger for similar cultural and intellectual production
to come.
181

Sacred songs – found in hymnals, psalters, and, later, in multi-format collections of
sacred song including fuguing songs and anthems – include examples of the religious variant of
the high-toned rhetorical style as well as pastoral-style themes and tunes, and as a group were
almost always segregated in print from other types of song. But though some sacred song could
sound and read similarly to other song genres, their function never would have been confused
with loyal song to the monarch or pastorals about shepherd and shepherdess, though the tonal
and stylistic similarities would have been understood. Similarly, the “anthem” song form that
emerged in later early-modern religious song also served secular purposes, especially for
observances honoring the king or his family, or, within a community, at civic ceremonies such as
college commencements – but never would have been confused with the sacred variant.
The vast majority of religious song appeared in bound books, but not all of it.
Occasionally, psalms or hymns appeared in full-text in pamphlets as an adjunct to a sermon, or
in snippets to provide spiritual encouragement in an almanac. Newspapers often used hymns
and psalms to mark the arrival of a new season, or to moralize over a tragic current event. And

181
Wroth in Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, The Book in America, 1951, p. 7. While psalms and hymns were
segregated in print culture, sometimes a “secular” hymn – “An Evening Hymn,” “A Hymn in a Spring
Morning,” “A Hymn to Contentment,” “A Morning Hymn,” “Execution Hymn,” etc. – slipped into secular
sources such as newspapers or broadsides, as did psalm references in those sources, almanacs and
others; we cannot know if these instances were intended to be sung, only that they were recognizable as
songs. Only in manuscripts were sacred and secular songs truly comingled, reflecting something about
the way individuals collected songs meaningful to them and archived them in scarce documentary
resources.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.95

even the least durable print format, the broadside, could be used when a religious song was
needed for fast, cheap distribution, such as psalms or hymns written to be distributed at
executions, or to supplement bound books.
182

In secular song books, the most common topic was the love song so privileged by the
eighteenth-century collectors and commentators from (the supposed collector) Ambrose to
Ritson. Whether devoted entirely to song, or including song as a category along with others,
these books often took a large percentage of their songs from the theater, often referencing the
play, the venue, or even the singers who had popularized them.
183

Taken together, sacred and secular songbooks provided the largest numbers of
individual song titles that reached British Colonial American readers, either those produced
domestically or imported, based on the sheer number of songs they could contain – hundreds in
a single volume, adding up to thousands or even tens of thousands of song titles or song
instances in surviving examples.
184

Print advertisements and booksellers’ lists in single-sheet form, along with archival
holdings in major U.S. archives, provided a sample of which religious songbooks – hymnals,
psalters, and texts that included a few songs for illustrative purposes, such as a hymn for each

182
Broadsides could also be repurposed by their owners, such as a small religious broadside pasted into a
copy of the bound psalter, creating a “new,” all-print edition based upon an individual’s intentionality.
Das Kleine Davidische Psalterspiel. Germantown: Christopher Sauer, 1764.
183
Pamphlets were often bound together in collections after the fact, but I do not include these with the
“books” because of my interest in their intended format at the time of their first printing.
184
Wroth estimated that “the total output of the American presses from 1639-1783 as numbering
86,000,” dwarfing the 18,300 examples identified by Evans. Wroth did not suggest what percentage of
these might have included songs, though my database shows song texts in only a few hundred of them,
ranging from hymnals and songsters with hundreds of songs, to single songs on single sheets. Wroth
called one example of a psalm book print run in 1756 Annapolis as “representative,” with 501 copies
containing the standard 130+ psalms., and he also included several formats used for song (“the annual
almanac ... the book of hymn and psalm tunes ... the broadside ballad”) among the “staples of the colonial
American press ... (that provide) a livelier picture of colonial social life than may be attained from any
other single source known to the historian.” Wroth in Lehmann-Haupt, The Book in America, 1951, pp.
27, 35, 52.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.96

chapter – outnumbered secular songbooks by a greater than a three-to-one margin. In addition,
religious books were produced in multiple editions in larger percentages than secular books.
These religious books did not include secular songs, though secular songbooks tended to blend
songs from all categories – love, sociable, some political (of the loyal sort), and sometimes a few
hymns or psalms for good measure. So, as a recent dissertation found, the story of bound print
song in British Colonial America would appear to be largely a religious story.
185

To summarize, most examples of books with songs were exclusively religious; most
tended not to be issued in multiple editions – possibly by a margin of two to one – though for
religious song the ratio was greater, perhaps a 40/60 split. Given the multiple printings of
religious songbooks housed in archives and the relatively large number of songs they contained,
it is safe to say that the largest number of song instances appearing in British Colonial America
print were probably religious.
186
But this does not minimize the importance of secular song
culture, as suggested by secular song’s overwhelming predominance in all other print formats
among colonial American sources.
Two other songbook categories straddle the bound/unbound print divide: pamphlets
known as “songsters,” i.e., collections of song lyrics without musical notation, and Freemason
books. Both categories survive in both bound and unbound examples.
The songster emerged as a format during the mid-eighteenth century. These were
collections of popular songs that were thought to be so well-known, either on their own merit
or by popularity of the tunes to which they were set, that there was no need to provide musical

185
Leavenworth, “Accounting for Taste,” p. xi.
186
And the numbers are likely larger, perhaps due to bibliographers’ practices; commissions like John
Holt’s printing of Isaac Pinto’s Shabbat prayer translation, which includes several psalms, is typical of
publications that do not come up in a search for “psalms.” Prayers for Shabbath, Rosh-Hashanah, and
Kippur, or the Sabbath, the beginning of the year, and the day of atonements; with the Amidah and
Musaph of the Moadim, or solemn seasons. According to the Order of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews.
Translated by Isaac Pinto (New-York: John Holt, A.M. 5526. [1766]).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.97

accompaniment, obviating the need for expensive musical fonts or engraving, or additional
column space to accommodate printed notation. The songster’s earlier cousin, the “garland,”
187

increased in popularity over the seventeenth century as the availability of musical notation in
“cheap print” was dwindling to the point that so-called “notation” at the top of broadsheets, as
noted before, was just as likely to be a decorative graphic as an actual melody.
188
A songster
could be bound or unbound, comprise four pages or four hundred,
189
and, by the nineteenth
century, would usually have had a single theme for all of its songs, or at least a focus on the
interests of the advertiser or patron who sponsored it. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish an
eighteenth-century songster from a bound songbook having no notation, other than by the way
it was described by its editor, or, later, by its bibliographers.
190
Though treated “dismissive(ly)”
by Child, the songster is today considered by folk song scholars as playing a similar role to the
field recordings of the modern era, in the way it captured the songs said to have been sung by
their customers’ grandmothers’ generation, and, as one songster introduction claimed, “we can
confidently add, also their grandmothers, and their grandmothers before them.”
191

187
“Garland” first appeared in the mid-16
th
century as a botanical metaphor for collected verse and
stories, but the first explicit use of garland for a collection including songs was Thomas Deloney’s 1631
The garland of good will. The term continued to be used in the same way up until the early 19
th
century,
though by that time not nearly on the same scale as the songster format that surpassed it in the late
eighteenth century.
188
Duckles and Zimmerman, Words to Music, 1967;” and Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, p.
xii.
189
The songster devoted to the Battle of the Kegs, 1807, has four pages; the second volume of the
songster Illustrations of Masonry is one of several with 400 or more pages (and when combined with its
first volume, the set numbers 760 pages. Robert M. Keller, Early American Songsters.
190
Irving Lowens, A Bibliography of Songsters Printed in America Before 1821 (Worcester, MA: American
Antiquarian Society, 1976).
191
Norm Cohen, “The Forget-Me-Not Songsters and Their Role in the American Folksong Tradition,” in
American Music, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 2005), p. 191. While Cohen argues that songs captured in print
can accurately reflect song culture beyond the grandparental generation, examples like “The Bold
Canadian” – which has never turned up in a source before the twentieth century even though its
documenters claim an oral tradition of its significance during the War of 1812 – show the problems
inherent in accepting the memory of even a very credible grandchild as being somewhat equivalent to an
extant source. James H. Coyne, “The Bold Canadian: A Ballad of the War of 1812,” Ontario Historical
Society, Vol. 23, 1926.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.98

For each of the nine songsters known to have been published and sold in British Colonial
America prior to 1776, advertisements suggest that there were dozens more available for sale,
many imported from Britain while others were compiled by local booksellers but have not
survived. Of these nine American songsters, five were primarily “sociable” but spanned all
categories of song, especially love, with heavy emphasis on theater songs. Two of the songsters
were intended for children, putting them into an instructive category, and two were explicitly
topical, both printed on the press at the Ephrata community for its German-language audience:
1769’s Six New Political Songs and 1775’s The Peasants (Farmers?) Stand.
192
Though the scope
of this project is Anglophonic song, it is impossible to dismiss the integrated nature of printing
and print consumption in the greater Philadelphia area, nor Anglo-American involvement in that
market.
193
And, as the analysis of manuscript sources later in this chapter will suggest, song
consumption, particularly among members of émigré communities, could in some cases be
bilingual. The Ephrata songsters are the only explicitly political songsters among surviving

192
Only one of the two Ephrata songsters is political in name, but both include songs consistent with an
ideology that is at once faith-based and isolationist. The press at Ephrata was owned by the celibate,
vegan community founded by Conrad Beissel in the 1740s; the first of the pamphlets containing song was
published shortly after his death in 1768 and the latter in 1775, quite possibly after the spring conflicts in
Massachusetts given the songs’ references to the disruptions of war. The Ephrata press is best known for
the bibles and hymnals it produced for this and other Anabaptist communities in the German-speaking
regions north and west of Philadelphia. But the songs in Sechs Neue Politische Lieder and Der Bauren-
Stand are not likely to have been liturgical, but possibly could have been sung in private gatherings or
even as work songs, or even read for their textual import – though the word lieder indicates they were
intended to be understood as songs. More on the Ephrata Community, its press, and Beissel’s role in the
development of a proto-serialist (a form of atonaly) music typology is available in Julius Friedrich Sachse,
The Music of the Ephrata Cloister (New York: AMS Press, 1903).
193
Willi Paul Adams’ chapter gives a good overview of the integration of German-language presses with
other Philadelphia print media, but he ignored the Ephrata press, possibly because it didn’t produce a
newspaper but perhaps also because it was a cloistered religious sect rather than a community one. The
other printers that were covered by Adams were largely not involved in song culture beyond religious
texts, though in fairness, as Adams pointed out, by “at least from the 1760s on” the Sower and Miller
German-language newspapers in the Philadelphia area “were thoroughly secular in tone, though not
indifferent to religion.” Willi Paul Adams, “The Colonial German-language Press and the American
Revolution,” in Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds. The Press & the American Revolution (Worcester:
American Antiquarian Society, 1980).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.99

songster examples of the prerevolutionary period, casting God and Jesus as the first “farmers”
and warning of the dangers to farming and survival caused by warfare.
There is another exceptional group in this source type: “songsters” produced by and for
Freemasons in British Colonial America are woven throughout with topical material. Freemason
rituals and socializing were so noted for their singing that not only do Masonic song collections
placed into the songster category by bibliographers, but sometimes Masons’ handbooks called
“Constitutions,” which provided instructions for lodges for their rituals as well as their singing,
are categorized by some archives as songsters, too. Many of these Constitutions found in
American archives were published in London, Edinburgh, or Dublin, but a few examples of
American-produced Freemasons’ Constitutions survive as well as at least two examples of
individual Mason songsters comprised entirely of songs.
194

True to the category, Freemason books, like songsters, never give tune notation,
recalling the dismissive remark by Ritson about Freemasons’ songs: “those who want them
know where to find them.”
195
But tune direction was sometimes given in the names of secular
tunes to which masonic themes were parodied, such as (give some names).
196
But tunes to the
central songs of Freemasonry given in every Constitution handbook are not given, suggesting
that, unless you were a member, you were not expected – or perhaps even wanted – to be
singing them.
197

194
The introduction to one song collection argued that “Ballad-Makers” – whose members he counted
Homer and the odists, ancient and new – “are a more ancient, more numerous, and more noble Society
than” even those other notable singers, “the boasted Free-Masons.” [Philips], A Collection of Old Ballads
[1723], vol. I, pp. vj.
195
Ritson, Selection Collection, 1783, I, viii.
196
For example, The Free Masons Pocket-Companion of 1765 included parody texts set to loyal (“Rule
Britannia”), sociable (“Derry Down,” “Which Nobody Can Deny [Green-sleeves]”) and a pastoral love song (“Rural
Felicity [Haste to the Wedding]”). The Free Masons Pocket-Companion (Edinburgh: Auld and Smellie, 1765),
219-223, 225-226, 230-231, 243-244.
197
One edition of Constitutions printed in 1756 in London included “Some of the usual Free Masons
Songs” common to such books, and while the songs sometimes provide information on authors and
composers (“set to music by Brother Gilding”), the notation or other clues to the melodies are not. John
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.100

The very secrecy of Masonic practices sometimes led to the vicious criticism attested to
in the lyrics of some Freemasons’ songs that bemoaned how misunderstood they were. But as
Stephen Bullock argued in Revolutionary Brotherhood, other reasons may have informed such
criticisms, given that the “Ancient (rite) Masons” of the prerevolutionary generation especially –
who counted among their members many of the men today called “founders” – “helped
reshape the social distribution of power in America" leading up to the imperial crisis.
198
While
earlier in the eighteenth century, it had been possible to find Masonic-themed songs in non-
Mason songsters and songbooks,
199
by the 1770s and 1780s Mason songs had been largely
segregated from other songs.
This shift can be illustrated through a comparison of three images, published within a
decade of each other on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and in different formats: the British
songbooks Calliope or English Harmony and The Musical Entertainer, published in London in
1739 and 1740, respectively – the former being available for sale from at least one source in
New York in 1749 (and likely other colonial booksellers’ shops through the years)
200
– and the
Boston Evening-Post issue of January 7, 1751.
201
Calliope provided, in a collection of many
secular song types intended not exclusively for Masons but for a broad audience, “A New Song”
“On Masony,” decorated with an orderly depiction of the secret rituals conducted inside the

Entick, M.A., The Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons
(London: J. Scott, MDCCLVI. In the Vulgar YEAR of Masonry 5756, pp. 321-340.
198
Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American
Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, published for the Institute of
Early American History and Culture, 1996), p. 107.
199
Examples include “The Free Mason’s Health” in The musical miscellany; being a collection of choice
songs, set to the violin and flute, by the most eminent masters. London : printed by and for John Watts,
1729-31, p. 72; and “The Genius of Masonry,” in The Musical Entertainer, Engrav'd, By George Bickham
junr. Vol. 2. London Printed for C. Corbett at Addison's Head, Fleet-Street [1740], p. 1.
200
Mr. Carey and Mr. Digby Cole, “On Masonry, A New Song,” in Henry Roberts, Calliope or English
Harmony. London, 1739, p. 65; Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. 2, p. 1; “The True Mason was
one of several songs with images praising Masonry in this collection.
201
“In Defence of MASONRY,” Boston Evening-Post, January 7, 1751, p. 1, column 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.101

fraternal organization. The Musical Entertainer offered, as the first song in Volume II, a heroic,
elaborately engraved image of “The True Mason,” the original “architect” of classical antiquity,
betraying at least some understanding and even approbation of Freemasonry. But a decade
later, in Boston newsprint, Masonic song of the colonial sort led to a very different depiction,
reflecting a specific anxiety related to Masonic music.

Figure 2.1. Depictions of Freemasons accompanying songs in popular print, 1739-40 and 1751

The heroic “architect” image of Masonry drawn from classical antiquity, and  a
depiction of secret yet dignified Masonic rituals, accompany Masons songs printed
in bound song collections of 1740 and 1739, respectively, alongside many secular
song types and intended for a broad audience (not exclusively Masons). “The
Genius of Masonry,” Bickham, Musical Entertainer Vol. 2, 1740, p. 1; “On Masonry,
A New Song,” Henry Roberts, Calliope or English Harmony, Vol. 1, 1739, p. 65.
 An “ass” brays “Trunil Him well
brother” in a satire about secret Masonic
“rituals” printed on the cover of a
Boston newspaper. “In Defence of
MASONRY,” Boston Evening-Post,
January 1751.

The large, graphic (some might say pornographic) image splashed across the top of the
front page accompanied an article whose references to sodomy only slightly outnumbered
uncomplimentary allusions to Mason music. While Thomas Foster, writing in the William and
Mary Quarterly in 2003, linked the music references of “In Defence of MASONRY” to mockery of
processions and other public displays of Masonic culture, the lengthy critique of Mason music
may also be connected to the political nature of these songs, especially those belonging to the
Ancient order practiced by many of those who became “founders,” whose handbooks described
above included more songs than those of the Modern rite. The Ancient Rite lodges that had
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.102

become, by the 1760s, veritable “schools of republican government,”
202
would have rung with
the sounds of songs linked through themes and tunes to oppositional political song of the
period, and one can only image the effect of these same songs being sung in the streets of
Boston and other colonial towns.
These songs that, apparently, produced so much anxiety, were very like the sociable
songs found in middle rhetorical style, but their texts used the language of Enlightenment
brotherhood rather than the passionate rhetoric of the liberty songs or the accepted (and
occasionally naughty) witty oppositional style of Anglophonic tradition. To understand their
location on the spectrum of political singing requires some explanation. When comparing these
volumes with other song texts produce in the early-modern British Atlantic, certain tunes used
in political song elsewhere were used in Mason “parodies,” most of them loyal, but occasionally,
a tune or two associated with oppositional song texts, too. Where Masonic song texts were
explicitly political, the tone was loyal, with refrains sung “To the King and the Craft”,
203
along
with familiar references to Masonic ideals of friendship and filial love.
But some examples of Mason song texts spoke to current political events in an expressly
apolitical way:

WE have no idle prating,
Of either Whig or Tory ;
But each agrees,
To live at ease

202
Margaret C. Jacobs, “Review: Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the
American Social Order, 1730-1840 by Steven C. Bullock, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol.
54, No. 4 (Oct., 1997), p. 849.
203
Calcott, Wellins. A Candid Disquisition of the Principles and Practices of the most Antient and
Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons. Boston: McAlpine, 1772, p. 231.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.103

And sing or tell a story.
204

The chorus and verses that follow return to basic sociable themes – no politics, no
religion, and certainly no anger, just drinking and song – and if you didn’t know that the singers
of liberty songs would be the ones remembered as Freemasons, you might be tempted to
identify the Masonic song texts with the counter-oppositional singers – suggesting that, when
they didn’t need feet on the street with a tune on their lips, the liberty song writers could have
been heard singing this very sort of apolitical Masonic song.
205

Another interesting characteristic of Masonic song texts examined is that, of the extant
examples, the farther from London a book or pamphlet was published, the greater the emphasis
on song, and the more likely it was to feature the integration of other, non-Masonic secular
tunes from various rhetorical categories. This trend would continue in the post-revolutionary
years as well, particularly in U.S.-produced Masonic texts of the late-eighteenth century.

Table 2.2. Freemasons Books, published or sold in British Colonial America, 1750-1776

Yr Location Type # Songs Notes
1751 Dublin (Butler) constitutions 33 33 songs, only one political tune given (“Rule Britannia”)
1751

Dublin (Byle) constitutions 33 33 songs, only one political tune given (“Rule Britannia”)
1756

London (Scott) constitutions 9 9 songs relating to specific Masons, activities, no tunes
given
1763

Liverpool?
(Hale)
songster

103

Pt. 1: 3 elaborate multi-voice settings
Pt. 2: 38 songs on various themes
Pt. 3: 49 catches
A supplement: 6 songs and 7 catches
Themes: mostly love, sociable, and political; not religious
or ceremonial
1765

Edinburgh
(Auld &
Smellie)
pocket-
companion

61 55 masons’ songs; 1 anthem; 3 prologues; 2 epilogues;
given tunes include examples associated with loyal song
(“Rule Britannia”), sociable song (“Which Nobody Can
Deny [Green-sleeves]”) and love song (“Rural Felicity
[Haste to the Wedding]”)

204
Calcott, p. 252.
205
Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.104

Yr Location Type # Songs Notes
1767

London
(Johnston)
constitutions 9 9 songs relating to specific Masons, activities, no tunes
given
1769

London
(Kearsly)
constitutions 9 9 songs relating to specific Masons, activities, no tunes
given
1769

London
(Nicoll)
exposé 2 2 Mason songs

1772

Boston
(McAlpine)
constitutions 19 19 Masons songs, 9 added to original London edition; no
tunes given

The overlap of pamphlets with certain types of publications also found in bound form
can be seen in plays, though the extant examples of multiple play pamphlets being bound
together may have occurred after the individual pamphlets’ initial publication in stitched form,
possibly to create later anthologies. Examples of both stitched play pamphlets and bound play
collections are widely found in archives, both traditional and online. Moreover, advertisements
list hundreds of play pamphlets being offered for sale in British Colonial America, showing the
extent to which British drama was readily available on the American continent, despite frequent
and even organized protests in seemingly every colonial town when the first theater arrived.
206

Plays, like so many other bound publications, offered songs from all secular categories
yet no religious examples that I have ever seen, except in parody. Of the more than forty plays
in this sample, seventeen were labeled comedies, mostly from Britain, and sixteen said to be
political or topical came mostly from 1775-1776 and many of those were American, some of
which gave instruction to show how they were intended to be read and/or acted at home or in

206
Commentary protesting theaters can be seen as early as 1754 in Philadelphia and continuing in one
town or another up until the final months before hostilities began in spring 1775; the 1754 author did not
“know where to begin … to give a view of the wickedness of the theatre,” given “the lewdness or impiety
of most of the plays themselves … the infamous characters of the actors and actresses … the scandalous
farces they commonly tag the gravest plays with, or, above all … the inhumanly impudent dances and
songs, with which they lard them between the acts.” Pennsylvania Journal, March 19, 1754, p. 1, cols. 1-
2. Many complaints centered as much on the waste of money as the immorality of the theater, leading
one commentator a dozen years later in the same newspaper to cite “The infancy of the colonies” for
making them unsuitable for theater: “at best we are not yet ripe for these things. A spirit of industry and
frugality has made us what we are. As these have caused our growth to be rapid, so a spirit of dissipation
will doubtless make our fall as exemplary.” Pennsylvania Journal, July 17, 1766, pp. 1-2, cols. 3 and 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.105

other amateur settings. Seven were tragedies – five British, and two American, and one was a
pastoral drama by the British author Hannah More.
Of all the publication types discussed thus far, plays provide some of the best secular
examples of song authorship. While hymnals and psalters regularly provided names of
composers and lyricists (or, in the case of psalms, Biblical citations), examples of secular song
might provide the name of the compiler, but unless a songster mentioned that a song came
from a recent theater production, or was sung by a known actor or actress – as in the case of
1771’s Miss Ashmore’s … Collection of Songs – one was fortunate to get the name of a likely
tune, much less the name of its author. And in this case, Miss Ashmore was not the author, but
the singer.
207

Such was not the case with theater song, where playwrights, composers, lyricists, and
actors enjoyed celebrity in print culture, their names appearing regularly among colonial
bookshop offerings and on the pages of colonial newspapers. The only other well-known names
in prerevolutionary secular song culture were those of the writers of loyal song, and even here
there was considerable overlap with the theater. Composers including Cibber, Arne, and Boyce
were all in the employ of both the London theater establishment and the royal court at various
times in their careers, sometimes concurrently, and each time a new loyal song was written for a
royal coronation, birthday, or funeral, the names of the composers and lyricists were mentioned
in reprints and newspaper accounts as prominently as those of the monarchs themselves.
Of nearly a hundred other pamphlets (not including songsters, plays, or almanacs)
having one or more songs and published in America that were evaluated in this project, nearly
two-thirds were religious. Nearly another third were political, but mostly mixed with religious,

207
The new song-book: being Miss Ashmore’s favourite collection of songs. Boston: Printed and sold by
W McAlpine 1771.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.106

sociable, and non-political topical themes, as well as one series of loyal songs on the taking of
Havana, singled out to for its heroic rhetoric. The remaining handful of pamphlets included song
from a mix of all other rhetorical categories, showing again that, like much of bound print (and
unlike Bailyn’s pamphlet sample), religious song appears to have been the pamphlet song of
choice.
One specific kind of pamphlet, the almanac, provided information about weather,
astronomical phenomena, weights and measures, roads, and other data useful to the members
of an agrarian society. Song rarely appeared in almanacs except for the occasional psalm
couplet or hymn – or, rarer still, love song. But for a very brief period during the Boston non-
importation crisis, in the midst of a well-known feud between two printers – Benjamin Edes of
the Boston Gazette, and John Mein of the Boston Chronicle – three of the oddest almanacs that
survive from colonial America skewed the sample of this pamphlet-type toward the political. In
the fall of 1768 and again in the fall of 1769, Mein and his partner John Fleming of the Boston
Chronicle published editions of Bickerstaff’s Almanack with liberty songs, including engraved
musical notation, one of the strongest of all indicators that a text was being encouraged to be
sung.
208
These editions were followed in February of 1770 by Edes & Gill's North-American
Almanack, which included three liberty songs (though no musical notation), printed and
advertised very late for an almanac, and less than a month before the ugly late-winter mood
culminated in two violent encounters in the streets, the latter of which we now remember as
the Boston Massacre.
209

208
Bickerstaff's Boston almanack, for the year of our LORD 1769, FIRST EDITION (Boston: Mein and
Fleming, 1768); Bickerstaff's Boston almanack, for the year of our LORD 1770 : Being the second Year
after Leap Year (Boston: Printed by MEIN and FLEEMING, 1769); the later Mein & Fleming almanac also
had a second liberty song (without musical notation), a parody of “the Hunting Song from THOMAS and
SALLY,” a stage song that had been and would be parodized again, and widely, in other print forms.
209
The Edes & Gill's North-American Almanack, Boston, 1770.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.107

Single-sheet print formats published and sold in America were also the most topical,
and, not surprisingly, produced the largest number of political song instances in the years
leading up to, and during, the imperial crisis: broadsides, magazines, and newspapers. The
question of authorship becomes more difficult to answer as the print vehicle in question
becomes more immediate, more topical, and more oppositional, all of which are characteristics
of unbound print.
As a stitched publication, the magazine should properly be considered alongside other
examples of the pamphlet – which in form it was – but as a periodical, it could also be
considered alongside the newspaper. Very few magazines were published in the colonies during
the colonial period; less than a dozen were attempted before 1776, and the longest-running of
them, Isaiah Thomas’ Royal American Magazine, numbered only 15 monthly issues over two
calendar years before the impending crisis in Boston forced suspension of publication before the
April 1775 issue could be produced.
210

The small sample makes it difficult to know what role might have been intended for
magazine song published in America, though Benjamin Mecom listed “Psalm, and Song” in the
stated purpose for the magazine that was printed in its first issue.
211
There would seem to have
been a balance between all song types, but from 1774 on both Isaiah Thomas and Robert Aitkin
published topical song including liberty song parodies set to the loyal song tunes “God Save the
King” and “The British Grenadiers.”

210
The data represents songs published from 1750-1776 by: James Davis in the North Carolina Magazine,
or Universal Intelligencer, Newbern NC (1749?-1764?); Benjamin Mecom in The New-England Magazine,
Boston MA (1758-59); William Bradford in The American Magazine, Philadelphia PA (1758-1762); Ezekiel
Russell in The Censor, Boston MA (1771-1772); Isaiah Thomas, The Royal American Magazine, Boston MA
(1774-75; subsequently, Thomas would subtitle his Worcester version of The Massachusetts Spy as The
Worcester Magazine); and Robert Aitken in The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum,
Philadelphia PA (1775-?). Other magazines by Hugh Gaine, James Parker, William Weyman, and John
MacGibbons were unlocated at the time of this draft.
211
Benjamin Mecom, The New-England Magazine for August 1758. Boston: 1758, p. 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.108

The mostly widely read magazines in British Colonial America were those published in
London and available for purchase through the same booksellers and ship captains as other
imported print, two-to-six months after their original publication. Songs in these extant
examples were mostly of the sociable sort, along with occasional “witty” oppositional
expression.
Table 2.3. London magazine song instances republished in British Colonial America, 1750-1776
N.B. some titles appear in multiple instances

Category # Comments
CRAFTSMAN 7 1770, “A R ** AL LOVE SONG. In the Modern C--rt style,” refrain: “Doodle
Doodle Doo”
GENTLEMAN’s MAGAZINE 8 1750, “NOVA-SCOTIA,” parody of “Derry Down”
1759, “From the GENTLEMAN’s MAGAZINE. A SONG upon the French
threatning us with an Invasion” (no tune given, common meter)
1760, “A S O N G,” celebrate victories of 1759 similar to “Heart of Oak”
HUMOURIST 2 1753-54, “As Damien one day with his fair one was sate”
late magazine 2 1767, “An Essay on Matrimonial Happiness” concludes with “Ye Gods, ye gave
to me a wife”
London Evening Post 3 1774, “A Parody on the Song of Chevy Chace”
1775, “The Sailor’s Address,” refrain suggests “Heart of Oak” parody
London Magazine 6 1752, “A Meditation Contemplation, by an unsuccessful adventurer in the
Lottery.”
1769, “An American Song. From Montaigne.”
1770, “Supposed to be sung by each Dissenting Teacher, who affects to wear a
clerical Gown.”
1775, “ODE TO INDEPENDENCE”
London Morning Chronicle 1 1770, mentioned in connection with the “Doodle” song in the Craftsman
London paper (not specified) 16 1769, Wilkes theme, parody of “The Echoing Horn”
1771, song about the King's breeches being pawned
1774, call for a new Parliament, parody of “Derry Down”
1775, “THE SAILOR'S ADDRESS.,” Parody of “Heart of Oak”
1776, “On the Promotion of Lord George Sackville Germain, to be Secretary of
the American Department,” parody of “Derry Down”
1776, song in solidarity with the colonies
Political Register 1 1772, “THE CONSTITUTIONAL, LITANY, FOR THE PRESENT YEAR.”
Public Advertiser 1 1767, “THE REVIEW, A NEW SONG. By J. Oakman. TRUE HONOUR AND
COURAGE”
Pub. in England some years since 1 1760, “The REVOLUTION ODE”
Published in London (not specified) 1 1776, “Extract from Bedlam. A Ballad.”
St. James’s Chronicle 5 1774, “A NEW SONG.,” anti-Quebec Act, parody of “O My Kitten”
Town and Country Magazine 1 1776, "ODE TO INDEPENDENCE”
Westminster-Journal 5 1752, “O D E, on the 24th of May ; being the BIRTH-DAY of his royal highness
GEORGE PRINCE of WALES”

As a vehicle for delivering news, the predecessor to the newspaper, the broadside,
would not disappear as a format until late in the nineteenth century (and even to this day, it
survives in flyers and handbills), but by the time of this search period, its significance as the
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.109

primary source for topical material was being supplanted by the colonial newspaper.
Newspaper growth was steady but slow, and two spikes in the number of publications may have
been due in part to war or an increased appetite for news, but also received a boost due to
printer conflict in the 1750s and, especially, 1760s, and also to the sudden relocation of many
presses in 1775-1776, the first two years of organized armed hostilities. It was not unheard of
for a printer to retire from the ceaseless pressure of producing a weekly newspaper and chasing
subscriptions and advertisement sales, and opting instead to make a reasonable living off of
other print forms. But a change was coming, and over the 27 years of this study – 1750-1776 –
the expectation of where news would come from decidedly and, as it turned out, irrevocably
shifted from the sporadic broadside to the regularized periodical. For the period studied,
though, the topicality of broadside song is undeniable; nearly two-thirds of song examples
found in broadside were explicitly political (of all types), outnumbering by two to one all other
types of broadside song combined.
Considerable bibliographic effort was poured into broadside identification during the
late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
212
but there are cases where dates assigned to undated
broadside song disagree topically with other print content, especially in comparisons with songs
that appeared in newspapers for which the dates are known.
213

212
Charles Evans’ American Bibliography and succeeding supplements by several others in the mid-
twentieth century give no information on the methodology used for the identifications in question.
Charles Evans, American Bibliography: Vols. I-XIII (Metuchen, NJ: Mini-Print Corp., 1967); Roger P.
Bristol, Supplement to Charles’ Evans’ American Bibliography (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of
Virginia, 1970).
213
For example, the famous series of “Yankee Doodle” broadsides that describe conditions in George
Washington’s camp can only be said to have appeared no earlier than 1775 or 1776, not that they actually
appeared at that earliest possible date. More on the topic of dating this song in Sonneck, and in J. A. Leo
Lemay, "The American Origins of 'Yankee Doodle,'" in The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol.
33, No. 3, (Jul., 1976), pp. 435-464. Sonneck, Report, 1909, pp. 134-142, gives the text and discusses the
authorship and probable date of “The Yankee's Return from Camp.”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.110

Newspapers provide the single most useful source for studying political song of all sorts
prior to the revolution. For the Atlantic coastal British colonies, there is something approaching
a complete collection – and where issues are missing, what issues are missing is known, which
cannot be said accurately for any other colonial print source and is difficult to ascertain even for
London sources, particularly broadsides whose existence might never reach the records of
Stationers’ Hall. Moreover, in every instance of newspaper song, the date and place of
publication is known as well as who published it. When you add to these factors the topicality,
immediacy, and relative affordability that are among the most common characteristics of places
where political songs could be found, newspapers provide an ideal laboratory for the study of
prerevolutionary political song.
214

Still, newspapers are not a perfect source, especially in the search for the authorship of
song – political or not – which turns out to be as tricky here as in other, less identifiable sources.
Of more than six hundred song instances drawn from thousands of newspaper issues, well over
half provide no indication of where they came from, or who wrote them.
215
Of these, the largest
number were political (about 60%) and there is political overlap with at least some songs in
every other category. Presumably, accountability for these songs rested with the printers, and
while some who published the most extreme song examples were mentioned or even
intimidated, none were prevented by authorities from printing such songs or other politically
inspired materials until after spring 1775; any censorship would seem to have been self-

214
The need to feed the newspaper beast drove both the introduction of song and poetry in the
otherwise topical medium as well as the frequent reprinting of other publications’ material throughout
the Anglo-American printing network. See also Wroth in Lehmann-Haupt, The Book in America, 1951, pp.
26-29, on the investment of time and effort required by newspaper publishing in the typical colonial print
shop.
215
Religious songs with biblical citations for their texts are among the songs most likely to have identified
authorship.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.111

imposed, or, in the case of John Mein’s Boston Chronicle in 1770, at the hands of community
vigilantes.
For the songs that provided sources, occasionally a citation would give more than one
data point – for example, an author and a publication, or a letter and an event. 80 instances
were journalistic reports of songs being sung at events and including the song text (and
sometimes tune direction as well). Another seven instances were song texts that were intended
for events, such as two hymns reported to have been written by George Whitefield for his own
funeral; two songs written to be affixed to the sides of a lanthorn for public display; one song
for George II’s funeral, and another for George III’s coronation.
216

Of the remaining sources of songs found in colonial newspapers, the largest single
number of songs for which a source was cited were the names of authors or composers (109),
followed by British periodicals (57), letters to the editor (38, though it is often not possible to
determine which “letters” may actually come from the printers themselves), American
periodicals (24), songs from performances (though without any coverage of same, 17), and eight
other unidentified publications in either book, broadside, or magazine form.
Given the relatively large number of authors cited – 109 of them, in 101 song
instances
217
– the category data would suggest there might be a good deal known about the
writers of “political” songs. Further analysis, however, quickly demonstrates that many
“named” authors are also unidentifiable. Of the 109 “named” authors, 29 are actually
anonymous – “a LADY in New-England,” “an Officer of the Montreal-Club, at Boston,” “A Son of
Liberty.”

216
Other songs written for an occasion, such as the king’s birthday, but not an actual event, are not
included in this count.
217
Some duplication is owing to citations given for a composer and a lyricist in a single song instance.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.112

Nine more are apparent pen-names, and another seven are initials – though several of
these are known today and would have been recognized by some at the time – but the point is
that the printer chose not to give the name.
218
It is impossible to know how many people
reading Rivington’s New York Gazetteer knew that “Agricola” was an alias used by political
economist James Anderson,
219
but many educated people might have recognized the name of
the Roman general responsible for conquering much of Britain.
What remains is a list of 64 actual people: 26 writers, 22 composers, eight ministers,
one king (Prussia, mentioned twice), one historical figure, one noblewoman, one local merchant,
and two otherwise private persons. With the exception of the last three, the names of all of
these individuals had previously been published, some of them extensively.
220
Of the political
songs represented on this list, only one was oppositional – all of the rest were loyal.
Returning to the group of 63 political songs for which sources were provided, the
findings are similar, and end up in the same place. Of the “named” authors of political songs
who are actually unidentifiable (or at least deliberately unidentified), 15 wrote liberty songs.
221

Another six were examples of two “anti” liberty songs allegedly written by soldiers at Castle

218
An example would be the cross-referencing of John Dickinson’s “Liberty Song,” published in
Philadelphia under the initial, “D.,” with surviving correspondence acknowledging his authorship. William
Goddard, Joseph Galloway, Thomas Wharton, Pennsylvania Chronicle, p 186, vol. II, iss. 24, July 4-11,
1768. John Macpherson Jr. of Philadelphia claimed that “As to the Farmer's letters ; the reports are
various. Some say they were wrote in N". England. Others alledged Mr. D-k-ns-n is the Author. While
others suspect Mr G-ll w-y : But nobody can certainly say who is the author.” William Macpherson
Hornor, Esq., ed., "Extracts from the Letters of John Macpherson, Jr., to William Patterson, 1766-1773," in
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1899), pp. 53-54.
219
Or indeed, whether the political economist actually was the author of this song “on the folly,
ingratitude, and violence of deluded patriots” upon Maryland calling for colonists to arm themselves in
early 1775; maybe Rivington really did mean Agricola.
220
The only Americans on the list are two composers, James Lyon and Thomas (probably Francis)
Hopkinson; one minister, the Reverend Mr. Samuel Davies, president of the College of New-Jersey; the
New Hampshire merchant, George Turner; and Mrs. Jenny Hamilton, one of only two women on the list
(the other being the poet, Lady Dorothy Du Bois).
221
Here again, same point about whether you could actually track down who they were – “D.” for
“Dickinson,” or the Oxford student referenced in the 1774 Norfolk VA paper. But the printers chose to
obscure their identities.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.113

William, the Boston harbor headquarters of the occupying British troops. However, it has been
noted that these songs could just have easily have been written by the “liberty song” contingent
themselves as a means of rousing public sentiment against the troops. Accounts of both songs
originated in the Boston Gazette, known haunt of some of the most active of the town’s liberty
songwriters.
Yet another eight songs were attributed to unnamed soldiers – five representing
examples of the American marching-and-morale songs that emerged at the outbreak of fighting
in spring 1775, and the other three attributed to British soldiers, two published at the time of
the Seven Years War, and the other recalling the same conflict, but in 1774. And of eight other
unidentifiable “author” song examples, four are traditional, humorous oppositional songs from
1765 and earlier, and the other four were counter-oppositional songs of the late 1760s and
1770s.
This leaves only 26 out of the 352 political songs printed in British Colonial American
newspapers that can actually be attached to a real person. And 25 of them are loyal songs.
In both cases – all songs with sources provided, and all political songs – we are left with
the same, sole oppositional song that can be attached to an author – and it wasn’t a liberty
song. The only actual, identifiable person credited with writing the text of an oppositional
political song in a British Colonial American newspaper between 1750 and 1776 was a historical
figure – a lawyer hanged, drawn and quartered for writing a text predicting the downfall of the
monarchy. It was published by a counter-oppositional printer, and was clearly directed at the
authors – among them, lawyers – who contributed to the aforementioned passionate exchanges
of newspaper articles, pamphlets, and oppositional song in the fall and winter of 1769-1770
during Boston’s importation crisis.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.114

The song was lifted from historian James Howell’s Familiar Letters, specifically an epistle
written while Howell was imprisoned in the Fleet in 1648 and discussing events he reported had
taken place there in 1619. A Mr. Williams of the Middle Temple had written a text entitled
Balaam’s Ass warning of the impending fall of the British monarchy; he sent it, in a sealed box,
to James I, but by some means it became public and Williams suffered the maximum penalty for
treason.
The song
222
appeared, with the author’s name,
223
in John Mein’s Boston Chronicle.
Three weeks after this song was published, Mein’s print shop was attacked and ransacked. This
event is usually associated with his non-importation stance, but it is interesting that the attack
took place shortly after Mein suggested – in a publication that would have been read not only by
local crown officials but by editors, court ministers, and politicians in Britain – a precedent
where a lawyer authoring such songs and texts against the crown had been executed by the
most gruesome method reserved for traitors.
Mein was typical of the printers in dialogue with the publishers of liberty song. He
printed liberty songs, too; he published almanacs with pictures of Sons of Liberty heroes John
Wilkes and James Otis on their covers. But Mein also published the names of merchants he
believed were hypocritically importing goods into Boston despite having signed the non-
importation agreement. Most importantly, he addressed his printed songs to the liberty-song
writers, not the crown, the state, or their representatives – though the latter would
undoubtedly have heard his voice, too.

222
“Verses, composed by Mr. Williams, a Counsellor of the Temple, and a Roman Catholic, who was
hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing Cross, in the year 1684.,” Boston Chronicle, September 28-
October 2, 1769, Supplement, available in the database Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers
(PACAN).
223
But without the names of the historian or the source, and with the wrong date: 1684 instead of 1648,
the publication date, or 1619, the reported date of the song. James Howell, Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ : Familiar
Letters Domestic and Foreign (London: R. Ware, et al, 1754), pp. 436-437.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.115

The newspaper song war would continue right up until events in the spring of 1770
suggested the need for a change in patriot strategy and rhetoric, including where and how
liberty songs were used in printed materials.
All print sources, whether bound books produced with a great deal of deliberation and
disseminated over many years, or single sheet broadsides produced at a day’s notice, were
created with a specific audience and purpose in mind. The same cannot be said of manuscript
sources. It is true that a letter-writer might expect his or her text to be shared by the intended
recipient with others of their family or acquaintance, or that the author of a military tune book
would expect his notation to be shared with – or, in the event of his death, inherited by –
someone else. But for the most part, personal texts were written by and for the person who
wrote them, without the myriad agendas that drove the authors, printers, and publishers of
song texts in print sources.
And though print sources are the most plentiful sources, providing the vast majority of
documented songs from the search period, it is the less-plentiful but always illuminating
manuscript sources that suggest more about how people may have actually used them. When
translated into personal settings and documents, songs lost the categorizations imposed by
print sources, and song types and uses were instead intermingled alongside texts of varying
functionalities and even languages. If the categories were important to those who strove to
impose a certain order or understanding on song in print, their categories do not seem to have
made much difference to the consumers of those songs in that most intimate of sources, the
scribal page.
Manuscript sources used in this project exceed the study period of 1750-1776 slightly,
due to the small number of extant sources found. They include three music books used by
students in their study of music; two notebooks containing accounts, diary entries, and songs;
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.116

one math book; several loose sheets containing songs; one whaling log; and a book of songs
kept by an American sailor imprisoned in Britain.
Songs were recorded alongside household budgets in account books; John Tucke, Jr.
wrote three hymn texts alongside the figures in his.
224
Songs were inserted into letters or diaries
as single sheets, as in the well-known case where William Almy of Newport, Rhode Island, wrote
to a Boston acquaintance, Dr. Elisha Story, to describe the violent Stamp Act demonstration
previously mentioned in Chapter One.
225
In volumes devoted to music and song, a lesson book
might include a loyal song on one page, a hymn on the next, and a dance tune on a third, while
military tune books show that soldiers in the case of at least one tune could and did march to
one known for its sacred text, but vastly more often to secular tunes of any rhetorical style that
suited the mood or march.
Manuscript songs are also just as likely to have musical notation as not, especially in
books specifically intended for musical instruction, reflecting a level of musical literacy among
some individuals that is not suggested by the lack of musical notation in contemporary printed
sources.
226

The lack of boundaries seen in manuscripts containing songs also extended to
audiences: they were religious and secular – though, as shown in the chart above, more than
twice as likely to be sacred; civilian and military; people of all levels of education; adults and
children; women and men. Even date would not seem to have made a difference in the way

224
John Tucke, Jr., Account book, John Tucke, Jr., 1755-57 (American Antiquarian Society, manuscript).
225
Letter of William Almy to Elisha Story, 29 August 1765. Manuscript at the Massachusetts Historical
Society. This letter includes the best example I have found of a liberty song being used in a public
demonstration, though Almy does not say that the text was sung, just that it was present.
226
In order to print songs with notation, a printer had to resort to engraving an image of the music, or
possess musical types as well as regular text types. This doesn’t entirely explain the drop in print musical
notation observed from the seventeenth century forward, but it does suggest that writing a musical note
by hand was not limited by a lack of technology, only by instruction or lack thereof.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.117

songs were commingled – examples are consistent throughout the 27-year search period as well
as those collected just before, and just beyond.
Songs survive in several forms of bound manuscripts, ranging from music instruction
books and personal song collections,
227
to non-music formats including account books, text
books, and the all-purpose repository of colonial-era notes about a life: the common-place
book.
228

John Tucke Jun. of Concord and Pittsfield, Massachusetts peddled “Fancy Goods” from
1755 to 1813/30, according to annotations on the cover of his slim account book. Beginning in
January 1755, entry after entry listed the pins, pans, and other household goods sold to
customers, ranging from “2 Cakes Ginger Bread” to the “Wid. Sarah Perkins,” to “an Ivory
Coomb” to “Mother.” But between the pages of notes is musical notation for three popular
hymn tunes: Brookfield S.M. (short meter), “Wells L.M.” (long meter), and “Shearbearn.” As in
other manuscripts, a song need not have included text in order for the reader to know how to
sing the words associated with the tune any more than a reader of a song text would have
needed the notation or even tune direction to know how to sing it.
Such is the case in the receipt book begun by Alexander Watson probably in the winter
of 1772-1773.
229
Watson’s book fits the description of a common-place book with its
intermingling of tax records, treatises on topics including “A new system of agriculture” and “the

227
Military tune books that included song tunes but were not officially intended for singing are covered in
Chapter Three, “Tune.”
228
The commonplace book claims a lofty heritage, with early-modern practitioners ranging from Erasmus
to Locke, their fragmented construction reflecting, in Anglophonic culture, the “fits and starts” of readers
who “jumped from book to book ... broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by
transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks.” In the examples surviving from early America
that include song texts and/or tunes, the authors were considerably humbler in station and means, but
were inspired by the same “continuous effort to make sense of things ... and by keeping an account of ...
readings,” you could construct a world of your own in book form, “stamped with your personality.”
Robert Darnton, “Extraordinary Commonplaces,” The New York Review of Books, December 21, 2000.
229
Alexander Watson, Alexander Watson His Rec
e
pt Book 1772
&
/3 (New-York Historical Society,
manuscript), entries from 1772-c. 1774.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.118

benefit of soap ashes as manure,” as well as an assessment of “The Exports to the Colonies” in
1704 and 1772, showing a twelve-fold increase over the century to date.
But early in the book, Watson devoted several pages to religious tunes. Along with
financial records and prayers, Watson wrote down text or notation for a total of six sacred songs
including three psalms (51, 92, and “old” 100), two hymn tunes (“Standish” and “Mears”), and a
“Spiritual Song to God far Above Creatures or Man Vain and Mortal,” with a text from the
biblical book of Job. Watson also recorded one loyal song, two pastorals, a love song,
230
and a
sociable song. But he went farther: Watson provided notation for four tunes: the two hymns,
the old 100 psalm, and “God Save the King,” as well as a gamut (range of available notes) for
each of the four strings on a violin.

230
The title of “Liberty” brings to mind the category of “liberty song,” but the song is, in fact, about how
love can rob a man of his liberty, in a use of enslavement rhetoric with a long history in Anglophonic song,
that will be discussed in a forthcoming chapter, “Slave,” on the theme of race in revolutionary song. The
irony of the metaphoric use of “Liberty” in this book must have been lost on Watson, who, four pages
later, made “An Acct. of Things Bought Since my W
e
s [wife’s] Death Taken out of my Old Books –” listing,
among his expenditures “100:00:0” “p
d
for A Negro.” Watson, Rec
e
pt Book.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.119

Figure 2.2. The migration of song from popular culture to folk practice #1:
“That Jenny’s my Friend”

 1762: Clio and Euterpe, or British Harmony, Vol. I, available
from colonial American booksellers, included “A Favourite Song
Sung by Mr Beard,” more often known by its first line, “That
Jenny’s my friend,” its text by the poet Edward Moore and set
by an anonymous composer, and popularized by theater
entertainer John Beard at Ranelagh Gardens, London.
231

1774: The accounts kept by Alexander Watson in his receipt
book wouldn’t suggest that he might have spent money on an
elaborately engraved song book, but given the title of his
transcription, below, he might have been aware through some
form of print media of this song’s connection to Beard and
Ranelagh.
232
It seems likely, though, that his motivation for
copying this particular text onto a precious page of his common-
place book was not its celebrity in faraway London, but its
friendly, witty treatment of companionable love, given that, on
the previous page, he had recorded the death at age 24 of his
wife Abigail, mother of their two toddler sons and “One of the
most Tenderest of Wifes & Mothers and Beloved by all that
knew her.” Watson’s act of documenting the song transformed
“Jenny” from a witty, sociable song into an elegy.

Children incorporated song into their work, too – in the cases shown here, this included
school work such as math. Whether Locke would have approved, these examples show the care
with which young colonial Americans were schooled in the rudiments and repertory of music.
The prevailing emphasis on church-based singing schools notwithstanding, the song choices
reflected in these books suggest a wide range of tastes and interests.

231
“A Favourite Song Sung by Mr Beard,” Clio and Euterpe, or British Harmony, Vol. I, (London: John
Welcker, 1762), p.160; Edward Moore. Poems, fables, and plays, by Edward Moore. London: J. Hughs
for R. and J. Dodsley, 1756, pp. 192-193.
232
“That Jenny’s my Friend” appeared in dozens of songsters available in the Anglo-Atlantic world from
the mid-eighteenth century into the nineteenth, including the first songster published in British Colonial
America. The American Mock-Bird (New York: James Rivington, 1760).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.120

The earliest of the lesson books considered here, prepared for “Mr. James Hunter His
Book by F. Baird” and dated April 7, 1755 (perhaps the teacher drew up the book for his pupil?)
features with beautiful calligraphy and extraordinary notation where abbreviations for the
"sols," "las" and other solfège syllables were inserted into the staff instead of the note values.
233

Here again are the numbers and place names given to familiar hymn and psalm tunes, with the
traditional and “new” C (Hundred) tune, and once again, as in the Tucke manuscript, though the
book contains no lyrics, familiar words for which the tunes were intended would undoubtedly
have been in the student's head as he practiced his lessons. The book, which also included an
“Acctt of Peacis of Cash” in various denominations from several countries – a coin collection, or
a sign of a society whose modes of exchange were as diverse as its participants? – apparently
was intended to be used for many years; on the final page, in more mature, florid script, is the
signature, “James Hunter. His Book 1764.”

Figure 2.3. Examples of notation style: the “Old” 100 Psalm tune

The calligraphy of F. Baird in the book he created for his student, James Hunter, marks the beautiful volume as the work of a
professional, but the method he used for expressing the notes in solfege neglected to give the note values (lengths);  John
Sandey’s 1756 song book provided both the “tenor” (melody) and the bass that came into increasingly common use in mid-century
liturgical accompaniment; by the time of Alexander Watson’s c. 1772 setting,  the “Old” 100 psalm tune was being designated as
such, and Watson provided both solfege syllables and standard notation, on a humbly crafted musical staff with improper usage of
some flags, suggesting perhaps a beginner or autodidact. Regardless of method or training, the tones indicated for all three
examples are correct, suggesting multiple levels of musical literacy understood by and available to people of different means and
stations.

Like the Baird/Hunter manuscript, John Sandey’s book was devoted entirely to music,
and though its songs are overwhelmingly religious, the variety of other song types suggests

233
F. Baird, Mr. James Hunter His Book by F. Baird (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, manuscript, 1755).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.121

something more than a collection for use at a church-based singing school.
234
Nearly sixty
religious tunes – hymns mostly, but also psalms, anthems, and spiritual songs – show much
overlap in theme and sources.
235
But here, too, are loyal songs to King George and his generals,
and a sociable drinking song, several love songs, and didactic songs about the uncertainty of life
– including English and Latin versions of the old favorite, “Gather Ye Rosebuds.” Historic themes
on the deaths of Queen Mary and Pompey use classical and pastoral allusions, and two songs
very specifically identify music in service to God and king (see inset). More than one
handwriting is seen in this example, and the possible later addition of the anthems to this
collection suggests the book’s usefulness over time and generations.

Figure 2.4. The language of music and social order

The early-modern language linking music to ideas of social order – in service to God and king – are made explicit in two examples
from John Sandey’s 1756 music book: “An Hymn on ye Divine use of Musick,” and (provided here) “A Song Made on ye Musick
Festival.”

Now well do this Harmonis Meeting Prove ; A feast of Musick is a feast of love ;
Where kindness is in Tune and we in Parts ; do but Shew forth ye Concord of our hearts
for Friendship is Nothing but a Concord of votes ; And Musick is Made by a Friendship of Notes.
Come then let us Joyfully Chearfully Sing : & Speak in ye Praise of great George our King (repeated)

The exercise book belonging to Jacob Hubley made clear its purpose: it was a tool to be
used as he learned the “Spinnet” from a Mr. Naum, who, according handwritten notes, received

234
John Sandey, John Sandey His Book 1756 (American Antiquarian Society, manuscript).
235
Karl Kroeger’s dissertation discusses the new song forms, and his note in this manuscript folder at the
American Antiquarian Society speculates on the possible addition of the anthems at a later time.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.122

“20/ upon Entrance” and “20/@ Month,” beginning November 14, 1769.
236
The untidiest of the
books considered here, Jacob created several incomplete tables of contents and practiced
scrawling five-line musical staffs on a number of pages, but also managed to produce a variety
of song types – loyal and love songs, religious themes, songs representing both folk and art song
types – ballad titles mixed with arias – as well as instrumental pieces for dances including the
hornpipe and minuet. The tune titles reflect English, German, French and Italian origins, and
more than half of them are in German, not surprising given that text on the back cover says
“Lancaster.” In a German-speaking community within British Colonial America, Jacob must have
taken pride in adding “King George’s March” to his collection, as well as two pieces written by
Handel, providing German cultural connection to the British polity. Jacob must have practiced
well, for the collection also includes a second music book: a set of instrumental sonatas for an
advanced player, with the young man’s signature and the date February 8
th
, 1775.
237

Figure 2.5. Bound manuscripts with multiple functions that contain songs

1755: The Baird/Hunter
music book’s inventory of
coins amid hymns and a
psalm in solfege notation.
c. 1769: The Hubley/Naum music book
included a “contract” for “Spinnet”
lessons alongside “practice” musical
staff lines.
1772-c. 1774: A single page in Watson’s “receipt”
book was used to document accounts, musical
notation, and an excerpt from Plutarch’s “morrals.”

236
Jacob Hubley, Music Book, c. 1769. Lancaster, PA [?] (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, manuscript).
237
Jacob Hubley, Eight Solos for a German Flute with a Thorough Bass for the Harpsichord : Composed by
Sigr. Cerretto. Opera Terza. February 8
th
1775 (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, manuscript).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.123

Another student left behind a school book from a different discipline – math – but at the
beginning of 1777, during the early part of the revolution, John Barstow had music on his mind,
too. In his lesson book, John wrote down a version of the broadside song “Americans to arms”
on January 2, 1777.
238
Not only does Barstow’s mixing of formats echo other manuscript
practices for recording songs, but this instance also provides a good example of the transmission
of song across formats and years. The schoolboy’s verses seem to be modeled on a song that
appeared in a broadside version likely published by Ezekiel Russell of Salem, Massachusetts, in
1775, the year that armed hostilities began.
239
The broadside features a handsome woodcut of
General Joseph Warren, and identifies itself as a parody of yet an earlier song, also given
“Britons to Arms” as its tune direction. That song appeared in the mid-century British songster
The Charmer, the sort of publication imported to and sold on the American continent, providing
another example of the sort of song that called young men to fight in earlier imperial conflicts
prior to the one that invaded, and inspired, Barstow’s mind.
240

238
John Barstow, “Americans to arms,” from the author’s math book, circa 1777. Manuscript at the Gilder
Lerhman Institute, accessed December 13, 2012 at http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collections/treasures-
from-the-collection/patriotic-verse-schoolboy%E2%80%99s-math-book-during-revolutionary
239
The broadside was identified by Evans, and included in the collections of Schlesinger and Schrader.
Americans to arms. Sung to the tune of, Britons to arms. [Salem, Mass.? : Printed by Ezekiel Russell?,
1775?]. Broadside in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
240
The Charmer; A Choice Collection of Songs, English and Scots (Edinburgh and London, 1749).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.124

Figure 2.6. The migration of song from popular culture to folk practice #2:
“Britons” and “Americans” To Arms

Songster, Edinburgh/London,
1749
Broadside, Salem MA 1775
[?]
Manuscript [New England], 1777

In one case, a pairing of a manuscript liberty song to a later broadside version helped
identify its author. A comparison of John Leacock’s commonplace version of “A New Song, on
the Repeal of the Stamp-Act” with a broadside of the same song allowed Carla J. Mulford
Micklus to date the earlier manuscript version's text for eight of the broadside's eventual
stanzas to March-April 1766, while the broadside revealed clues that it was published in May or
June, likely "soon after news of the repeal reached America.”
241
But “The most interesting
accidental differences between the” two formats was in the way that the names “Grenville,
Huske, and Bute” were given in the manuscript version, yet obscured in print “because of an
English law concerning printing ... (that) parliamentary proceedings could not be reported in

241
Carla Mulford Micklus, “John Leacock's 'A New Song, on the Repeal of the Stamp-Act,’” Early American
Literature, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Fall, 1980), p. 189.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.125

print intended for the public.”
242
Miklas posited that Leacock may have “thought his poem
complete” when he memorialized it in his commonplace book, allowing the fascinating
opportunity to observe a liberty song writer in the process of composing and later augmenting a
song text as events unfolded around him.
243

One final example of a bound civilian manuscript source comes from the “unbound”
bound format, the pamphlet. The author, Samuel Cooper, devoted a blank pamphlet,
constructed similarly to those used for almanacs and plays, to a 33-stanza “imitation” of The
Messiah,
244
an eclogue on the classical anticipation of the Christian savior written in 1712 by
Alexander Pope (itself an “imitation” of Virgil’s “Pollio,” and later translated into Latin by Samuel
Johnson).
245
Cooper, a minister who would figure among the notables of the founding
generation, wrote this text around 1745, soon after his 1743 graduation from Harvard College
and entry into the ministry.
246
But his “imitation” was not about the Savior, but about song,
music, and sound, and drew a distinction between songs to be sung or not sung, presenting this
as a “Choice.”
Eclogues are supposed to be short, and are often pastoral; The Messiah is both. While
not necessarily sung, Cooper’s text is written in an ode style that could (and often was) sung –
and given that the theme is singing and song choices, perhaps it might have been. In some
cases, dictionary editor Samuel Johnson used “profane” as a synonym for “secular,” but more
often “profane” and its variants meant “violating” the sacred, or putting things to a “wrong

242
Micklus, “Leacock’s,” Literature, pp. 191-192
243
Micklus, “Leacock’s,” Literature, Fall, p. 193.
244
Samuel Cooper, Mr. Pope’s Messiah imitated (Henry E. Huntington Library, manuscript).
245
Alexander Pope, The works of Mr. Alexander Pope. London: 1717, pp. 36-46.
246
See Charles W. Akers in The Divine Politician for more on Samuel Cooper’s views on topics including
music in church and broadside. Charles W. Akers, The Divine Politician: Samuel Cooper and the American
Revolution in Boston (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1982), pp. 23, 117, 124, 389 note 14;
and 390 note 35.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.126

use.”

Though the Rev. Cooper might have meant “profane” songs in the latter sense, his
admission of the “delight” that the profane songs’ “pleasing strains” once produced for him
might suggest the broader “secular” sense of the word, referring to any rhetorical style of song
not specifically connected to the sacred. Whatever the sense, defining the songs no longer to
be sung was Cooper’s contribution; Pope’s original version mentioned only the “heav’nly
themes” to be sung by the “Nymphs of Solyma [Jerusalem],” not what they might replace. In
later years, Cooper’s sermons would often be based on psalm texts and, as war approached,
reflect secular concerns in the rhetoric reserved for sacred spaces and appropriated by liberty
song.

Figure 2.7. The migration of song from literature to religion: “The Messiah”

1
Tho’ Songs profane have long employ’d
In pleasing Strains my Ear and Voice
They now delight no more, nor more
Shall be the Object of my Choice.

2
A nobler Theme inspires the muse
To which sublime Strains belong
O those ! who touch’d with Sacred Fire
The Prophet’s Lips, inspire the Song.

Similar to Cooper’s pamphlet, single-sheet manuscript
songs that were single examples do not allow for the same comparison as collections, but they,
too, tell us about the variants of scribal song interest. Perhaps the most useful example of a
song being used at a demonstration is the one that was enclosed in the aforementioned letter
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.127

to Elisha Story, sent by William Almy and dated 29 August 1765.
247
Because of its rarity, such a
song example tempts the reader to think of it as a stand-in for the many similar letters one
imagines might have been carried by riders up and down the post road, describing personal
experiences of being at rousing demonstrations where passionate oppositional song was used in
passionate ways. These same post roads on which riders carried Almy’s letter to Dr. Story also
carried newspapers throughout the colonies, and within a week, his letter, paraphrased – or one
very like it – and/or the song it contained, had been printed in five northeastern newspapers
spanning the coast from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to New-York City; by late October, it had
appeared in a sixth paper, in Charleston, South Carolina.
248
This epistolary flow of ideas
mirrored the exchanges of the previous two centuries referred to by participants as the
“Republic of Letters,” except this republic included not just exchanges by individuals whose
works would sometimes be published later, but also conversations between the “letters” that
populated the newspaper format itself, some of the earliest examples of which were called
“news letters” and traveled the same post roads as mail, and whose “news” very often
contained text taken from letters like Almy’s. These are bridges by which the distance between
private correspondence and “public sphere” can be measured.
249

247
William Almy. Letter to Elisha Story, 29 August 1765. Manuscript at the Massachusetts Historical
Society. Story's father was the registrar of the Court of Admiralty whose office was among the buildings
invaded by a stamp mob in Boston; the younger Story was a medical doctor and a Sons of Liberty
member who took part in the Boston Tea Party; he himself fathered the Supreme Court associate justice
who wrote the Amistad decision in 1841.
248
“Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in Newport Rhode Island to one in this Town, Aug.29.1765.”
Boston Evening Post, September 2, 1765, pp. 2-3. The other five colonial papers carrying either the song,
the letter, or both, were: Connecticut Gazette, New Haven, CT, September 6, 1765 (song only); New
Hampshire Gazette, Portsmouth, NH, September 6, 1765; Portsmouth Mercury, Portsmouth, NH,
September 9, 1765; New York Mercury, New York, NY, September 9, 1765; and South Carolina &
American General Gazette, October 23-31, 1765, Charleston, SC.
249
In fact, another letter may have been in conversation with these. On August 29, 1765, the same day
Almy wrote to Story, the New York Gazette & Weekly Post Boy published an extract of a letter written on
August 15 in Boston and sent to Newport, where it was published on August 19, about an (check text
here) “effigy of the stamp tax collector hung from a tree” with a very similar “verse” affixed: “Fair
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.128

This example is also fruitful in showing a comparison of how the same evidence was
recorded in manuscript and print formats, each documenting very cool details about a stamp
protest and how song itself was displayed. Here, as in other examples mentioned earlier, the
song was described, but not the singing. Posted “out of reach” on the other side of a written
warning to the public not to interfere, the song graced “a gallows about 20 feet high” where
three effigies were “exhibited to public view the whole day” and viewed by “great numbers of
people.”
The height at which the song was posted may have provided an excuse for Almy and
other witnesses for not having taking it down, but apparently it was not posted too high to be
read and transcribed. That night, the effigies were “cut down and burnt under the gallows,
amidst the acclamations of the people ; which being done, they returned very orderly to their
respective homes.” A number of these “orderly” individuals returned the next day to destroy
the homes of the men represented by the effigies. Apparently, the threats and physical
violence, but not the singing, could be reported, with emphasis not the symptoms of disorder –
the gallows, the arson – but on its orderly character. Would a report of the singing of a song
threatening shame and violence have inherently suggested the opposite?

Freedom's glorious cause I've meanly quitted, / For the sake of Pelf, / But ah! the Devil has me outwitted,
/ And instead of stamping others, I've hang'd myself. / [4 more lines]
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.129

Figure 2.8. The migration of song from manuscript to print culture: “For a pelf”

 August 29, 1765: William Almy. Letter to Elisha
Story, 29 August 1765.

 September 2, 1765: “Extract of a Letter from a
Gentleman in Newport Rhode Island to one in this
Town, Aug.29.1765.” Boston Evening Post,
September 2, 1765, pp. 2-3.

Another loose song, written by Naaman Holbrook, at Houghton, August 31, 1772, tells a
cautionary tale of young and old with social and religious overtones, regarding men governing
women's behavior. This could be yet another example of a familiar parallel seen in other songs
of the period that used domestic themes paralleling the political situation with the “mother”
country.
250

250
Citation for loose song, written by Naaman Holbrook, at Houghton, August 31, 1772; one of the most
repeated of the “domestic” songs up to our time is the broadside song The World Turned Upside Down, or
The Old Woman taught Wisdom, sometimes called Goody Bull or The Second Part of the Repeal. The song
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.130

Yet another loose song signed “Philad
a
New Goal Jan
y
1776” may have been written by
British soldiers imprisoned in Philadelphia several months before the signing of the Declaration
of Independence that summer.
251
The heading “Verses &c –” could suggest poetry or song, but
an old archival note suggests someone at some point deemed it the latter. Condemning the
American cause as “Anarchy, Sedition, Strife/And every other Bane of Social Life,” the author
saw the hand of Satan in the rebellion, and deplored that “The days of Cromwell, puritanick
Rage/Return’d to Curse our more unhappy Age.” Rhetorically, the words “Phrensy,” “Rage,” and
“madly” suggest not the reason of the pamphlet literature, or the virtue of the ubiquitous love
songs so fervently pushed on the public by the collectors and publishers alike, but the passion
expressed in loyal and liberty songs.
As texts on female behavior and singing schools alike suggest, women clearly were
instructed in music as well as reading, if they had the resources. Mercy Otis Warren may have
written liberty song along with plays and poetry.
252
One more manuscript song source
considered here, a collection of loose songs probably written by Mary McKesson (1734-1796),
253

gives an idea of how song bridged the colonial era to the early national period. The loose-leaf
sheets show lingering interest in tunes about hunting, love, and political songs by the
prerevolutionary generation, including “The Echoing Horn,” mentioned earlier in this chapter as
appearing in a liberty song parody in an almanac. Originally a theater song from the comedy

is clearly set to the tune “Derry Down” by virtue of its familiar refrain, but the tune is sometimes confused
with another tune, “The World Turned Upside Down,” also known as “The King Will Have His Own Again.”
“The world etc.” is not only a song tune but also a common idiom of the period used when uncommon
things happened. The World Turned Upside Down, or The Old Woman taught Wisdom (British Museum,
broadside, 1767), accessed online January 4, 2015.
251
British soldiers’[?] song at Philadelphia New Goal, January 1776 (Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
manuscript).
252
Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution, pp. 36-37.
253
Variation in handwriting makes it difficult to determine who (or how many) contributed to the songs in
this collection, or in what specific year each was produced. John McKesson Collection ca. 1760 - ca. 1820.
Manuscript at the New-York Historical Society.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.131

Thomas and Sally, in parody form it transformed the faux-military form of the hunting song into
a genuine martial use. Another song in the McKesson collection, “War and Washington,” first
appeared during the revolutionary conflict parodizing the loyal song tune “The British
Grenadiers,” and yet another example used the theme of Columbia, so popular during the first
years after the conflict.
Two other items reaching just beyond this project’s search period give examples of
sailors’ use of song, both military and merchant: the 1777 songbook of an imprisoned American
sailor in London, and a 1780s whaling ship’s log. Each shows the same variety apparent of song
expression found in both civilian and military manuscript sources.
The logbook kept by Shubel Hammett aboard the whaling ship of his kinsman William in
1788-1789
254
is described as both an account book and a common-place book with hymns and
ballads, providing texts for songs including a version of the popular ballad “Sally in our Alley;” a
fragment of a loyal song in ode style (with numbered stanzas) describing the death of Wolfe and
fighting at Quebec during the Seven Years War and extolling the “Brittis boys” who did
“Conker(ed) great georg is Enemys & win England pr[ize?]”; one love song with the first line,
“Lovely Nymph Assuage my Anguish,” and another first addressed to “Sally” but then corrected
to “Nancy;” and the sociable song “The Jolly Toper.” In a touching autobiographical note,
Hammett used song as a way of defining who he was as well as his relationship to his Maker:

254
The date places the logbook more than a decade beyond the end of the search period, but as the
former owner described it in an annotation as the “Oldest Whale Log I ever had,” I included it as a
merchant example that confirmed the practices found in other manuscripts, military and civilian, of the
previous decades. Shubel Hammett. Logbook of William Hammett, 7 Dec 1788-20 Jun 1789. Manuscript
at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.132

Shubel Hammett is my Name and Inglich is my
Naton – Rochester is my Dweling place and Christ ys
My Salvation So y will Conclude and worship and Sing
to His prais Rochester. February 7
th
. A. 1789.
255

In the case of the songbook of the imprisoned American sailor in London, the author,
Timothy Connor, suggested song categories, though the book’s modern editor, George G. Carey,
cautioned against drawing conclusions:

“Any attempt to categorize these eighteenth-century songs is arbitrary
at best. Yet the contents of the songbook do cling loosely to such headings [one
might impose] as obscenity, love, the sea, and patriotism. Sometimes Connor
helps us with a title: ‘A Tar's Song,’ ‘A Love Song,’ or ‘A New Liberty Song’
leaving little doubt of the piece's intent …. (but) By far the largest number of
songs come labelled simply ‘A New Song ….’”
256

Carey was right to hesitate to impose categories where none were given, but the
significance here is Connor’s stated understanding of song as belonging to categories that had

255
Hammett identified his “Naton” as English, but annotations by the previous owner, Chas. H. Taylor,
who donated the logbook to Harvard University in 1931, suggest a connection of the logbook to whaling
in Massachusetts. Among them: “Upon examination of Starbuck Hist-Whale-fishing at the beginning of
the lists I find only a few whale craft going out from Boston about 1785[.] In 1787 it states a few craft
whaling from New Bed – & Nantucket were out in the sea but brief reports are on deck – (This relic came
from Rochester[.] Therefore any logs of this period on whaling whether whole or imperfect are rare
gems” Taylor did not indicate whether “Rochester” meant the town in England or one in the U.S.
Hammett, Logbook. The text cited by Taylor, A History of the American whale fishery from its earliest
inception to the year 1876, was published in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1878 by Alexander Starbuck, of
the Nantucket whaling family of the same name.
256
George Gibson Carey, ed., A Sailor's Songbag: An American Rebel in an English Prison, 1777-1779
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), p.15.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.133

certain intent that was so clearly articulated in eighteenth-century Anglophonic print. Carey’s
further observation that the title “A New Song,” might be owing to “a practice which harks to
the broadside maker's convention of taking an old song, printing it up, and making it look fresh
by calling it ‘new’” makes a certain practical sense, but it also identifies those songs as belonging
to the realm of parody as defined by Rousseau and Ritson.
257

Of the 57 songs (there are some problems with numbering), 28, or nearly half, have the
word “new” in their titles. Most involve love, many are pastoral, and though they are “new”
they present age-old song themes: love is more important than money; loyalty is prized,
especially to an industrious husband and most especially to men fighting for their country; and
money cannot save you from anything, including death – though, as is common in secular song,
God and religion are not cited as reasons for dying, and even death is represented not as a
Biblical devil but in naturalistic terms, an “old man” whose “head was bald and his beard was
gray/His coat was of the mortal clay.”
258
Taken together, these “new” songs reinforce old
expectations of a national character imbued in the laboring orders, who were expected be loyal
to peacetime social order and productivity, and do their duty to king and country when called
upon to do so. Not an uncommon collection of songs for an imprisoned sailor to be drawn to,
but it is the similarity of this collection to others found in print that suggests a larger cultural
understanding of the purpose of song, and the themes they shared in that place and time.
In that similarity, the Carey collection differs from tune books scribed by military
musicians, both in its intended function as well as in sort of songs it contains. To understand
why takes not only an examination of how music and song were understood in military units as
revealed in orderly books and other primary documents as well as secondary scholarship on the

257
Carey, Sailor's Songbag, p. 15.
258
Carey, Sailor's Songbag, p. 38.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.134

topic, but also a deeper analysis of the tunes they collected – many of them identified as song
tunes. As already demonstrated, tunes did not need to be sung for the texts and meanings
associated with them to be ringing in one’s ears. Song tunes transmitted potent messages even
when played instrumentally and their tacit texts could be understood, as will be examined in the
next chapter.

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.135

Chapter Three: Tune

Tune is the element that converts a text into a song, but many anecdotes indicate that
the members of the revolutionary generation didn't need words to understand what a tune
meant because of associations with prior uses on common themes. “The Rogue's March,” when
played by soldiers marching past Isaiah Thomas’ print shop, was an act of intimidation intended
as a warning;
259
“Yankee Doodle” played within earshot of Boston churches on Sundays was
intended and received as an affront.
260
Tune must be examined separately to explain the role it,
too, may have contributed to generating the sensations noticed by John Adams, or the extent to
which tune independent of text helped determine what songs were song "fit" to be sung in
streets, or at all.
While some songs had tunes written expressly for the text – the tiny subset that
Rousseau favored over virtually all strophic song of the sort examined in this project – the vast
majority of tunes used with all genres of song in the early modern Anglophonic world were
recycled from earlier uses. This was true for both sacred and secular songs; 150 psalm texts
were sung interchangeably with only a handful of tunes, and eighteenth-century hymnals
provided texts at the front and a small selection of hymn tunes (often without notation) at the
back of the book. To sing sacred song, whether in a church or not, one had to know both that
tunes were interchangeable according to their rhythmic meter, and that uniting text and tune –

259
Thomas, Three Autobiographical Fragments, p. 13.
260
According to the “Journal” series, first published in John Holt’s New-York Journal and later repeated in
several colonial newspapers, “the officer of the guard, in a sneering manner, called upon the musicians to
play up the Yankee Doodle tune, which completed the conquest of the military, and afforded them a
temporary triumph;” the church wardens “enter(ed) a complaint with a magistrate … for breach of
Sabbath” against the governor’s son, John Bernard, who had sided with the guard, and “he was convicted,
and punished agreeable to law.” John Holt, ed., “Boston. Journal of Occurences,” New-York Journal,
September 14, 1769, p. 1, col. 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.136

though some tune direction was given – was a personal choice, and easily accomplished,
regardless of musical literacy. The same freedom of choice extended into secular songs, and
even the large percentage of the population that was “unchurched” would have been familiar
with the practice.
For tunes that were recycled from previous uses – the practice known as
“contrafactum” – countless songs entitled, “A New Song” were new in their texts only. The use
of a new text set to an older tune produced a new song that often bore rhetorical similarity to
previous uses of the same tune. Other recycled devices, such as having the same words on
particular beats, or even borrowing entire phrases or familiar and favorite refrains, could also
awaken memories of older songs and messages – and similarly, a popular refrain or element
could be lifted and repurposed for an entirely different tune. Such reuses created new
members of song or tune “families,” distinct enough to be considered “new” songs but clearly
related to the previous uses.
261
For topical or oppositional song especially, parody of one form
or another was the usual form, and while secondary scholarship tends to notice this use and
reuse of particular tunes to animate certain functions or topics, less attention is given to what
musicological properties might have made certain tunes more suitable than others for specific
uses. Just as lyric – in poetry or song – has its rhetorical styles, so does music.
262

Some early-modern composers and commentators like Thomas Campion put great
effort into composing tunes and text that complemented one another, thematically as well as
structurally. Campion divided his 1613 song collection into two “subjects,”
263
of which “The first

261
Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Ballad as Song (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California
Press, 1969).
262
Ratner, Classic Music, 1980; also, Mason, Singing the French Revolution, 1996; hoping that
musicologists will pick up the thread and see why certain tunes might be better for certain strophic song
uses.
263
Campion’s categorizations recall the Petrarchian paradox between piacevole (agreeable) and gravita
(serious), noted by literary scholars in the contrast between works by authors such as Petrarch and Dante,
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.137

are grave and pious; the second amorous and light.” Campion described the tunes as explicitly
English: “… some there are who admit onely French or Italian Ayres, as if every Country had not
his proper Ayre, which the people thereof naturally usurpe in their Musicke …. In these English
Ayres I have chiefely aymed to couple my Words and Notes lovingly together ….”
264
Campion
further delineated his two “subject” categories in the edition’s title – “The first contayning
diuine and morall songs: the second, light conceites of louers.” The dedication to his patron in
the second book, though, makes clear that one category was sacred and the other secular, the
former “high” and the other “low,” yet while separate in style and function, each was equally
necessary to life and to each other – with styles distinctly woven into their “Notes and Rime:”

Such dayes as weare the badge of holy red,
Are for devotion markt, and sage delight ;
The vulgar Low-dayes undistinguished,
Are left for labour, games, and sportfull sights.

This sev'rall and so diff'ring use of Time,
Within th'enclosure of one weeke wee finde,
Which I resemble in my Notes and Rime,
Expressing both in their peculiar kinde.

Pure Hymnes, such as the seaventh day loves, doe leade,

respectively, and art historians in the styles of Raphael and Michalangelo. Patricia L. Reilly, "Raphael's
'Fire in the Borgo' and the Italian Pictorial Vernacular," in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 92, No. 4 (December 2010),
p. 308.
264
Thomas Campion. Tvvo bookes of ayres …. London : Printed by Tho. Snodham, for Mathew Lownes,
and I. Browne Cum priuilegio, [1613?], Booke I, note To The READER.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.138

Grave age did justly chalenge those of mee :
These weeke-day workes in order that succeede,
Your youth best fits, and yours yong Lord they be :
As hee is, who to them their beeing gave,
If th'one, the other you of force must have."
265

Campion added “To the READER” a further plea to unite sacred and profane at their
place of sale, suggesting that this might not have been a practice approved by all:

That holy Hymnes with Lovers cares are knit
Both in one Quire here, thou maist think's unfit ;
Why do'st not blame the Stationer as well,
Who in the same Shope sets all sorts to sell?
Divine with Stiles prophane, grave shelv'd with vaine ;
And some matcht worse, yet none of him complaine.
266

In 1667, Christopher Simpson, too, was thinking of categories related to musical affect
when “accommodating Notes to Words,” with “high” and “low” styles referencing – but not
exclusively related to – the realms of sacred and secular; he gave these clues about the
structure of tunes set to words of particular moods:

265
Campion, Ayres, [1613?], Booke II, Dedication; Campion’s “Never weather-beaten saile,” was included
in at least two sources studied in this project’s time period but was not included in sacred song books
examined, even though Campion himself classified it in that way.
266
Campion, Ayres, [1613?], Booke II, note To The READER.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.139

When you compose Musick to Words, your chief endevour must be ,
that your Notes do aptly express the sense and humour of them. If they be
grave and serious, let your Musick be such also : If Light, Pleasant, or Lively, your
Musick likewise must be suitable to them. Any passion of Love, Sorrow,
Anguish, and the like, is aptly exprest by Chromatick Notes and Bindings. Anger,
Courage, Revenge, &c. require a more strenuous and stirring movement. Cruel,
Bitter, Harsh, may be exprest with a Discord ; which, neertheless must be
brought off according to the Rules of Composition. High, Above, Heaven, Ascent
; as likewise their contraries , Low, Deep, Down, Hell, Descent, may be exprested
by the Example of the Hand
267
; which points upward when we speak of the one,
and downward when we mention the other ; the contrary to which would be
absurd.
268

The affective quality of the tune was worthy of notice when Nicholas Brady and Nahum
Tate were permitted in 1696 by William III to distribute their New Version of the Psalms with
new, regularized rhythms to the familiar, favorite tunes of Sternholm and Hopkins’ Reformation-
era “English Metre” psalters.
269
Tate and Brady specified that, when selecting tunes for “long
meter” psalms, those “of Praise or Chearfulness may be properly sung as the Old 100 Psalm, or
to the Tune of the Old 125 Psalm” while “The Penitential, or mournful Psalms in the same

267
N.B., the example given by the author seems to suggest arsis and thesis rather than the Guidonian
Hand, a popular device used in singing instruction for several hundred years by Christopher Simpson’s
time, was still common in “tutors” (tutorial books) well into the early modern period.
268
Christopher Simpson, A Compendium of Practical Musick, p. 140.
269
Editions of the “old” version of the psalms continued to be sold on both sides of the British Atlantic
during the eighteenth century, too. Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, et al, The Whole Book of Psalms,
Collected into English Metre (London: A. Wilde, 1740).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.140

Measure [meter], may be sung as the Old 51 Psalm.”
270
These tunes correspond, respectively, to
“major” and “minor” keys, indicating an understanding by this time of a relationship between
specific keys (and the musical scales that relate to them) with specific emotions.
271

By the beginning of 1774, when a Patriotic song writer chose, perhaps pragmatically, to
set a very popular newspaper ballad concerning events that took place on a December night in
Boston Harbor to a “plaintive tune,” songwriters of the liberty song era had plenty of
homegrown examples for setting texts to tunes that carried greater rhetorical impact. In 1760,
James Otis compiled a text on The rudiments of Latin prosody with a dissertation on letters, and
the principles of harmony, in poetic and prosaic composition, to “(assist) such young persons, as
cannot readily furnish themselves with” the writings it blended together from the works of
classical antiquity and, likely, Otis’ pen alike. The chapter on “Rules and Principles” suggests a
conventional wisdom regarding the link between rhetoric, prosody, and music in the arts of
passion and persuasion, reminding the reader that “The connection between grammar, and
music, and indeed all the liberal arts, every one is sensible of,” and that the “part of grammar,
which is more intimately connected with rhetoric is Prosody.”
272
Quoting from the Greek
rhetorician Longinus on the sublime:

270
Notation for the tune of Psalm 100 (p, 73) and Psalm 125 (pp. 36-37, both first and second “measure”)
271
The evolution of this idea, if indeed that is what it was, came gradually. In 1966, Claude Simpson
identified the most popular tunes found in sixteenth century broadside ballads as “Packington’s Pound,”
“Fortune my foe,” and “Greensleeves,” all of whose tunes were founded upon older ground basses and
expressed according to a mode rather than a key, yet notation in modern collections would come to
notate them with minor keys. Similarly, d’Urfey’s seventeenth-century setting for “Joy to Great Caesar,”
discussed in Chapter One, is to a fifteenth century ground considered to be in Dorian mode in its time but
now understood to be, like the old Psalm 51 tune in Tate and Brady, in the key of D minor, yet there is
nothing “penitential” or “mournful” about it – quite the opposite. Simpson’s seventeenth-century
examples feature myriad texts both happy and sad set to these tunes, suggesting that the association of
minor key songs with sadness is a more modern idea. Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, p.
565; Tate and Brady, New Version of the Psalms of David., penultimate page; Duckles and Zimmerman,
Words to Music, 1967.
272
James Otis, The Rudiments of Latin Prosody … (Boston, N.E.: Printed and sold by Benj. Mecom, 1760),
pp. 62-63.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.141

Harmonious composition has not only a natural tendency to please and
persuade, but inspires us to a wonderful degree, with generous ardour and
passion. Fine notes in music have a surprising effect on the passions of an
audience. Do they not fill the breast with inspired warmth ; and lift up the heart
into heavenly transports ? the very limbs receive motion from the notes, and
the hearer tho’ he has no skill at all in music, is sensible however, that all its
turns make a strong impression on his body and mind. The sounds of any
musical instrument are in themselves insignificant ; yet by the changes of the
air, the agreement of the chords, and symphony of the parts, they give
extraordinary pleasure, as we daily experience, to the minds of an audience.
Yet these are only spurious images, and faint imitations of the persuasive voice
of man, and far from the genuine effects and operations of human nature.
What an opinion therefore may we justly form of fine composition, the effect of
that harmony which nature has implanted in the voice of man ? It is made up of
words which by no means die upon the ear, but sink within and reach the
understanding.
273

The catalog of the power of the voice of man continued, but ultimately returned to yet
another reference to a conventional wisdom about its effect: “it is folly to endeavor to prove
what all the world will allow to be true. For experience is an indisputable conviction.”
274

273
Otis, The Rudiments of Latin Prosody, pp. 62-63.
274
Otis, The Rudiments of Latin Prosody, pp. 65-66.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.142

That Otis, a key voice of the revolutionary generation and a reputed writer of liberty
song himself, understood the rhetorical power of music to inspire warmth and lift the heart to
the heavens – even to the point of making the arms and legs move, its power further magnified
when combined with the voice of man – may help explain what Adams and others understood
about the relationship of tune to the “sensations” noted in 1769 nearly a decade after Otis
injected this primer from classical antiquity into the colonial milieu.
Given the lack of documentary evidence on song production and reception (and what
appears to be a reluctance to actually report on it, as in the Almy example during the Stamp Act
crisis), there is nevertheless one place where song tunes are documented expressly without
their familiar texts to be used to persuade or effect actions: in military tune books that often
identify the tunes they contain with the names of the songs that, under other circumstances,
might be sung with them. Other manuscript tune books created for civilian use might have been
used for singing as well as playing, but there is very good evidence to suggest that military tune
books were not intended to be sung from.
Several tune collections carried by military musicians during the war years – and in one
case handed down from a previous conflict – were considered in this project. Music in the
military, as reported in various documentary source types, was first and foremost about
function. Raoul Camus identified both “field” musicians responsible for cadence or signals, and,
in a handful of cases, “band” musicians who performed primarily on woodwinds for ceremonial
and convivial purposes, the latter primarily for officers; these musicians were not obliged to
perform military service.
275
Kent A. Bowman also discussed revolutionary-era music, but

275
The tune book carried by John Greenwood c. 1780 is somewhat controversial; its citation describes it
as a “Manuscript book of music given to Greenwood by a British fife-major, probably after 1780,” and it
includes “A Dictionary of such Greek, Latin and French Words as generally occur in Music.” But according
to David Hildebrand in “Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 15891839: An Index”
(http://www.colonialdancing.org/Easmes/Biblio/B018536.htm, viewed August 6, 2012), “the music is
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.143

relatively briefly, as a way to get to his central argument about the development of nineteenth-
century martial and patriotic music; he relied largely upon popular song collections published
during the bicentennial era to repeat the “diptych” approach to revolutionary era song: liberty
songs before the shooting started, and war songs afterward.
276
But at least one reviewer,
Barbara Tischler, felt Bowman “tend(ed) to blur rather than sharpen” these categories, “call(ing)
into question the distinction in the first place.”
277
Camus’ monumental achievement aside, it is
not possible to know exactly which tunes were used for which purposes, but a study of dozens
of orderly books from British and American troops, the earliest dating from the Seven Years War
and the latest from 1779, makes clear the connection between musical uses and the
maintenance of order. It is equally clear that the addition of words to music (i.e., song),
whether used on the job or on one’s own time, was only mentioned when it was proscribed or
punished.
278

As the category name “orderly books” makes clear, imposing military order on men
largely unaccustomed to it was a challenge. While certain tunes might be useful for long
marches or ceremonial purposes, the main function of music described in these books was
communication that facilitated a desired order through drum rolls that marked the time of day
or a call to parade or work, or indicated specific work roles, such as the “Pioneers’ March” that
alerted advance teams that cleared the way for an army on the move. Anything else – even

probably for German flute or violin, and it is a leisure collection for a gentleman and not music for use in
the military as some sources suggest.” Whatever its use and origin, this collection of tunes across
rhetorical styles is similar to other examples of military tune books of the period (apart from the many
minuets), and certainly military “bands” existed, as Camus found in seven cases, privately funded by the
officers who benefited from their performances as well as overlap between these musicians and civilian
musical networks. John Greenwood Music Book, c. 1780 (New-York Historical Society, manuscript);
Camus, Military Music, 1976.
276
Especially Vera Lawrence, but also Bowman, Voices of Combat, 1987.
277
Tischler, Barbara L. “Review: Voices of Combat: A Century of Liberty and War Songs, 1765-1865 by
Kent A. Bowman.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Oct., 1988), p. 1114.
278
Jeanne E. McDougall, “Music in Orderly Books in the Collection of the Huntington Library, 1762-1778,”
unpublished; available from author.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.144

orders by officers to serenade them with a few tunes during their off-hours, in their private
quarters – could lead to the one thing that no army would tolerate: disorder. Especially during
the long periods of waiting for the order to march or fight, the tired, hungry, hot, or cold troops
accustomed to the freedoms of civilian life often met with music and trouble when they went
into town, with the threat of severe punishment – even execution – for those who disobeyed.
279

But music, or its rhythm, could also prevent disorder. In a case during the Seven Years
War in 1762 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, “The Drum” was used “to Pass through the Town to
forewarn the Inhabitants not to buy anything from the Soldiers” who, apparently, had a
penchant for selling their “Cloaths.”
280
The war may have been all but over at that point, but as
long as the soldiers remained in the ranks, the drums were there to remind them of their duty,
“to assume the Air of a Soldier, and quit that of a Clown.”
281

In other cases, music was integral to both communication and keeping order through
the omnipresent fifes and drums that accompanied mustering for roll and parading. Getting
men out on parade seems to have been an ongoing problem; officers were constantly berated
for failing to make their troops attend, or for the condition of those men who did fall in who
were often condemned for their unclean, scruffy appearance – another sign of disorder. The
drumbeat of order imposed an aural regulation to the stressful, anxious, and sometimes

279
There is no indication that a maximum allowable penalties were ever carried out for musical
infractions, but music was often an integral part of behavior to be sanctioned. In one example, a potent
combination of music and alcohol posed a threat to military order as reported by Francis Marion’s unit on
September 3, 1775: “As the Blue house Tavern opposite the Barrack yard is a Great Nuisance to the good
Order & Discipline of the Soldiers ... (those who went without permission would) be immediately confined
& they may Depend on Being Punished.” Orderly book of Francis Marion, 1775-1779, Manuscript at the
Henry E. Huntington Library.
280
Orderly book of the Virginia Regiment, Fredericksburg, July 15, 1762. Brock Collection 97, Henry E.
Huntington Library. Drums were also used to round up those soldiers who had slipped the leash; on July
6, “A Pattrole” was dispatched “to go the Round through the Town after Tattoo Beating & bring in and
Confine Ev’ry Soldier out of his Quarters.” Apparently, the problem was so severe that it continued all
night: “the Patrole to go Ev’ry hour Till the Reveale.”
281
Ibid Brock 97, July 19, 1762.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.145

downright boring routine of army life. As regular as a timepiece, drumming was used to
punctuate the hours of the day – when to rise, when to muster, when to parade, when to
worship, and when to sleep.
282

But song was another matter. Just as “music” was rarely mentioned by name, mentions
of singing are all but absent in soldiers’ manuscript accounts that survive. In one rare example,
tailor Jeremiah McIntosh, who in his year in the Massachusetts militia would have become very
familiar with military musical expression, reported on October 16, 1776 how “ower Regt
Peraded and marcht the drums and fifes Beet the Retreet.” But he had to leave camp in order
to sing the psalms he loved so well at a meeting house on Sunday October 6, to hear “the
Reverant Mr Williams teach 34 psalm 11 vers Come ye Children hearken unto me I Will teach
the fear of the Lord.”
283
Divine services were certainly conducted at camp – again, for their
influence on order as well as providing a place for men facing possible death to unburden their
souls and seek solace. It is difficult to find references to the presence of hymn or psalm singing
that could have animated those services, though here again, drummers and fifers contributed to
order by being required to perform for those ceremonies to call others to their duty. Colonel
William Moultrie of the Dept. of the Army, Southern Dept., ordered “All the men to attend
Divine Service tomorrow when the Long roll beats.”
284
Lt. Abraham Chittenden of the 7
th

Connecticut regiment saw Divine Services as important to both character and leadership, as long
as it didn’t interfere with the need for order:

282
Sometimes, it seems, it was difficult even to get the musicians who called the troops to parade to turn
out: “All the Musick of the Second Regt. Except orderly Drum to attend the Prade Every Day with the
Guards the Adgt.[?] will answer the Contrary ----------” Orderly book with accounts of Capt. Nathan
Strong's company the 4th New York Regiment, manuscript in the collection of the Henry E. Huntington
Library, 31 March 1777.
283
Jeremiah McIntosh His Book of Accounts. 1776-1777. In the collection of the Huntington Library.
284
Orderly books of William Moultrie, June 20 1775-February 12 1780, manuscript in the collection of the
Henry E. Huntington Library, entry for 17 August, 1776.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.146

... As the Religious Character of the Gentlemen officers of my Regt is
well known they will doubtless attend on Divine Service when thier business will
admit I only ask them to parade in the front of thier own Companies when ever
they attend, to parade in yr proper place in thier Several Companies.
285

Similarly, in spring 1777, Captain Nathan Strong of the 4
th
New York regiment,
amid an outbreak of smallpox and a series of executions, found it important to stress
the importance of Divine Services, called by the beat of the drum.
286

Hints linking military men to song may be inferred from reports from civilian sources.
Even prior to enlistment, one 1756 broadside set a song text “to the tune of George’s
coronation,” because of the ability of a song set to an obvious loyal song “to animate and
incourage our soldiers, for the present expedition.”
287
Sociable song worked just as well; the
tune identified in The Maryland Gazette in 1754 by its refrain “Over the hills and far away”
began life as a satire on the drunken title character of George Farquhar’s 1706 play The
Recruiting Officer, but here the tune was being parodied, without irony, by “an Officer” of the
Maryland Independent Company in an actual recruitment song.
288
Five years later, at the
beginning of what would later be remembered in song as the “glorious year” of 1759, the song
“A Cheer for Soldiers and Sailors. Humbly addressed to his Royal Highness Prince Edward, the

285
Orderly book of Lieut. Abraham Chittenden, adjt. 7th Conn. reg't. Hartford, CT : Case, Lockwood &
Brainard, 1922 entry for 20 September 1776.
286
Orderly book with accounts of Capt. Nathan Strong's company the 4th New York Regiment, manuscript
in the collection of the Henry E. Huntington Library, entries from 7 April-23 May, 1777.
287
M. B., “Endeavour to animate and incourage our soldiers, for the present expedition” (Evans 40822
and 40956 Evans [N.B. both numbers reference the same item]). Boston: Green & Russell [1756?],
broadside at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
288
“For the Maryland Independent Company. (By an Officer of the Company),” in The Maryland Gazette.
Annapolis: Jonas Green, September 19, 1754, p. 2, col. 3, iss. 489.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.147

Rising Protector of the British Navy,” gave direction for it “to be sung or said on board all his
Majesty's ships, transports, &c. going to the coast of France” – an unusual direction not only
that a song could be spoken or sung, depending on the situation and the singers’ (or
commanders’) choice, but also that the song was expected to be audible to, and participated in
by, men in ranks.
289

Quite a number of newspaper songs talk about soldiers, but some songs were attributed
to them as authors. Shortly after the street shooting in Boston called “massacre,” a liberty song
parody said to be “Much in vogue among the Friends to Arbitrary Power, and the Soldiers at
Castle Island, where it was composed, since the troops have evacuated the Town of Boston”
may just as likely have been a satire or an inciting warning written by the other side, claiming
that the British were threatening the Liberty-Tree and Boston with reinforcements that would
result in even more quartering on civilians. The very presence of the song – set to perhaps the
most popular sociable tune of the century and bearing the refrain “Derry Down,” suggests the
possibility of singing in the ranks – unless, in the case of a satire, that was part of the joke.
290

Song may also have been useful to men in ranks in the year of the Declaration in the
eleven stanzas of “The Soldier’s Sentimental Toast” to the “valiant sons of thunder” heading off
to war in spring 1776.
291
In another case, several stanzas “On Independence” encouraged much-
needed recruitment in September 1776, set in the familiar “come all ye” song format of Biblical

289
“A CHEER FOR SOLDIERS AND SAILORS,” in The New Hampshire Gazette. Portsmouth, N.H.: Daniel
Fowle, January 26, 1759, p. 1, col. 3, iss. 121.
290
A New SONG [Inserted by particular Desire.], in The New-York Journal; or, the General Advertiser. New
York, N.Y.: John Holt, April 12, 1770, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 1424. Holt’s paper was also the originator of each
installment of the “Journal” series of articles on “transactions” and/or “occurrences” in Boston, though
the author or authors were uncited.
291
“THE SOLDIER'S SENTIMENTAL TOAST,” in The Continental Journal. Boston: John Gill, June 6, 1776, p.
4, col. 1, iss. 2; the article dated the toast as coming from New-York, May 21, 1776.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.148

passages and song.
292
Another publication, a Baltimore hymn pamphlet “Dedicated to the
inhabitants of the united colonies,” gave “advice to soldiers and Christians.”
293

As the previous chapter showed, singing also sustained captive soldiers and sailors in
the cases of the British officers imprisoned in Burlington on the king’s birthday in 1776, and in
American sailor Timothy Connor’s song book while imprisoned in London. But it is the
sustenance of soldiers still in arms suggested by “A SONG. Composed by a Soldier in the
Continental Army” that appeared in a succession of newspapers just before Christmas 1775 and
continuing into the new year, purporting to be the stalwart, even cheerful voice of one of the
soldiers sent to Canada during the first miserable winter of the conflict:
294

THO’ some folks may tell us, it is not so clever
To handle a muskey in cold frosty weather ;
By yonder bright Congress,* in spite of all such,
I’ll tarry this season, and take t’other touch.

Let poltoons and tories retire from our lines,
We’re stronger without them above fifty times :
Their infamous characters none will begrutch

292
“ON INDEPENDENCE.” in The Norwich Packet. Norwich: John Trumbull, September 09-16, 1776, p. 4,
col. 1, iss.
293
Elhanan Winchester. Thirteen hymns, suited to the present times. Baltimore: Baltimore: Printed by
M.K. Goddard, in Market-Street,, M,DCC,LXXVI. [1776].
294
Another song, “The Pennsylvania March,” appeared earlier at the end of summer 1775 in newspapers
in PA, MA, NY, and NH, but it has the feel of a recruitment song, set to a pastoral tune, “I Winna Marry
ony Lad, but Sandy o’er the Lee;” this tune does not appear in any of the military tune books under either
name. “The Pennsylvania March,” in The Pennsylvania Packet and The General Advertiser. Philadelphia:
John Dunlap, August 7, 1775, p. 3, col. 3; repeated in The Massachusetts Spy, August 24, 1775, p.4, col. 1,
iss. 235; The New-York Journal, August 24, 1775, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 1703; and The New-Hampshire Gazette,
September 12, 1775, p. 2, col. 2, iss. 986.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.149

Who tarry with us, boys, to take t’other touch.

* The mortar so called.
295

Six more stanzas of bravado follow (with a reference to John Manley who had recently
won the first sea skirmish of the conflict), along with repeated claims of good conditions.
The tune indicated, “The Black Sloven,” is the name of a horse in a song of the hunting
genre. Another hunting song parodied in this period was famous for another reason; “The
Echoing Horn,” the aforementioned opening song from the wildly popular London stage play
“Thomas and Sally,” which reached the colonies in play form as well as in song, had been
parodied as early as 1769 with a “rebel” text referencing John Wilkes. These and other hunting
songs may have been familiar to readers of London magazines or other imported song sources,
but would not necessarily have been “in vogue with the vulgar” as they do not appear among
the hundreds of parodies found in single sheet formats – with the sole exceptions being “The
Echoing Horn,” and this parody of “The Black Sloven.” In the latter case, when comparing the
settings of the hunting and the soldier versions, there is a significant difference: the hunting
song is marked by a repeated element, the word “Taleo” (tally ho) used as a refrain; this
element does not appear in the “Soldier” text. Such a repeated element would have greatly
assisted in facilitating participation, if the song really were one used in a participatory way in a
group setting.
Were this all of the evidence relating to this song, it would be easy to interpret it as
another example of newspaper song using a “soldier” theme but not having a connection to

295
“A SONG. Composed by a Soldier in the Continental Army.” Cambridge, Ma.: Samuel & Ebenezer Hall,
December 07-12, 1775, p. 4, col. 1, vol. 3, iss. 385; reprinted in The Connecticut Gazette, December 22,
1775, p. 1, col. 3, vol. 13, iss. 632; The Essex Journal, December 22, 1775, p. 4, col. 1, vol. 2, iss. 103; The
Providence Gazette, December 23, 1775, p. 3, col. 2, iss. 625; and The Constitutional Gazette, January 6,
1776, p. 3, col. 1, iss. 46.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.150

actual military use. But in two military tune books carried by American military musicians, “The
Black Sloven” appears with the same tune as the hunting song.
296
Whether the song actually
came from a soldier, or came to soldiers by way of the newspaper song, this is one hunting-cum-
fighting song that did find its way into the army.
This raises a curious question. Apart from its role in maintaining order, music in the
military could be a problem even on one’s own time, and in places and at times where silence
was necessary – again, personally or professionally – and where the act of singing was almost
never mentioned. Nevertheless, tunes are often named in military tune books not by their airs
but by the names of the familiar popular songs that the airs accompanied. Perhaps this is
because the airs were most familiar because of these song forms, but the very act of
documenting the song names would instantly recall the singing, in the way described in the
method used in this project for determining singing “intentionality.”
As in other manuscript sources, the rhetorical style of the textual associations attached
to these tunes span the gamut of types. Loyal song intermingled with sociable song, love songs,
even a few sacred songs – and even a “Liberty Song” put in an appearance in the tune book
carried by William Morris of New Jersey. The Morris book, dated 1776-1777 and carried in the
1
st
New Jersey Regiment, included some songs, sacred and secular, that appear by their titles to
have been repurposed to satisfy military needs: along with familiar military calls like “Retreat,”
and “Revelley,” the song “Lovely Nancy” had been converted into a “retreat,” while the famous
William Billings hymn tune “Chester” became “a Quick step for Sunday.”
297
But the “Liberty

296
Henry Blake, Diary, 1776 (American Antiquarian Society, manuscript); Kate Van Winkle Keller, ed.,
Giles Gibbs Jr., his book for the fife (Hartford, CT: Connecticut Historical Society, 1974).
297
William Morris, of Captain Tucker’s Company, New Jersey’s First Regiment, Hunterdon County, tune
book ( New-York Historical Society, manuscript, 1776-1777). The citation counts "approximately fifty
patriotic and martial tunes including ‘Liberty Song,’ ‘American Artillery,’ ‘Quick Step Bunker Hill,’” among
them, but also lists many song names familiar in the sociable range. Like the other military books, this
one is all tunes, no lyrics, but echoing many of the most familiar songs sung during the revolutionary era.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.151

Song” tune noted in Morris’ book isn’t the tune of “Heart of Oak” used by John Dickinson, it’s
“The British Grenadier,” used in the “parody of the parody,” identified in newspaper, broadside,
and almanac as the incendiary “New Massachusetts Liberty Song,”
298
not to be confused with
the original “Massachusetts Liberty Song,” a parody of the Dickinson and Lee original.
299

Similar repurposing can be seen in the “Rakes of Marlow (Mallow) quick Time” and
“Nancy Dorsons (Dawson’s) March” in Connecticut fifer Giles Gibbs’ 1777 book.
300
John
Greenwood’s book, whether intended to play dance tunes in or out of the military, includes a
large number of song tunes that could have been as easily applied to singing as to country-style

298
“The New Massachusetts Liberty Song” is the “Liberty Song” that appears in the military tune book of
William Morris. Morris, Morris … tune book. This version first appeared in broadside in February 1770
and was set to the tune of “The British Grenadier” but identified as “A NEW SONG, COMPOS’D BY A SON
OF LIBERTY, AND Sung by MR. FLAGG at Concert-Hall, BOSTON, February 13, 1770.” “New Massachusetts
Liberty Song,” broadside, Evans 42135. Available in microform from many online archives including the
Archive of Americana, American Antiquarian Society, and Massachusetts Historical Society, to name a few.
The broadside song was also included in the same 1770 Edes and Gill almanac containing the original
“Massachusetts Liberty Song” but didn’t move into newspapers until the beginning of 1774, just as news
of the tea incident in Boston Harbor was being digested throughout the coastal colonies. Alexander
Purdie & John Dixon, eds., Virginia Gazette, January 6, 1774, p. 4, col. 1; repeated in John Holt, ed., New-
York Journal, April 28, 1774, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 1634; Isaiah Thomas, ed., Massachusetts Spy, May 26, 1774,
p. 4, col. 1, vol. IV, iss. 173; Ebenezer Watson, ed., Connecticut Courant, May 8, 1775, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 541.
Isaiah Thomas first printed this version in the May 1774 issue of his new magazine, Royal American
Magazine, just before the Boston Port Act closed that harbor on June 1. Isaiah Thomas, ed., “A Song on
LIBERTY. To the Tune of THE BRITISH GRENADIER.,” The Royal American Magazine, or Universal
Repository of Instruction and Amusement (Boston: Thomas, 1774), p. 197.
299
The existence of two different songs called the “Massachusetts Liberty Song” may contribute to the
confusion over conflicting claims of authorship. The original version appeared in newspaper versions in
September 1768 during a rapid and lively conversation between a “parody” of Dickinson’s original “Liberty
Song” (purportedly written by Boston soldiers) and a response that followed known also as “the parody
parodized:” Samuel Hall, ed., “The PARODY PARODIZ’D or the Massachusetts LIBERTY SONG,” Essex
Gazette, September 27-October 4, 1768, p. 3, col. 2 1/10; repeated in: Thomas & John Fleet, Boston
Evening-Post, October 3, 1768, page 3 col 1, iss. 1717; Solomon Southwick, Newport Mercury, October 3-
10, 1768, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 527; Daniel Fowle, New-Hampshire Gazette, October 14, 1768, p. 2, cols. 1-2,
iss. 627; and Robert Fletcher, Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, February 28-March 6, 1770, p.
80, cols. 2-3, vol. 2, no. 10. Almanac versions of this first “Massachusetts Liberty Song” appeared during a
1769-1770 conversation between two rival Boston publishers in their respective almanacs: Mein and
Fleming’s Bickerstaff's Boston Almanack, 1770, and Edes & Gill's North-American Almanack, 1770.
300
Kate Van Winkle Keller, Giles Gibbs, 1974. Edited from the original manuscript, Keller’s work on Gibbs’
tune book turned up “melodies not found” in the tutors (books) listed by Camus, suggesting that
individual tune books could carry the stamp and personality of their compilers as well as of the standard
repertoires.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.152

dancing, including Scots songs like “Roselin Castle” and “Over the Water to Charlie,” and
pastorals and love songs like “How Sweet Through the Wood lands” and “Jockey to the Fair.”
The only words appearing in Major Henry Blake’s book were diary entries or the song
names of tunes he notated for fife. An officer’s aide, Blake enlisted in New Hampshire in 1776
and interspersed song tunes between diary entries as his unit traveled through Boston and New
York and on to Quebec, before returning home in October that same year. Whether or not
Blake’s duties included fifing, the book was intended for that use and included instructional
material including “the gamut” (range) of the instrument and the same mix of tunes to military,
love, and sociable songs as seen in other manuscript examples.
301

All four military tune books considered here include the tune for “Lovely Nancy” (in
addition to the “retreat” version), and sociable songs appearing multiple times include the ever-
useful “Rogues March” and the theater song “The Wild Irish Man,” along with the naughty
women of song and dance, “Maggie Lauder” and “Nancy Dawson.”
By comparison,
302
the manuscript civilian tune books examined differed in one great
respect from the military tune books: they included many more sacred songs. The mingling of
Psalms and Hymns with pastorals and sociable songs described in the previous chapter did not
happen in the military tune books (apart from the re-purposed “Chester,” intended for marching
on Sunday), further strengthening the argument that, whatever role musicians were expected to
play in Divine Services, the encouragement of singing – even sacred singing – wasn’t a part of it.
Singing wasn’t necessary to making a point when Yankee Doodle was played outside of
Boston churches on Sundays, and a similar accounts exist regarding “Nancy Dawson,” a tune
that originated in a hornpipe scandalously danced by the London performer of the same

301
Blake, Diary.
302
Appendix J includes the contents and analysis of, and comparisons between, “Manuscript Tune Books,
Military and Civilian.”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.153

name.
303
The popular newspaper series, “Journal” of “Transactions” or “Occurrences,”
reported:

1769. May 15. Yesterday, but before divine Service began, part of the town had
opportunity of hearing Nancy Dawson from a most elegant band of music, the
French horns certainly were inimitable--It is some time since we have had such a
Sunday morning regale, the drums and fife, being the common entertainment,
and 'tis uncertain to whose taste we owe this: Some think it the fancy of Madam
G--m, while others think that the justice himself conceived it might be an
agreeable relief to the wardens under the burthen of their duty.”
304

But in another case, a publisher found “Nancy Dawson” to be entirely worthy of
religious satire, when a “correspondent” in Manchester, England reported use of the tune
“Nancy Dawson” by a “religious sect” that “had their religious ceremonies and tenets delivered
to them in a vision” involving:

“trembling, shaking, and screeching in the most dreadful manner …
which strange articulation at last ends in singing and dancing to the pious tunes
of Nancy Dawson, Bobbin Joan, Hie thee Jemmy home again, &c. … from which

303
In yet another revealing clue that nineteenth-century writers and their readers were well aware of
what these tunes meant, “Yankee” and “Nancy” were linked in a simile defining inappropriate music:
“The air was not always appropriate to the drama that was to follow … like making “Yankee Doodle” or
“Nancy Dawson” pass as introductory symphonies to “Hamlet” or “Macbeth.” “Odd Fashions,” in The
Crayon, Vol. 2, No. 9, August 29, 1855, p. 129.
304
“Boston. Journal of Occurrences, continued. May 15.,” The New York Journal. New York: John Holt,
June 29 1769, Supplement, p. 1, col. 3; repeated in the Essex Gazette (Hall), July 4-11, 1769, p. 1, issue
1993; the Connecticut Courant (Watson), Hartford, July 10, 1769, p. 2, col. 1, issue 238; the Connecticut
Gazette (Green), New London, July 14, 1769, p. 1, col. 2, issue 296; and the Boston Evening Post (Fleet),
July 17, 1769, page 1, col. 1, issue 1764.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.154

uncommon mode of religious worship they have obtained the denomination of
Shakers.”
305

But if the meaning behind “Nancy Dawson” was indeed obscene, it was of the witty
English variant allowed where “wit or humour are predominant,”
306
and completely socially
acceptable if played in its proper place – often at sociable gatherings of men. The notorious
tune – known today, ironically, in the children’s song family that includes “Here We Go ‘Round
The Mulberry Bush” and “The Wheels on the Bus Go ‘Round and ‘Round” – is thought to be the
work of one of the most sophisticated practitioners of London theater song, Thomas Arne,
whose work animated everything from light musicals to oratorios and includes the tune for the
iconic loyal song “Rule Britannia” as well as the modern setting for “God Save The King.”
307
A
text was added by George Alexander Stevens, one of the popular lyricists of his era and a
practitioner of double entendre.
308
So while the tune could be shocking when directed as an
insult to Boston Congregationalists, or fit only for use in the insane rituals of a freakish sect,

305
John Dixon and Alexander Purdie, The Virginia Gazette, November 9, 1769, page 1, col. 3, issue 964.
306
The Convivial Songster, p. vii.
307
“Dawson, Nancy.” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004; online
edition, accessed 19 May 2013.
308
James Sambrook, ‘Stevens, George Alexander (1710?–1784)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/ view/article/26422,
accessed 21 Nov 2011]. For a less ambiguous reading of attitudes toward Dawson and other women of
the theater set, 1761’s The Meretriciad, written by Royal Navy officer and poet Lt. Edward Thompson
(later captain)

about courtesan Kitty Fisher viciously satirized Dawson and her famous dance: “Well,
dance on Nancy, keep the beaten rout, / And burn your Rider, as you was burnt out.” N.B., Thompson’s
career may actually have benefited from his associations with the theater crowd, as he was steadily
promoted during this period, possibly with the help of impresario David Garrick; meanwhile, like Dawson,
Fisher would also be immortalized in children’s literature in the nursery rhyme “Lucy Locket.” Edward
Thompson. The Meretriciad. Printed for the author: and sold by C. Moran, under the Great Piazza,
Covent-Garden [London], M.DCC.LXI. [1761], pp. 20-21; Clive Wilkinson, “Thompson, Edward (1738?–
1786),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford:
OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by David Cannadine, January 2008.
http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/view/article/27260 (accessed December 5, 2016).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.155

nevertheless it could serve a purpose as a military march or be openly enjoyed by the best sort
of people, under the appropriate circumstances.
Perhaps showing a change in attitudes over a century and a half of practice, the
disapproval Thomas Campion anticipated over the sale of sacred and secular songs in the same
place seemed to have dissipated even for this most ribald secular example when, in 1761, the
Memoires of Nancy Dawson
309
was available for purchase alongside “Shakespear's, Drydens,
Otway's, Milton's, Gay's, Farquar's, Vanbrugh's, Cibber's, and Rowe's plays and works” as well as
sacred songbooks, in the shop operated by New York bookseller James Rivington, a printer and
publisher praised by no less an authority than Isaiah Thomas as the bookseller best
“acquainted” with his business in America, “possessed (of) good talents, polite manners, … well
informed” and “conduct(ing) his Gazette with such moderation and impartiality as did him
honor.”
310

“Nancy Dawson” and other tunes like it provide further examples of how even without
text, song was understood to belong in certain places but proscribed in others, and was
expected to do different work in each place. For sacred song, that place was in the church or
meeting house, but also behind the plow and other secular spaces:

In the preface to his Greek New Testament, Erasmus wrote: “I wish that
even the weakest woman should read the Gospels, and I wish they were

309
William Weyman. The New York Gazette, October 26, 1761, page 3, col. 3, issue 147; the ad repeated
in the same publication the following week. A book with a similar name, Nancy’s Dawson’s Jests, which
included a songbook, The Merry Hornpipe, with witty sociable songs set to tunes including “A Begging We
Will Go” and “Derry Down.” An Elizabethan pastoral, Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to
His Love (Come live with me and be my love),” is added at the end, but only to be shot down by Walter
Raleigh’s arch “Answer,” “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd (If all the world and love were young).”
Nancy Dawson’s Jests. London: Printed for J. Seymour, in Ball-Alley, Lombard-Street. MDCCLXI (1761),
pp. 43-44.
310
Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Vol. 1, pp. 307, 309.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.156

translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not
only by Scots and Irishmen, but by Turks and Saracens. I long that the
husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough,
that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveler
should beguile with them the tedium of his journey.” It was a like burst of
enthusiasm in William Tyndale when, as so often quoted, he announced his
determination to devote himself to the translation of the New Testament into
the English, declaring: “With God’s blessing I will so order it that the English
plough-boy shall read the word of God in his own tongue in which he was born.”
And he did; and perished at the stake for this one only crime!
311

Whether expressly indicated or not, tune direction for all religious song was known, in
the sense that selections of psalm and hymn tunes were provided in the back of psalters and
hymnals to be chosen from. Notation for other sacred forms such as fuguing tunes and
anthems were provided in supplements for specialists, i.e., singing-masters or singing school
students, rather than in the regular hymnals and psalters.
312

But “secular” anthems and “hymns” – those not based on sacred texts but nevertheless
using those names – can be found in secular sources such as newspapers or songsters, but not
with musical notation or tune direction, meaning one would perhaps have been more likely to

311
One example of many such quotes appearing in nineteenth-century church histories: Justin A. Smith,
D.D., Studies in Modern Church History (New Haven, CT: James P. Cadman, 1887), p.16.
312
For an analysis of the most popular hymn, psalm, anthem, and other sacred tunes, refer to the
Leavenworth and Kroeger dissertations. The segregated nature of sacred and secular song in this period
put these sacred tunes out of the scope of this part of the project; however, were evidence to emerge of
people parodizing “Old Hundred” in this period (evidence that is plentiful in the nineteenth century), it
would be a very interesting, and welcome, complication for this project.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.157

read them than to sing them.
313
The actual tunes written by composers such as the king’s
master musician – whose names were often mentioned – for these through-composed songs
reported in newspapers could only have been accessed through other means, were their scores
to have been reproduced in print or manuscript and either sold or shared.
Similar to the search for authors in the previous chapter, many tunes for song texts
were not named – but the odds of find them are a little better.
314
Of nearly a thousand song
instances (excluding most of the entries for bound books, in the search for tunes used for topical
song), nearly 400 do not indicate a tune by any of the methods suggested earlier in this project.
Nearly 200 more are identified in some manner but are unlocated at present.
That leaves close to 400 tune instances that can be identified among the sources
examined, and perhaps the most important point is that more than half of them appear in nine
or more instances, meaning a relatively small pool of individual tunes were used most often for
songs found in the kind of sources most likely to have topical or explicitly political content.
Another 125 instances have 2-8 citations, and fifty more tunes appear just once.
Another important point is that, for the 400 songs that do not indicate a tune but are
clearly singable by virtue of their structure and other clues, either the population was expected
to recognize things about these singable texts that we do not, or they were expected to do what
they wanted with them – sing them to whatever tune fit, or not.
315

So of nearly 100 individual tunes identified, fewer than 30 tunes gave music to the vast
majority of the 400 songs instances among those most likely to be topical and for which tunes

313
The same is true for cantata, a musical form that is beyond the scope of this project though print
examples of texts for these and other through-composed pieces (recitative, mostly, without regulated
meter or rhyme) appear in British Colonial America, but without notation or other song direction.
314
Appendix K lists tunes indicated for the close to one thousand song instances considered.
315
N.B. in cases where, for example, it is possible to identify a song as being in a particular meter, that
would not be an indication of a specific tune, but rather an indication of how a tune could have been
chosen for a text.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.158

were identified. Of these, eight tunes appear on both the list of the eleven most frequently
used tunes, and the eleven songs appearing in the most instances. These eight tunes, along
with six others that filled out each “top eleven” songs and tunes, are the fourteen listed in the
table below.

Table 3.1. Identified tunes used most frequently, or for top songs, British Colonial America, 1750-1776
Rhetorical style of text:  High  Mid  Low; italicized text used for tunes appearing on only one list

Songs Tunes

Top songs
associated
RS Tune title
Instances
RS Tune title
5 H Heart of Oak 65 H Heart of Oak
1 L Hosier’s Ghost (11x) 26 M Derry Down
1 H The God of the Greeks 19 M The British Grenadier
1 H Come Jolly Bacchus, &c. or
Glorious First of August (9x)

13 M The Echoing Horn
1 M The Echoing Horn 13 L Chevy Chase
1 M O My Kitten, my Kitten, &c. 13 H The Gods of the Greeks
1 M Doodle Doodle Doo 11 L Hosier’s Ghost
1 M Sing Tantarara 11 H Rule Britannia
1 H Rule Britannia 9 H Come jolly Bacchus, &c. or
Glorious First of August

1 H The Watry God 9 M O my Kitten, my Kitten, &c.
1 M The Black Sloven 9 M Sing Tantarara

The songs with the greatest number of instances appear on the left, and it is clear that,
however many times a tune might have been mentioned for use with a song throughout the
period, with one great exception, its greatest popularity in this period was its association with
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.159

one single song text. The exception, of course, is William Boyce’s tune to “Heart of Oak,” which
was parodized far more often than any other tune in the liberty song pantheon, providing music
for five of the songs most frequently mentioned.
With one single exception, each one of these most frequent songs featured an
oppositional text relating to one of the great issues of the imperial crisis. The exception is a
sociable song of the “Nancy Dawson” sort that tittered about the divorce scandal involving a
brother of the king and set to a familiar old tune with the refrain “Doodle Doodle Doo.”
Among the most popular songs and tunes alike, the rhetorical styles vary, with slightly
less emphasis on “low” pastoral or love songs and “high” rhetoric songs. Many of these popular
songs with oppositional texts combine rhetorical styles to their best effect: sociable tunes with
pastoral imagery and musical devices mimicking battle, as in the case of the two examples set to
hunting songs, or “loyal” songs that occupy a more sociable space than anthems, the sort of
tunes that might accompany a toast. Each tune will be discussed individually and explored for
individual nuances,
316
but the point is that the liberty songs like those that parodied “Heart of
Oak” or “Rule Britannia” -- appropriating the “wrong” rhetoric – may have been widely
disseminated (as noted by the numbers) and wildly popular (as already noted by commentators
from Adams to Fithian), but they account for a relatively small number of individual songs
among prerevolutionary song output – and the theatre tune “Heart of Oak,” though written by
the master of the king’s band, itself borders on sociability. The more significant impact of
revolutionary era themes in song may be in the way the early liberty songs may have paved the
way for these themes to enter into other song rhetorics, too. Equally significant: these songs
were documented in a way that survived the period, clearly attached to the names of their

316
Appendix L includes scores (contemporary where possible) of these fourteen tunes and the texts for
the most repeated songs set to them.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.160

distributors (especially in the case of newspaper songs), yet without evidence – Isaiah Thomas’
“Rogue’s March” anecdote notwithstanding – of any particular punishment or suppression,
other than the way some publishers or writers may have suppressed themselves.
317

In the case of “The Liberty Song,” whoever chose the tune for this “experiment” hit the
bullseye. “Heart of Oak” was composed by William Boyce for a text written by David Garrick for
the London play Harlequin’s Revenge, extolling British naval victories of the "glorious year" of
1759. As master of the king's band of musicians, Boyce also composed loyal song, examples of
which appear in the database of song instances for this project.
318
“Heart of Oak” provided a

317
John Dickinson and his collaborator, Arthur Lee, are one example. The two men connected to the
creation of the most popular, most parodied song of the entire liberty song oeuvre were never before or
after associated with the creation of a song. But the motivation behind the song survives in Dickinson’s
extraordinary letter to James Otis, and there could not be a clearer description of something like a
laboratory experiment (of the sort Bacon, Mersenne or Kircher would have loved?) to see what impact
the potent combination of text and tune would have in generating what John Adams would describe, a
little more than a year later, as powerful “sensations.” Though it is impossible to know for certain, “The
Liberty Song” may not have even been Dickinson's idea. Dickinson sent the text to Otis and at least one
publisher, William Goddard, following a visit by Arthur Lee, who was on his way out of the country after
an unhappy stint as a doctor in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Otis letter credits Lee with writing eight lines
of the song, which could be either two verses or, more provocatively, one verse and the refrain – in other
words, the germ of the entire song. Dickinson had no connection to song before or after this one
stunning example, so much so that one biographer insisted that a four-sided music stand for group
playing must actually have been a group reading stand. Lee's brother-in-law later claimed that Dickinson
"stole" the song from Lee, though Lee never claimed it. Arthur Lee returned to England as “The Liberty
Song” was being published, and would later contribute to the cause of American liberty as an essayist,
foreign representative, and even as a spy, his methods usually cloaked in pseudonyms, disguises, and
intrigue. Suggesting a song idea to Dickinson, though unprovable in the absence of additional evidence,
would nevertheless be consistent with Lee’s practice of injecting ideas from the shadows. “Heart of Oak,”
Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, pp. 299-301.
318
Boyce’s participation in musical theater is represented in publications such as the inclusion of “A New
CANTATA. Sung by Mr. Lowe” in The LADIES’ Own Memorandum-Book ; OR, DAILY POCKET JOURNAL, For
the YEAR 1769 (LONDON: Printed for ROBINSON and ROBERTS No. 25-0 Paternoster-row ; and T. SLACK,
at Newcastle, 1769). But most mentions of Boyce in the song instance database are drawn from
newspapers whose printers tended toward loyal songs and themes, and frequently on news pages rather
than back page slots often allotted for poetry and song: “ANTHEM. Composed for the Funeral of his late
Majesty, Nov. 11, 1760,” New Hampshire Gazette, March 20, 1761, p. 3, col. 1; “Ode for his Majesty's
birth-day,” South Carolina Gazette, August 29-September 5, 1761, p. 2, col. 1; “ODE FOR HIS MAJESTY'S
BIRTH-DAY, JUNE 4, 1762,” South Carolina Gazette, August 14-21, 1762, p. 2, col. 1; “ANTHEM, on
occasion of the general thanksgiving for the peace,” Georgia Gazette, September 15, 1763, p. 1, col. 2;
“ODE FOR THE NEW YEAR, JANUARY 1 1765,” New York Gazette, March 25, 1765, p. 2, col. 2; “ODE FOR
HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY, JUNE 4, 1768,” South Carolina & American General Gazette, September 16-23,
1768, p. 1, col. 1; “ODE FOR HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY, JUNE 4, 1769,” South Carolina & American General
Gazette, August 18-23, 1769, p. 2, col. 1; “ODE for the New Year,” South Carolina & American General
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.161

tune of exactly the high rhetorical style that was supposed to be reserved for God, king, country,
composed by a practitioner at the highest level of such compositions at that place and time.
Just as the tune for “Heart of Oak” was composed in service to the British Empire as
manifested by its powerful Navy, so was “Rule Britannia” crafted to laud the maritime nation
writ large. The similarities don’t end there. The song, with tune by Thomas Arne (who may
have been responsible for that very different tune “Nancy Dawson”)
319
and text by James
Thomson, was written for a rarified dramatic form. The “masque” had its roots in earlier
productions dating to the Tudors and was always intended for a court audience. In this case, the
masque “Alfred” was privately written and performed for the Prince of Wales as a country
entertainment in 1740; , a momentarily vindicating historical moment for the Prince – a political
opponent of both his father, George II and the prime minister, Robert Walpole – with the early
British victory at Porto Bello, Panama buoying those who supported going to war against Spain
in the face of Walpole’s advice to the contrary.
320

“Alfred,” and the masque form itself, are largely forgotten today, but “Rule Britannia”
continues to be one of the primary songs celebrating the idea of Britain, perhaps second only to
“God Save The King” – yet another loyal song set by Arne whose tune would be appropriated
and parodied to American themes as the fundamentally English polity found familiar cultural

Gazette, March 2-9, 1770, p. 3, col. 4; “ODE FOR THE NEW YEAR,” South Carolina & American General
Gazette, March 5-12, 1771, p. 2, col. 1; “ODE FOR THE NEW YEAR. JANUARY 1, 1772,” South Carolina &
American General Gazette, March 9-17, 1772, p. 2, col. 2; “ODE FOR HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTH DAY,” South
Carolina & American General Gazette, August 11, 1772, p. 2, col. 1; “ODE FOR HIS MAJESTY'S BIRTH-DAY,
JUNE 4, 1773,” South Carolina & American General Gazette, August 17, 1773, p. 1, col. 1; “Ode for his
Majesty's birth-day … June 4, 1776,” New York Mercury, October 1, 1776, p. 4, col. 1.

319
Though largely overshadowed by German import George Frideric Handel, Arne was considered “the
greatest native-born English composer of his day” but is “largely forgotten” today. Todd Gilman, “Arne,
Handel, the Beautiful, and the Sublime,” in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 4, no. 4 (Summer, 2009), pp.
529-555.
320
“Arne, Thomas Augustine (1710–1778),” David J. Golby in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed.
H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2009,
http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/674 (accessed May 19, 2013).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.162

song structures to describe its new manifestation. But at this moment, “American” still meant
the condition of being English-but-resident on the (largely North) American continent.
“God Save The King” does not rank among the largest number of instances for tune or
song uses in this database, but that could be due to which sources were used; the addition of all
songs from all extant bound books that could have found their way to British Colonial America
would undoubtedly have added to its numbers. The origin theories for the tune and song are
many and murky, but both were already in the culture by the time Arne set the song for a use at
Drury Lane Theatre in 1745; an musical setting adapted from Purcell’s “Fame, Let Thy Trumpet
Sound” but having the first line “God Save Great GEORGE our King” was printed in the
Gentleman’s Magazine in October of the same year,
321
but several years earlier, “A Loyal Song”
with the same first line but the more familiar setting we know today appeared in the second
volume of the illustrated song book Calliope, or English Harmony, published in 1739.

321
Sylvanus Urban, Gent., ed., “A Song for two Voices. As sung at both Playhouses.” Poetical Essays,
October 1745, Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, Vl. XV for the year 1745 (London: Edw.
Cave, [n.d.]), p. 552.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.163

Figure 3.1. Loyal Singing, 1739 and 1745.


”A Loyal Song” in the songbook “Calliope, or
English Harmony” (1739) is one of only two songs
in the book where actual singing is depicted,
each with an image of men in an indoor sociable
space singing.

”A Song for two Voices. As sung at both Playhouses” in the October 1745
issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine show the song to “Great GEORGE” was
popular at public singing venues, but that, at least as far as the magazine
knew, it was still being sung to a tune similar to a song set by Henry Purcell
in the late-seventeenth-century, “Fame, Let Thy Trumpet Sound.”

In Calliope, a collection of about 400 songs, only two of the images accompanying songs
depict actual singing, and this song has one of those images: the men sing in a sociable setting
while patriotically drinking English beer and smoking tobacco (one of the great commodities of
empire), with one of the men standing and raising his glass in the manner of a toast, according
the “loyal song” a reverence not ordinarily required of non-loyal sociable song settings and
singing.
322

The song was parodied in 1758 to celebrate the fall of Cape Breton, in an example that
shows how the Atlantic space mediated the way colonials engaged in song discourse. According
to the article accompanying the song, the surrender had taken place in July – a fact obviously

322
“A Loyal Song,” in Calliope, or English Harmony. London: Henry Roberts, 1739, vol. 2, p. 167.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.164

known soon after the fact in the British American colonies – but an account of singing and
celebration published in London in September only reached colonial newspapers in time for
their December issues. Nevertheless, the entire text of the song “On the GLORIOUS Twenty
sixth of July, 1758” was printed in three extant newspapers, providing locals with a new way to
celebrate the victory in song five months after it took place, adding new verses to, but retaining
the refrain element of, “God Save The King.” Even the lyrics tell the reader to sing:

BRITANNIA’s Sons rejoice
To George exalt your voice;
God save the King!
In whose auspicious reign,
Cape Breton we regain
And in recording strain
Victory sing.
323

John Draper of the official Boston paper The News-Letter rarely printed a song, but this
one ran alongside news coverage of the Cornish celebration, and included every word of every
verse. The account of the celebrations in Penryn give a vivid account of “rejoicings exceed[ing]
every thing of the kind ever seen in that part of the world, within the memory of the oldest man
living:”

323
“On the GLORIOUS Twenty sixth of July, 1758,” in The New-London Summary. New-London: Timothy
Green, December 8, 1758, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 18; repeated in The Boston Weekly News-Letter, December 14,
1758, p. 2, col. 2, iss. 2989; and in The Boston Post Boy, December 18, 1758, p. 2, col. 2, iss. 70.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.165

To the incessant ringing of bells, the illumination of windows, the blaze
of bonfires, and other usual demonstrations of joy, a very grand apparatus of
fireworks was added … which, after being carried thro' the town in solemn
procession, preceded by drums beating, fifes-playing, and colours flying, was
amidst repeated acclamations of the populace, convey'd to the King's Arms
Tavern, near the Town-Hall, and exhibited in the evening before the door of that
house, to the universal satisfaction of all the spectators. …. The fire-works being
exhibited, the company repaired to the King's Arms Tavern to supper, where
particular marks of distinction were paid to a noble piece of roast beef, which
was ushered into the room with the beat of the drum, musick of fifes, and other
military honours, deck'd with the arms of Great-Britain over those of France;
and being placed on a side-board, after singing The Roast Beef of Old-England
and God save Great George our King, together with the new-composed song,
called The Glorious Twenty-sixth of July, 1758, it was dissected with a broad-
sword …. After supper, his Majesty's, and several other loyal healths were
drank. The evening concluded with great unanimity and good fellowship; In
short, the whole was conducted from the beginning to the end, in such a
manner, as has done great honour to the gentlemen concerned in the
management and direction of this affair.
324

The new parody was not sung to the crowd outdoors, but to the privileged few who
brought the parade inside to an exuberant but ceremonial slicing of the entrée that most
represented “Old-England” – roast beef, with its own signature song. It was here that the loyal

324
The Boston Weekly News-Letter. Boston: John Draper, December 14, 1758, p. 2, col. 2, iss. 2989.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.166

parody was sung alongside the original loyal song. The mixture of solemnity and rejoicing, and
the orchestrated, time-honored rituals alongside “usual demonstrations of joy” in the streets
show how the “generation” of “sensations” of loyalty outweighed the risks inherent in filling the
streets with singing people and setting off fireworks – a civilian corollary to artillery? – described
as “various mines … rockets of several sorts … pyramids of fire … Roman candles … with several
other ingenious devices too tedious to mention.” No wonder the concern that it be
“conducted” with honour,” and the congratulations that it “concluded with great unanimity and
good fellowship.”
The first American parody of “God Save The King” published in a colonial newspaper was
reportedly sung at the 1764 send-off arranged for Benjamin Franklin, who had been recently
ousted from the Pennsylvania assembly and was returning to London “to assist the present
agent at the court of London” in advancing the anti-proprietory argument opposed to the
colony’s Proprietors, the Penns: “a very great number of the reputable inhabitants of this city
and county … saluted” his departure with “a number of cannon, and the huzza's of the people;
and an Anthem was sung … suitable to the occasion.” The parody appropriated the tune of king
and empire but mentioned neither; perhaps the writers felt Franklin’s support of royal
governorship as a way of removing the proprietors entitled the use of the royal loyal song in his
support? The song text placed hope in Franklin instead, calling on God to “Scatter our enemies,
And make them fall … Confound their politicks, Frustrate such hypocrites,” to “save us all.”
325

By 1776, the appropriation of British loyal song in service of American causes had
become common, including an example published in The New York Packet in exile in Fishkill

325
“Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Philadelphia, to his friend in Newbern, dated Novemb. 23,
1764,” and “THE ANTHEM SUNG AT CHESTER,” in The North Carolina Magazine. New Bern: James Davis,
December 21, 1764.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.167

following the signing of the Declaration a month earlier. This parody reworked the 1758 parody,
with the call to “exalt your voice” directed toward removing rather than honoring the king:

Hail! O America!
Hail now the joyful day!
Exalt your voice,
Shout, George is King no more,
Over this western shore;
Let him his loss deplore,
While we rejoice.
326

In the manuscript sources that reveal how individuals used songs, “God Save The King”
lingered into this period in two examples considered. When Alexander Watson kept his receipt
book in 1772-1774 (before the final convulsions toward separation from Britain), the loyal song
took a place of honor among songs memorialized and was the only secular tune for which
Watson provided musical notation (though no text).
327
The tune also appears, not surprisingly,
in the military tune book of John Greenwood that had been once owned by a British fife-major
during the Seven Years’ War.
328
“God Save The King” would gain even greater prominence as an
American loyal song during the early national period,
329
undoubtedly assisted as much by its

326
“Hail! O America!” in The New York Packet. Fishkill, N.Y.: Samuel Loudon, August 1, 1776, p. 4, col. 1,
iss. 31; repeated in The Norwich Packet, November 18-25, 1776, p. 4, col. 1.
327
Watson, manuscript at N-YHS.
328
Greenwood, manuscript, Leaf 10, “God Save the King” and Leaf 37, “Boston March” and “God Save the
King.”
329
Robert Keller lists dozens of versions of the tune being used as “God Save the King,” “God Save
America,” “God Save the Rights of Man,” etc. through 1820; the familiar lyrics known in our time, “My
Country ‘Tis Of Thee” would not be written until the 1830s. Robert M. Keller, Early American Songsters.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.168

ease of singing – with a range of less than an octave – as by its steady, stepwise motion, pausing
only for long, strong notes on the strong beats.
Other tunes animating American liberty songs drew themes from different deities,
namely the gods of classical antiquity. “The Watry God” is the first line of the song “Neptune’s
Resignation,” with text by a “Mr. Wignel,”
330
that took its title from a literary allusion to King
Neptune, understood at the time to be a metaphor for Britain, such as when used by Mercy Otis
Warren in a poem “requested” of her following the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor in
December 1773.
331
The Wignel text was set to music by John Worgan,
332
a Cambridge scholar
and Vauxhall organist who periodically held the official “composer” post at the pleasure gardens
and dabbled, though not very successfully, in the high-rhetoric realms of oratorio and anthem,
including music celebrating the naval victories of 1759, as did Boyce. Certainly this tune follows
the pattern of artillery-like movement.
333

In the American version of the text, as Schlesinger succinctly put it, “Neptune yields his
trident to America,”
334
appearing in song instances published throughout 1776, including one

330
John Wignell and other members of his theatrical family are found in Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A.
Burnim, Edward A. Langhans, Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993), pp. 57-74. The publication date of circa 1760 on
the sheet music for “Neptune’s Resignation” in the British Library (G 312.( 224.) is inferred, not known,
but the text was printed by the author, John Wignell, without musical notation in November 1762;
Wignall made no pretense to high art or lofty rhetoric, “present(ing) His Compliments” to the London
literati by that he published his work “not from an immoderate Thirst of Fame, but a modest Hope of
Profit.” Sheet Music for “Neptune's Resignation” Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, accessed June
28, 2016, http://www.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/628; John Wignell. A
Collection of Original Pieces. London: 1762, pp. 32, 122-125.
331
Letter from Mercy Otis Warren to Abigail Adams, February 27 1774, manuscript in the collection of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed online.
332
Sheet Music for "Neptune's Resignation,” Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, accessed June 30,
2016, http://www.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/628.
333
“Worgan, John (bap. 1724, d. 1790),” Robert J. Bruce in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee
ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. David Cannadine, May 2005,
http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/view/article/29974 (accessed August 24, 2016).
334
Schlesinger, “Patriot Propaganda,” p. 88.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.169

appearance in loyalist Hugh Gaine’s New York Mercury as “a favorite song of the Rebels.”
335
Its
effect on Americans may have been similar to that experienced by their English brethren at the
time the original was published at the time of “the Naval Victory obtain’d by Sir Edward Hawke
Novr. 20
th
. 1739 Off Bellisle” near Quiberon Bay. The title was paraphrased when the song text
was copied out in the commonplace book of the Reverend Thomas Speddin of Whitehaven,
Cumbria, UK, a format with a “facility for expressing and thus for reinforcing one's own
patriotism through selective textual appropriation” begun by mid-century, according to David
Allan. Even when texts were:

… drawn from a published source … the choices made when
commonplacing served strongly to underline those specific identities – at once
ostentatiously patriotic and unashamedly partisan – that seemed integral to the
reader's own relationship with others in the public domain … (as well as) one of
the more significant means by which patriotic fervour and national identity
were generated and sustained throughout contemporary English society.
336

The purest, most fundamental expression of English national identity, the pastoral, is
apparent in earlier examples of loyal song using pastoral imagery and gaining lasting favor, as in
the case of the sociable yet loyal song, “The Origin of English Liberty,” written by George
Alexanders Stevens – yet another connection to “Nancy Dawson.” In the lyricist-playwright’s
text, the daughter of Jove, “Attraction,” is tasked to find the proper “climate” for “silver, gold,
jewels” (India) and “vineyards” (France, Spain). Freedom, she found, “flourish’d” in England,

335
Hugh Gaine, The New York Mercury, November 25, 1776, page 3, column 3.
336
David Allan, Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), pp. 233-235.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.170

and she left “Four cardinal virtues
337
… as guardians to cherish the root.” Its flowers, Liberty,
“fed” and “bred” Englishmen, who promise “We will while we’ve breath ; nay, we’ll grasp it in
death, / Then return it untainted to heav’n.”
338

The tune has some leaps, but also stepwise movement that is rather more peaceful that
bellicose. Its composer, identified in extant sheet music as Starling Goodwin, was a church
organist at a number of London churches – often simultaneously – as well as an instrumentalist
at public pleasure gardens including Lambeth Well and Ranelagh Gardens. Both a composer of
hymns and an arranger of other composers’ tunes, he traveled the same path between sacred
and secular song as had so many composers of tunes used by writers of loyal and liberty
songs.
339

337
The “Four Cardinal Virtues” – prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude – are not named
individually in this song text, but they were understood at this time to date to Plato and were often
associated in English histories with qualities desired in kings – whether Charles I, “adorn’d with every
Virtue that Plato would have wish’d in a King … the four Cardinal Virtues never more conspicuously met in
any one Person,” or John, villain of the eighteenth-century Magna Carta narrative, being advised on good
kingship by Pope Innocent. B. Higgons, of the Middle-Temple, Esq, A Short View of the English History
(London: James Mead, 1734), p. 240; Nicholas Tindal, trans., The History of England written in French by
Mr. Rapin de Thoyras, Vol. I (London: John and Paul Knapton), p. 268.
338
“SONG 126. The ORIGIN of ENGLISH LIBERTY,” in George Alexander Stevens. The Choice Spirit’s
Chaplet. London: John Dunn, 1771 [1772]. “Once the Gods of the Greeks” appears in many extant
songsters from the revolutionary era, each placing it squarely among sociable loyal songs. The “Liberty
Tree” version appeared 66 times in extant American songsters through 1820, including a version
“Revisited” in 1809’s Republican Songs. Robert M. Keller, Early American Songsters.
339
Four sheet music examples of “The Origin of English Liberty” dating from 1760-1775 identify Goodwin
as the composer of the tune used by George Stevens. Extant commentary on Stevens’ works indicate
cases where his tunes came from other sources, as in a review in The Monthly Review or Literary Journal
for January 1770 that mentions a song being set to “a famous composition of [sic] Purcel’s” from the
previous century; the DNB cites the use of at least one traditional tune in a Stevens work, causing one
biographer to conclude, "It seems probable that other songs by Stevens were also lyrics by him set to
existing tunes." Starling Goodwin, George Alexander Stevens. The origin of English liberty. Musical score
at the University of Oxford. Four editions; 1., London : Printed by R. Falkener ... and sold at his music
shop ... 1775; 2., [London] : [publisher not identified], 1770; 3., London : Printed and sold by H. Fougt ...
1767; and 4., [London] : [publisher not identified], 1760; The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal: By
Several Hands, Vol. XLII. London: Printed for R. Griffiths, M,DCC,LXX [1770], pp. 73-74; “George
Alexander Stevens,” in Highfill et al, Biographical Dictionary, 1993, p. 277. The tune changed but little in
the next generation according a Cambridge University scan “from copies of copies of (an) original
manuscript, whose whereabouts are unknown”. Multum in Parvo, or a Collection of Old English, Scotch,
Irish & Welsh Tunes. Selected by John Rook. Waverton: 1840, p. 221, accessed online May 21, 2013.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.171

“The God of the Greeks” tune was selected for use with the text “Liberty Tree,”
attributed to Thomas Paine during his employment by Robert Aitken of The Pennsylvania
Magazine. Published in August 1775, two months after Joseph Warren had led an army to
Bunker Hill and just as George Washington was mustering a Continental Army to invade Canada
while the Constitutional Convention labored across town from Aitken’s print shop, the song was
quickly reprinted in numerous newspapers up and down the coast, and in years to come would
linger in songsters.
340

Paine’s text built on the original’s narrative of the god-given rights of Englishmen and
applied them to the American view: beginning with imagery that, like the original, is botanical
and pastoral, with the goddess of Liberty bringing to man (not England) a sprig that, when
tended, becomes the liberty tree. The tenders, while “like patriarchs of old,” are identified as
“freeman and brothers (who) agree,” virtuous generations who benefit from the tree, and only
identified as Englishmen when they are called upon to fight in the tree’s defense – amid
maritime imagery. The song ends with a call for “swains” (further marking the text as pastoral)
to defend the tree from “tyrannical powers” that would “cut down this guardian of ours.” The
participatory portion of the song is the repeated last line of each stanza, each one arpeggiated
in the way of “loyal” song yet ending with the words “Liberty Tree” sung in a calming step-wise
motion down the scale to the tonic note.

340
"Liberty Tree. A new Song," in The Pennsylvania Magazine. Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, July 1775, pp.
328-329; reprinted in Pennsylvania Ledger, August 12, 1775, p. 4, col. 1; Maryland Gazette, August 15,
1775, p. 2, col. 1; New York Journal, August 17, 1775, p. 4, col. 1; Essex Journal, September 5, 1775, p. 4,
col. 1; Massachusetts Spy, September 6, 1775, p. 4, col. 1; Newport Mercury, September 11, 1775, p. 1,
col. 1; Pennsylvania Evening Post, September 16, 1775; Newport Mercury, September 17, 1775, p. 4, col.
1; and Maryland Journal, October 4, 1775.
Robert Keller found dozens of examples of “Liberty Tree” and “Once the Gods of the Greeks” in songsters
published through 1820; Robert M. Keller, Early American Songsters.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.172

“Liberty Tree” is then a hybrid of all song types, starting with a sociable tune previously
set to a loyal text embedded with a classical version of divine ordination and the language of the
rights of Englishmen, appending to it the rights of all men in a way that is specific to
Enlightenment thought and Freemasonry, yet expressed with classic pastoral imagery in which a
god of antiquity instructs ordinary people on virtue in a narrative about a botanical emblem of
the English common man, and carrying a loyal call to duty – a duty that is now in opposition to
“King, Commons, and Lords” that pastorals otherwise were supposed to support. Sociable in
nature, loyal in its message – to the nation, not its patriarchs – and pastoral in its imagery,
“Liberty Tree” does what “country” music is supposed to do in time of war: it encourages
recruits.
An anecdote related by the young John Quincy Adams about this song being sung by
General Robert Howe, commander of the Continental Army’s southern department, shows that
sociable singing was engaged in by military men – so long as the songs were being sung in the
right place, by the right people, and there was libation available:

“General Howe attended one of President of Congress Lee's weekly
dinners, after which guests were invited to sing songs. That evening after the
general failed to find his voice, he had cried out, ‘give me that madeira to revive
me, for I have been flattening my voice by drinking burgundy.’ And sure
enough, after his glass … he sang ‘Once the god of the Greeks’ very well.”
341

341
Phyllis Lee Levin, The Remarkable Education of John Quincy Adams (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015), p. 134.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.173

It would be interesting to know which lyrics Howe sang, because in contemporary
sources the Aitken/Paine text was called “Liberty-Tree” rather than “God of the Greeks,” a lyric
that does not appear in the American liberty song. But if Howe sang on the origins of English
liberty, did he do so with a cultural understanding of himself as English while commanding an
American army against a British foe? Or would he have “Americanized” the text?
Among the most ancient and honored ballads in the English canon, “Chevy Chase”
opens with these lines echoing the same theme as “Liberty Tree:”

God prosper long our liberty,
Our lives and safeties all

“Chevy Chase” had been the topic of a conversation stretching back to Elizabethan times
between commentators who pondered on the story of a Scottish border hunting party gone
very bad and what the song said about what it meant to be English. In An Apologie for
Poetrie,
342
Philip Sidney pondered the power of “poesie” to go beyond the mere representation
of virtue and to actually move people to virtuous acts. He observed that “the right use of
Comedy will … make Kings fear to be Tyrants,” yet cited Plutarch’s “testimony” regarding the
“abominable Tyrant Alexander” who would shed an “abundance of tears” over “well-made”
tragedy, yet “who without all pity had murdered infinite numbers, and some of his own blood,”
unashamed “to make matters for Tragedies” in his own actions, yet unable to “resist the sweet
violence” of their representation.

342
Sidney, Poetrie.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.174

In pondering this conundrum, Sidney turned his attention to the ability of the lyric poet
and the well-tuned lyre to “raise his voice to the height of the heavens, in singing the lauds of
the immortal God,” with the following effect on even as discerning a listener as himself:

Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness, I never heard
the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved
more then with a Trumpet: and yet is it sung but by some blind Crouder,
with no rougher voice, than rude style: which being so evil appareled in
the dust and cobwebs of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed
in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar? In Hungary I have seen it the
manner at all Feasts, and other such meetings, to have songs of their
Ancestors’ valor; which that right Soldier-like Nation think the chiefest
kindlers of brave courage. The incomparable Lacedemonians, did not
only carry that kind of Music ever with them to the field, but even at
home, as such songs were made, so were they all content to be the
singers of them, when the lusty men were to tell what they did, the old
men, what they had done, and the young men what they would doe.
343

Sidney invoked the odist Pindar as being of the “kind most capable and most fit, to
awake the[se] thoughts from the sleep of idleness, [and] to embrace honorable enterprises.”
He found in the “Heroical” the means to “not only teach and move to a truth, but teach and
move to the most high and excellent truth.”
344

343
Sidney, Poetrie.
344
Sidney, Poetrie.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.175

Joseph Addison picked up the thread from Sidney in 1711, beginning his critique of “the
old song of Percy and Douglas” with a Latin quote from the lyric poet Horace meaning,
“Sometimes the vulgar see and judge aright,” a view he based on his own “particular Delight” in
the songs and stories “most in vogue among the common People of the Countries through
which I passed.” To Addison, universal approval, even by “the Rabble of a Nation,” spoke to
“some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the Mind of Man.”
345
He summed up the
importance of this “low” style of rhetoric:

I know nothing which more shews the essential and inherent Perfection
of Simplicity of Thought, above that which I call the Gothick Manner in Writing,
than this, that the first pleases all Kinds of Palates, and the latter only such as
have formed to themselves a wrong artificial Taste upon little fanciful Authors
and Writers of Epigram. Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the Language of their
Poems is understood, will please a Reader of plain common Sense, who would
neither relish nor comprehend an Epigram of Martial, or a Poem of Cowley : So,
on the contrary, an ordinary Song or Ballad that is the Delight of the common
People, cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not unqualified for the
Entertainment by their Affectation or Ignorance; and the Reason is plain,
because the same Paintings of Nature, which recommend it to the most
ordinary Reader, will appear beautiful to the most refined.
346

345
Addison, “No. 70,” Spectator, p. 397. Isaiah Thomas may have been tipping his hat to Addison when he
subtitled his broadside collection “in vogue with the vulgar.”
346
Addison, “No. 70,” Spectator, pp. 397-398.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.176

Addison remarked on Sidney being moved by “Chevy-Chase,” and also Ben Jonson’s
claim that “he had rather have been Author of it than of all his Works.” He admitted his own
admiration for “this antiquated song,” making no “further apology” for offering his own critique.
Acknowledging the “Rule, that an Heroick Poem should be founded upon some important
Precept of Morality, adapted to the Constitution of the Country in which the Poet writes,”
Addison speculated that the ancient author of “Chevy Chase” wished “to deter Men from such
unnatural Contentions” as the border conflict between Percy and Douglas, and in so doing,
identified the “Hero” of the piece as Percy. Though outnumbered, “The English are the first who
take the Field, and the last who quit it.” Yet, Addison found, the poet allowed even Douglas
“Sentiments and Actions … every Way suitable to an Hero,” in offering a single combat between
himself and Percy so that others would not die; unfortunately, Douglas reneged “with his Dying
Words” by encouraging “his Men to revenge his Death,” but Addison excused this behavior as a
parallel to Camilla in the Aeneid who, also fatally wounded, “considers only (like the Hero of
whom we are now speaking) how the Battel should be continued after her Death.” He found
Percy’s lamentation over Douglas to be “generous, beautiful, and passionate,” with a “Simplicity
of … Stile” that did nothing to diminish “the Greatness of the Thought.”
347

“Chevy Chase” has continued to figure prominently in ballad collections up to the
present day, from Bishop Percy’s Reliques to Francis James Childs’ English and Scottish Ballads
that for many remains the standard work in our own time. During the period examined in this
project, there were regular reprints of various versions of the Percy/Douglas story,
348
and one
popular collection of Scottish songs even proposed a similar, but different, tune for the

347
Addison, “No. 70,” Spectator, pp. 397-405.
348
A broadside example of the traditional ballad from this period is in the collection of the American
Antiquarian Society. “Unhappy memorable song of the hunting in Chevy-Chace, between Earl Piercy of
England and Earl Douglas of Scotland,” 1772; a comprehensive look at the song in broadsides can be
found in Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, pp. 96-101.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.177

traditional text (its “music taken from the most genuine sets extant”).
349
The tune also ranks
among the most frequently parodied tunes of the search period for this project, but not for any
of the most frequently repeated songs; still, it found its way into oppositional song of the
sociable, “witty” sort, whose authors possibly hoped to benefit from the tune’s past associations
with “greatness of thought” while, often, satirizing its “simplicity of … style.”
Joseph Green chose to set his witty “Old Tenor” broadside commentary “to the
mournful tune of, Chevy Chase,” perhaps suggesting the devaluation of the old money to be
equivalent to the loss of the heroes Percy and Douglas.
350
A loyal parody of the tune in 1757
used the signature imagery of God and liberty in the opening lines of the traditional text to
honor “Courage and Conduct display’d” alongside news reports at the advent of the Seven Years
War;
351
a generation later, the same lines would open a parody on “A woeful statute” that did
“In Parliament befall.”
352

Among the most elaborate political parodies of the ancient, honored tune is a ballad in a
1774 pamphlet from a “poor man” giving “advice to his poor neighbours” about the Quebec Act
so hated by Anglophones south of the Canadian border. Seventy-eight stanzas, written as
though by a common man of the sort observed by Sidney and Addison – “larnt” instead of
“learned,” “purdigious” instead of “prodigious” – was obviously the work of an author satirizing

349
Allan Ramsay. A Second Set of Scots Songs for a Voice & Harpsichord, Vol. II of Thirty Scots songs for a
Voice & Harpsichord. Edinburgh: R. Bremner, 1757, pp. 28-30; Ramsay’s Songs appears in newspaper
advertisements in British Colonial America from 1764-1771, so assuming this refers to Thirty Scots Songs
and not to Ramsay’s earlier collection Tea-Table Miscellany, first published in the 1720s, that would mean
both tunes could have been available to Americans.
350
Joseph Green, “A mournful lamentation for the sad and deplorable death of Mr. Old Tenor,” [1750],
broadside in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society; because the suppressed “Old Tenor”
broadside that was prosecuted is not extant, it is not possible to know whether it, too, was a parody of
the same tune or if indeed either “Old Tenor” parodist was parodying the other.
351
“Courage and Conduct display'd To the Tune of Chevy-Chace,” in The Boston Evening Post. Boston:
Thomas Fleet, May 30, 1757, p. 1, col. 2.
352
“From the London Evening Post. A PARODY ON THE SONG OF CHEVY CHACE.” in The New-York Journal.
New York, NY: John Holt, October 6, 1774, p. 4, col. 1; also in The Norwich Packet, October 13-20, 1774,
p. 4, col. 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.178

common speech as well as the Act, appropriating and satirizing the virtue and “greatness of
thought” of the “low” rhetoric to make witty middle-rhetoric sociable commentary of the
appropriate sort:

XI
The Canagans too, whom they address,
And treat so very blunt ;
Will cry, while as they cross their breasts,
Jesu ! quel gros affront !

XII
If to obey King George they please,
For what is all this fuss ?
And love him more than Lewy Sease,
Pray what harm’s that to us?

XIII
He graciously, their laws restor’d,
Which they had long besought :
For which, he is by them ador’d,
As every good King ought.
353

353
The poor man’s advice to his poor neighbours: a ballad, to the tune of Chevy-Chace. New-York : [s.n.],
1774, pamphlet in the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, p. 5.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.179

The author invokes the familiar imagery of the martyrologies, Papists, Lord North,
merchant profiteering, the Falklands, and Havana, while touching on virtually all themes of
empire relevant to the times, including the imperial crisis at home:

LXXVIII
Stand forth ! and save these happy lands,
Ere ‘tis, alas ! too late ;
Oppose all lawless mad commands,
Tremble at Boston’s fate.
354

Boston’s fate, indeed, seemed to have been sealed by events of the previous winter –
events described in the song whose tune was described in print as “plaintive.”
When reading about activities taking place out of doors that clearly “generate
sensations,” one cannot help being struck by the ubiquitous observation that everything was
conducted in an orderly fashion. John Tudor recorded in his diary entry for Thursday, December
16, 1773, after witnessing the event we know as the Boston Tea Party, “It was all distroyed with
as little noise as perhaps anything of the like Nature was ever don, in the Evening, and all over
and quiet by 8 o’clock.”
355
There is an equally striking soberness, even sadness, to Tudor’s
outrage on August 1 the following year, as punishment for that night took effect in Boston:

354
The poor man’s advice, 1774, p. 18.
355
John Tudor. Papers, 1732-1793. Manuscripts in the Massachusetts Historical Society, entry for
December 16, 1773.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.180

60 days have expired, since Boston Harbor was shut up by that inhuman
Act of the British Parlement called the Boston Port Bill, which took place on June
1st; and which has been carred into Execution with all the Rigour that the Fleet
and Army could excercise, by Governor Gage, who was the General, with 5
Regements, and Admeral Graves, with 5 or 6 Men of War and 4 Commisioners,
Most consistently cruel has the British Legislators Acted in employing those
Instruments of Tyranny, to inforce the most inhuman act that ever disgraced an
English Senate, or distressed a Loyal, a Vertuous and I will say (for I Know it) an
innocent People, (A few excepted). It would take up pages to discribe the
various hardships Boston now groans under; I therefore leave them to the
honest Historian of American Annals to tell the dismal Story to Posterity: and
whilst the Shameful Story rouses their Indignation of the treatment of their
Ancestors, may it inspire them with Virtue, and with Patiorism; May they
animate each other by the recollection of What Their Fathers suffered for
Freedom, and never part with this noble boon of Heaven, but with Life. (Note)
Let it never be forgotten, the Generous and noble Collections and Donations
that were raised by the Neighboring Governments and Towns for the Releaf of
the poor and distressed inhabitants of Boston on the cruel treatment as
above.
356

An appeal to all that John Tudor would describe as loyal, virtuous, and innocent in the
American colonies came in the form of a ballad text set to a lovely and familiar pastoral tune
associated with another ship, whose admiral and crew lost their lives because of imperial policy.

356
John Tudor, Papers, entry for August 1, 1774.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.181

In the wake of the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, a song appeared in John Dunlap’s
Pennsylvania Packet on January 3, 1774, with the direction, “to the plaintive tune of Hosier’s
Ghost.”
357
In the uncertain aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, the desire and need that the
song be “plaintive” seems obvious, but the mechanism that made it so was embedded deeply in
both the tune and the text.
The story began a decade after German-born composer George Frideric Handel arrived
in London in 1710 in anticipation of the arrival of his patron, the elector of Hanover who would
become King George I of Britain. In honor and imitation of his adopted homeland, Handel
composed twenty-four tunes between 1719-1746 in a series of “English songs,” either based on
or emulating traditional English folk tunes and set for consort performance.
358
One tune in
particular gained popularity in printed song books under the name “The Sailor’s Complaint,”
with the come-all-ye form of opening line so customary in ballad, “Come and listen to my
ditty.”
359
The complaint was written in maritime metaphor by a “Brother Tarr” who faced no
dread at sea compared to the scorn of the woman who rejected him. The tune was instantly
parodied for another kind of lament, that of a “Brother Debtor” being met by his fellow inmates
in the “poor but merry place” where, at least, he no longer has to face “Bailiff, dun or Setter.”
360

Poet Richard Glover drew inspiration from Handel’s pastoral sailor tune when, in 1740,
he wrote the poem “Admiral Hosier’s Ghost” about the “first major loss of men in the
eighteenth century,” in coastal Panama during the 1726 blockade of Porto Bello. The Spanish
ships being blockaded “were in fact empty,” but so many British sailors died of yellow fever that
the admiral had to find more crew, only to repeat the same disastrous results in blockades of

357
"A NEW SONG. to the plaintive tune of Hosier’s Ghost,” in The Pennsylvania Packet; and the General
Advertiser. Philadelphia: John Dunlap, January 3, 1774, p. 1, col. 1.
358
Gilman, “Arne, Handel,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2009, pp. 529-555.
359
“The Sailor’s Complaint,” Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. 1, p. 54
360
“Debtor’s welcome to their Brother,” Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. 2, p. 26
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.182

Vera Cruz and Havana, resulting in a total loss of more than four thousand lives, including the
admiral and two successors.
361

Figure 3.2. Bound and single-sheet song, 1738-1740 and 1774.


 Two different songs – “The Sailor’s Complaint” with the
first line “Come and listen to my Ditty,” and  “Debtor’s
[sic] welcome to their Brother” with the first line
“Welcome welcome Brother debtor” – were each set to
the same tune by Handel in engraver George Bickham’s
The Musical Entertainer (1740), one of the loveliest bound
English song books of the eighteenth century, featuring
some of the best musical notation in print, “[adorned]” on
“every page with scenes appropriate to the subject matter
of each song … Often … with elaborate, original cartouches
… in lifelike semblance … flawlessly executed,” a work that
took years to complete.
362


 Anonymous but known to
be the work of poet and
Walpole opponent Richard
Glover, the parody “Admiral
Hosier’s Ghost” was published
in 1740 “as a broadside ballad,
but in engraved form and with
a highly polished illustration”
by Charles Mosley and with
the direction, “To the Tune of
Come and listen to my
Ditty.”
363


 “A NEW SONG” To the
plaintive tune of “Hosier’s
Ghost” first appeared in this
simple setting in The
Pennsylvania Packet on January
3, 1774 and is second only to
Dickinson/Lee’s “The Liberty
Song” in song instances for a
single song examined in this
project – simple in production,
as Bailyn observed of American
print when compared to some
British originals, but still
effective.

Porto Bello would be taken by Admiral Vernon in 1740 – the victory to which Arne and
Thomson’s masque Alfred was dedicated – by sailors of the era depicted that same year in
Charles Mosley’s engraving European Race for a Distance as able, virile, and singing about dying
doing their duty. But here, underneath a very different Mosley print, Glover invokes the shades

361
Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999),
pp. 72-73.
362
Franklin B. Zimmerman, “The Musical Entertainer by George Bickham,” review in Notes, Second Series,
Vol. 24, No. 2 (Dec., 1967), p. 339.
363
Paul Baines, “Glover, Richard (1712–1785),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University
Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/10831,
accessed 20 May 2013].
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.183

of Admiral Hosier’s dead crew, men who could no longer sing about their duty, emitting instead
“Hideous Yells & Shrieks” while draped in “dreary Hammocks … Which for Winding sheets they
wore.” Hosier explained to Vernon that, though “Nothing then its Wealth defended … my
Orders (were) not to fight:”

For resistance I could fear none,
But with twenty ships had done,
What thou, brave and happy Vernon,
Hast achiev'd with Six alone.
Then the Bastimento's never
Had our foul Dishonour seen,
Nor the Sea the sad receiver
Of this gallant Train had been.
364

Hosier’s Ghost told Vernon he would have preferred to be “condemn'd for Disobeying”
and have “met a Traitor's Doom” rather than have stood by as “thousands fell in vain / Wasted
with disease and anguish” rather than “in glorious battle Stain.” He calls on Vernon, and by
extension, the reader, to “remember our sad Story … When your patriot friends you see,” how
England had been “sham'd in me.”
365

364
[Richard Glover], Admiral Hosier's Ghost (London: Charles Mosley, Publish'd according to Act of
Parliament July 1740).
365
Glover, who also “made a long, much reprinted speech summing up the complaints of the merchant
community concerning the lack of military protection against Spain,” was criticized for the song by
Walpole, not least of all because Glover’s patron, the prince of Wales (for whom Arne and Thomson had
written the masque Alfred), was Walpole’s enemy. Baines, “Glover,” Oxford DNB, 2013.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.184

Though historians would later find that the ballad gave Hosier “posthumous fame out of
all proportion to his actual achievements” in this “blatantly political piece which sought to
misrepresent Hosier's fate to support then current attacks on the Walpole government,”
366

nevertheless Francis Conway reportedly told his cousin Robert Walpole how “The Patriots … the
Courtiers … and the hawkers cry” the song “up and down ‘till they make one deaf … I like it
extremely and think it mighty solemn and mighty poetical.”
367
Perhaps a song writer looking for
exactly the right mighty, solemn, poetical tune in late 1773, one associated with a nautical
theme, agreed with Conway and chose to link a new cause and text to the sympathetic and
patriotic urging of Admiral Hosier’s ghost to act rather than to stand by while “thousands fell”
through shameful inaction.
“Hosier’s Ghost” had been parodied before in the years between 1740 and 1774,
368
but
this is the only example published in British Colonial America during the search period. The
parody is second only to the original “Liberty Song” by Dickinson and Lee in the number of song
instances found, solely on the basis of its use with this one song.
369
Examples of the Boston
parody outlived the century and appeared in songsters into the nineteenth century, but after
1800 the tune was more often associated with the “Debtor” version of the song, though the

366
J. K. Laughton, ‘Hosier, Francis (bap. 1673, d. 1727)’, rev. J. D. Davies, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008
[http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/13833, accessed 20 May 2013]
367
Baines, “Glover,” Oxford DNB, 2013.
368
Examples of “Hosier” parodies include: “Capt. Andrew's Ghost, to A-l B-g [Admiral Bing] as He Lay at
Anchor at Gibraltar. To Nhe [sic] Tune of Hosier's Ghost.” London: J. Morgan, at the Globe in Pater-
noster-row, 1756; and “A sequel to Hosier's ghost: or Old Blakeney's reception into the Elysian fields. A
ballad … Written by a Patriot of Ireland ... Dublin, 10th July, 1756.” London: Printed for J. Morgan, at the
Globe in Pater-noster- row. 1756, broadside at Oxford, accessed online:
http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/title/Old%20Blakeneys%20reception%20into%20the%20Elysian%20fields%20A%20ballad
369
Though the tune in its “Debtor” form would be cited as the tune for “A New BALLAD, addressed to the
honest TARS of ould England,” in The Boston Evening-Post. Boston: Thomas & John Fleet, March 11,
1771, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 1850.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.185

original “Sailor” version appearing periodically in nautical song collections.
370
Yet in its own
moment, this powerful justification for action in the face of “ineptitude” among “authorities,”
dressed in the peaceful, beautiful pastoral tune composed by Handel, gained broad distribution
and would have been ringing in ears from New England to Virginia as London sessions began
that would produce the act termed “intolerable” by the “Loyal … Vertuous … innocent People”
who comprised the presumed audience for early modern Anglophonic “low” rhetoric song,
common people who, by summer, would be faced with responding to “the most inhuman act
that ever disgraced an English Senate.”
371

A middle path for rhetorical expression in song was described earlier in this project as
existing “between” the high-toned rhetoric of awe-inspiring passion and belief in something
larger than one’s self, and the low-toned rhetoric of simplicity and virtue, believed or hoped to
be embedded in English national character. The middle path was for songs concerned with the
business of life and living, of the temporal plane and materials things, the world of what “was”
rather than what could be. These songs taught lessons explicitly or through wit, the English
variant of intelligence and good taste, a quality that evolved in English people in relatively
recent times, not antiquity, allowing them to transcend more primitive passions and surpass
their native simplicity. Just as pastorals and love song provided simple reminders of an inherent
virtue, and high-minded song inspired one to awe and duty, these temporal, sociable songs
provided a social benefit, commenting on how things were and what was to be done, with

370
Entries for “Hosier’s Ghost,” “Come and Listen to my Ditty,” and “Welcome, Welcome, Brother
Debtor,” in Robert M. Keller, Early American Songsters.
371
After its initial publication in The Pennsylvania Packet, the song was repeated in The Boston Post-Boy,
January 17, 1774, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 857; The Essex Gazette, January 18-25, 1774, p. 103, vol. VI, iss. 287;
The Virginia Gazette, January 24, 1774, p. 3, col. 1; The Boston Evening-Post, January 24, p. 2, col. 2, iss.
2000; The Massachusetts Spy, January 27, 1774, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 156; The New-York Journal, January 27,
1774, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 1621; New-Hampshire Gazette, January 28, 1774, p. 2, col. 3, iss. 901; The
Connecticut Courant, February 1-8, 1774, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 476; The Essex Journal, February 2, 1774, p. 3,
col. 2, iss. 7; and The Connecticut Gazette, February 4, 1774, p. 2, col. 1, iss. 534.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.186

enough wit to make the messages more palatable. Their singers and subjects were not
presumed to be heroic – either in valor or virtue – but ordinary people of all orders, moving –
often humorously – through life.
While some lines were hard and fast – high-tone rhetoric was not humorous, and
otherwise low-toned song that tended toward the ironical or bawdy really wasn’t low-toned –
other distinctions tended to blend, as seen the previous tune examples. Tune rhetoric
depended in part on musicological properties that tended to be used with certain functions, in a
way that can be tracked in similar uses of the same tune. So a tune frequently associated with
the act of drinking, or using the image of Bacchus, places it in the social spaces and places where
drinking might take place. This could trend toward the convivial, or toward the loyal toasting
seen in the examples of “God Save The King” or in “The Soldier’s Sentimental Toast,” where the
“sentiment” harnessed was to “Crush to death … haughty foes; / Burst their slavish bands
asunder, / Till no Tory dare oppose.”
372

“The British Grenadier” might at first seem to be a loyal song of the high style, given its
obvious textual connection to a martial emblem of (English) nation and (British) empire, but it is
an eighteenth-century member of the same song family as the seventeenth-century convivial
song “All You That Love Good Fellows,” sometimes changing the fellows in question from third-
to the second-person by replacing the words “that love” with “that be.” A variant of the tune
dates to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1610-1619) and the tune was used with many texts over
its first century, evolving from having “an additional eight-measure phrase at the end” to “”the
eighteenth-century version … (that) fit the double ballad stanza of the piece associated with the
tune” in versions printed by D’Urfey and Coffey.
373
The tune is merry, with the blend of

372
“The Soldier’s Sentimental Toast,” Continental Journal, 1776.
373
Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, pp. 13-16.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.187

arpeggiated notes on strong notes linked with the connective tissue of stepwise runs of notes.
Uses in its earliest forms ranged from a ballad about a London apprentice who, after captivity,
rose to marry a princess; an Elizabethan “amatory” song; a song celebrating the taking of “the
town of Berke;” an instrumental setting by Thomas Morley called, “Nancie;” and a variety of
Dutch songs to the tune then called “Nowells Delighte.”
374

During the search period for this project, the tune was widely known in its “Grenadier”
form – “good fellows” making good soldiers – and while it is not associated with one of the
songs with most instances, it is among the most frequently cited tunes used for various texts.
375

Versions of the march appear in the military tune books carried by John Greenwood, William
Morris, and Giles Gibbs, and one undated broadside includes texts for both the song and the
march.
376
And as mentioned earlier, only Henry Blake put the name of the tune “The British
Grenadiers” song in his diary/military tune book, but Morris included the tune under the name
of one of the American parodies set to that tune, the Massachusetts “Liberty Song.”
377

Descriptions of the final seven tunes – Come, Jolly Bacchus; The Black Sloven; The
Echoing Horn; Sing Tantarara; O My Kitten; Derry Down; and Doodle Doodle Doo – as well as
the songs set to them during the search period, will be included in a subsequent draft.
For more information, see www.songhistorian.com

374
Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad. This version of “Great honour of a valiant London
prentice” was still being repeated during the search period for this project; “Great honour of a valiant
London prentice: being an account of his matchless manhood, and brave adventures, done in Turkey; and
how he came to marry the king's daughter, &c. To the tune of, ‘All you that love good fellows,’ &c.”
Broadside in the collection of The American Antiquarian Society [1770-1779].
375
N.B., “The Grenadiers’ March” is not the same tune as the song or other tunes with similar names; it
evolved in the late seventeenth century from an entirely different tune. Claude Simpson, The British
Broadside Ballad, pp. 279-280.
376
“British Grenadier : together with the Grenadier’s march, and an excellent new song on the year fifty-
nine.” Broadside in the collection of The American Antiquarian Society [1760-1769].
377
Blake, Diary.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.188

Chapter Four: Man

This chapter explores what Anglophonic song in the third quarter of the eighteenth
century might tell us about masculinity and, especially, manliness, for a people that had been
engaged in ongoing wars of empire for more than two centuries. In other words, what did song
say about what it meant to be a man? How do we decode, in images like European Race for a
Distance, who is singing what – men and women alike – and why?

Figure 4.1. Singing and Empire, 1740

 Charles Mosley’s engraving European Race for a Distance, Anno Dom. MDCCXXXX (1740) shows who is singing to whose tune,
and where, at the beginning of the War of Jenkin’s Ear.
378

378
“European Race for a Distance” (London: Charles Mosley print in the collection of the New-York
Historical Society, 1740).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.189

Detail from above image, lower left: an elephant
representing Turkey functions as a music stand at the French
tent (“nul Place pour les Anglois”) where Cardinel Fleury and
the King of Spain play the tune as the Queen of Spain
(pregnant with Gibraltar) and her prospective daughter-in-law,
Princess Louise Elisabeth, sing; the bridegroom-to-be, Philip,
Duke of Parma, whispers in his intended’s ear, presumably
offering a crown.

Detail from just above the image to the left; while he lights
the cannon’s fuse and drinks from a tankard (presumably
good English beer), the virile British sailor appears to be
singing his own song as he does his duty (“Pro patria mori”),
removed at a safe distance from the crowd, as if aloft in a
ship’s rigging; far below, prime minister Robert Walpole
reluctantly offers a “Declaration of War” while crushing Lord
Gage’s speech under his foot.

Knowledge about what the residents of British Colonial America during the third quarter
of the eighteenth century thought about song, coupled with a large number of extant songs and
their tunes, allows a greater inquiry into some of the larger dimensions of discourses that cut
across all types of documentary evidence. The articulation of a secular American “scripture”
that helped change the world through the distillation and transmission of messages that
fostered other democratically inspired political change grew from foundational documents of
the American polity such as the Declaration, and later, the Constitution and Bill of Rights as well
as earlier documents where similar ideas were incubated.
379
These include the pamphlets
examined by Bailyn, the periodicals of Habermas’s public sphere, and the manuscripts of a still-
thriving “Republic of Letters” that connected the authors of political change along post roads
and ocean currents. Other themes of academic inquiry relevant to this study of song include the
“Englishness” of colonial Americans; the global nature of century-long state of imperial conflict
– often between the same adversaries, fighting over many of the same objectives; and a

379
Texts consulted include: David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Pauline Maier, American Scripture: making the
Declaration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997); and Jack Rakove, Original Meanings:
Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.190

personal devotion to monarchy right up until the brink of revolution. More broadly, the
examination of events of the revolutionary period through the lenses of race, class, and gender,
has led to many new approaches to understanding the founding generation before, and after,
the conflict. So it is with song.
Most historical discussion about revolutionary-era song in America – in scholarship and
in popular publications alike – has tended to center on something in the neighborhood of class,
though the term itself is anachronistic to this period. Ideas about rank and order permeate
these song texts and obsessed their discussants.
380
Later discussions, especially when written
years or even centuries after the events took place, were often complicated by nationalistic
views or just plain pride for one’s “side,” and get in the way of a deeper critical understanding of
what the participants intended. These studies have tended to be published for anniversaries
(centennial, bicentennial) or in times of war or the threat of it, or associated with social unrest.
From the early national appropriators to the nineteenth-century collectors and on to the
Bicentennial folkies, everyone had a contemporary argument about what these songs meant.
Not surprisingly, most of these song histories have emphasized American themes, yet
Anglophonic songs of this period of all types being sung in British Colonial America were
profoundly English in their themes, sources, and deployment, even when they purported to
emphasize the ways in which Americans most differed with the parent culture. There is little
evidence of languages other than English being used in print media except from presses located
in areas of territorial or cultural overlap – Quebec, the Caribbean, and German-language presses
in the Philadelphia area – all of which, perhaps for reasons of that very marginality, were among
the people least likely to participate in the eventual armed struggle. This study shows these
were also the areas least likely to participate in oppositional songs of the “wrong” sort; there

380
Examples in Appendix I, Song database.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.191

are no examples of “liberty song” found in any of those areas, among the sources considered for
this project.
381

What “national” overlapping of song did exist in American song was the same as in
England – the influx of Scottish songs between the Jacobite revolts of 1715 and 1745-46, a
phenomenon that would be repeated with Irish songs after the 1798 revolt in that country.
382

This doesn’t mean that no one in England sang Scottish songs before the Jacobites – they did,
usually associated with love song and pastoral themes – but the colonization of Scots culture in
song mirrored the appropriation of other symbols by empire.
383

Love of the monarchy is revealed in the loyal songs that regularly punctuated royal
birthdays, births, victories, etc., songs that were more likely (by their lack tune direction) to have
been read than sung. But the most-repeated song in this era about the royal family was that
lewd-but-witty song about the king’s brother’s involvement in a divorce scandal mentioned in
Chapter Three as the sole song among the top songs in this study that did not expressly deal
with an issue of the imperial crisis.
384
For all the sneering, though, there's a sense that people
must have enjoyed the loyal songs, and perhaps even found ways to use their texts or themes to
sing about, or toast, a monarchal institution that enlarged them and their world. Even as late as
April 1776, when hope of a reconciliation with the crown was all but gone (as Franklin wrote to

381
Admittedly, the number of Canadian and Caribbean sources examined for this project is small, and
further work needs to be done to flesh out the story of song on the borders of empire. German-language
presses in Pennsylvania did produce song examples in all source categories examined, and all had religious
themes – including even the Politische Lieder discussed in Chapter Two, which presented an anti-war
argument.
382
Songsters are a particularly useful way to track the entry of Irish song into American culture at the end
of the eighteenth century. Robert M. Keller, Early American Songsters.
383
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992);
Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2008).
384
Though it could be argued that the inability of the monarch’s brother to effectively manage his own
personal affairs resonated with the king’s similar difficulty in managing affairs of state, mentioned in
songs such as the “Chevy Chase” “poor neighbor” parody mentioned in Chapter Three.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.192

one correspondent that month), at least one Pennsylvania printer still held out hope, evidenced
by a song in his newspaper praising Washington's generals, but asking people to also raise a
glass to their king.
As described previously, the idea that Americans were willing to fight and, specifically,
even die for a matter of principle came to song long before other sources. The usurpation of
high-toned song style was indeed revolutionary – but not based on a global message of natural
rights such as would be written in the Declaration; the liberty songs tend to base that right on
the Americans’ right to freedom through their status as freeborn Englishmen. That the concept
of natural freedom might someday, somehow, be transplanted to other cultures or peoples isn't
on the song map at all, except in Freemason songs, and as mentioned in Chapter Two, even the
song authors we know of who were members of Masonic groups did not use a similar song style
or themes in their liberty songs. As has been amply argued in many texts, the republic that
succeeded the colonies ultimately deprived many groups of freedoms they enjoyed before the
conflict, including all women, as well as the enslaved, the indigenous, and even some orders of
white men, as Shays and others would learn.
The story in song of something like “class” during this period (the transformation of
subjects to citizens) has been often told, but less has been written about song’s intersection
with race and gender. In each of these dimensions, song can contribute to our understanding of
popular ideas about – in the former case – what sort of manliness was required during an age of
nearly constant conflicts of empires, and for the latter, the deft, tragic sleight of hand that
allowed freedom and slavery to coexist in revolutionary discourse. This chapter will deal with
the former.
If the end game for architects of song culture was to use song to help persuade people
to do what the authors or their sponsors wanted them to do, then for an empire frequently
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.193

engaged in warfare for nearly the entire century, much of what you might ask listerners to do,
as good subjects, would be to prepare to go to war when needed, to preserve everyone’s way of
life. And since the actual combatants were presumed to be male, you would inevitably talk
about the connection of fighting wars to masculinity – which happened frequently.
This is not to say that women were excluded from the discourse – far from it. In the
many examples of womanly behavior observed (in “love” songs) or prescribed (in didactic
songs),
385
women were inextricably linked the discussion of manliness.
386
But in these songs,
womanliness was defined by its relationship to manliness, just as manliness was very much
related to men’s relationships with other men. And though we know very little about the
authors of the songs that did survive, those authors we do know are rarely women.
387
The one
woman identified as a liberty song writer, Mercy Otis Warren, wrote poetry and plays in rhetoric
that was mannish for her time.
388

Men already had reason to be anxious about the male role in society during this period.
Carole Shammas has demonstrated the crisis in patriarchy rooted in the collision of English
common law that evolved before the social, political, and economic conditions of the Atlantic

385
As seen in Appendix I, song database, song culture was awash in songs by men telling women how to
behave, especially with respect to their husbands
386
Examples in the song instance database include songs like “Auld Lang Syne” or “Collinet and Phoebe,”
where the woman encourages the man to face the horror of war with the promise that she would accept
him, in whatever condition, when he returned.
387
This is a point to explore. Print scholarship indicates where printers were also writers, and that
printers operated as family businesses, with mothers, sisters, and daughters immersed in the business.
Extended household, too – Thomas said a woman in Ezekiel Russell’s household “sometimes invoked the
muse, and wrote ballads on recent tragical events ... (that) had frequently ‘a considerable run,’” which
Thomas attributed to their immediacy and ornamentation (and, likely, sensationalism) rather than the
woman’s abilities. Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Vol. I, p. 155.
388
Warren “fumed” over women being trapped into conventions constructed for their gender, which
included exclusion from “the field of politics.” Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution, pp. 36-37. For more on
shifting gender roles and responsibilities during the revolutionary era in British Colonial America, see
especially Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: gendered power and the forming of
American society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996); and Liberty's Daughters : the revolutionary
experience of American women, 1750-1800 (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1980).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.194

chattel system. In British colonial America as in Britain, the common law governed household
dependents' status regarding such things as coverture of married women, and laws relating to
minor children. Relationships between masters and servants or slaves were also governed by
both the common law and either colonial statutes or slave codes, depending on status. With
the influx of indentured and enslaved persons during this period as well as higher migration and
sex ratios (more women-to-men generally meant population increase), household governance
also expanded, at a time when there were few public social welfare institutions to deal with the
increase. The household head was left with weak control over his family due to conditions
unique to the colonial system: land policies encouraged young people to form their own
households, which left the head of the household with little control over marriage settlements
and wills. Even the institution that most fundamentally defined the family – marriage – was
uncertain, due to the lack of an established church or state method for registration.
389

This crisis in patriarchy at the time had “family” dimensions, too; the “sons” (as in
liberty) were having problems with “mom” (Britannia), but that was not the only anxiety
affecting masculinity. Thomas Foster argues that “sexual activity was very much a public
concern ... the business of the state ... regulated, controlled, discussed, and crafted as part of an
effort to create social stability and define racial, class, and gender social boundaries.”
390
There is
no familiar LGBT language in early modern dictionaries or literature – sexuality was behavior,
not identity,
391
and it was not private, unless you managed to keep it that way, but rather “an
interior moral state ... emblematic of the moral condition of society.” Masculinity was

389
See especially Carole Shammas, A History of Household Government in America (Charlottesville, VA:
University of Virginia Press, 2002).
390
Thomas A. Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in
America (Boston: Beacon, 2007), p. ix.
391
Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man, p. xii; see also Rictor Norton, “Recovering Gay History
from the Old Bailey,” The London Journal, Volume 30, 2005, Issue 1: Tales from the Old Bailey, pp. 39-54.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.195

associated with “appropriate sexual desires and behaviors,” which, before the early modern
period, had included the desire of men for other, often younger, men. Song culture makes clear
the early modern definition of “appropriate:” a man and a woman. Sometimes, the message
was direct, as in the case of Purcell’s “Man is For the Woman Made” from The Mock Marriage
392

rattling off a litany of metaphorical vessels and what should fill them (scabbard/blade,
can/liquor), or “The Black Joke,” which defined men of every walk of life, stanza by stanza, on
the particular manner in which they desired a “woman’s commodity.”
393

Anne Lombard, also discussing the colonial New England male, sees the development of
an “ideal of responsible, rational manhood” as a public order issue, consciously designed “to
suppress the rowdy, disorderly, sometimes violent behavior endemic to the popular culture of
early modern England.”
394
Foster also sees the connection of male anxiety to the household as
well as career, as “discourses of male sexuality were unbounded, taking place in virtually all
areas of early modern life, linking so-called private sexual behaviors to more public cultural,
political, economic, and commercial concerns.”
395
It also posed a way of “otherizing” your
enemies; in her discussion of the relationship of dreams to “manly restraint,” Ann Marie Plane
argues that seventeenth-century New England men used what they thought about the dreams

392
Mr. Scott, “A Roundelau by Mr. Motteux,” The Mock-Marriage, A Comedy acted at the Theatre in
Dorset-Garden, by his Majesty’s Servants (London: H. Rhodes, 1696), p. 49.
393
“Man Is For The Woman Made,” D’Urfey, Wit and Mirth, 1719-1720, vol. 3, pp. 222-223; “Man Is For
The Woman Made,” Convivial Songster, pp. 18-19; “The Black Joke,” Convivial Songster, pp. 76-78; the
1788 Francis Grose dictionary of slang makes clear the latter song’s meaning: “figuratively the black joke
signifies the monosyllable,” in turn defined as “A woman's commodity.” Francis Grose, A Classical
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. The second edition, corrected and enlarged (London, M.DCC.LXXXVIII.
[1788]), pages headed BLA and MOT.
394
Anne S. Lombard, Making Manhood: Growing up Male in Colonial New England (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 15.
395
Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man, p. xi.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.196

of indigenous peoples and Catholics as a way to “feminize” or demonize them – in this case very
similar things.
396

Despite the consequences, for those whose same-sex behaviors or interest did attract
public comment or even prosecution, Foster describes not “harsh” punishment but a range of
“derisive dismissal to a fragile tolerance” for same-sex behavior and interest in colonial
Massachusetts, though there were social consequences for public knowledge of the same, due
to the “threat” it posed to “fraternal social order.”
397
And a vocabulary did exist to animate this
public awareness, articulating

... the cultural emergence of nascent sexual types – the bachelor, the
effeminate, primping fop, and the sodomite. Representations of cultural outsiders,
sexual crimes, and deviant sexual types yoked sexuality and manliness to larger
concerns about orderly social relations among men and about commerce and morals ....
These representations were especially important as foils that implicitly defined, by way
of contrast, normative manliness and its relation to sexuality.
398

Masculinity was redefined in musical performance, too. J. Terry Gates “inferred” that, in
eighteenth-century Boston, while women and even children were increasingly being encouraged
to “join congregational singing,” nevertheless “public singing was largely associated with adult
males … (and) women did not engage in” it.”
399

396
Ann Marie Plane, “Dreams, Colonial Hierarchy, and Manly Restraint in Seventeenth-Century New
England,” paper given at USC Department of History, 2009, pp. 1-2.
397
Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man, pp. xv, 78.
398
Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man, p. ix.
399
J. Terry Gates, "A Historical Comparison of Public Singing by American Men and Women," in Journal of
Research in Music Education, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), p. 36.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.197

Elizabeth Crist gave this interpretation a revolutionary reconsideration in the case of
Boston composer William Billings “in the specific context of colonial republicanism and
masculine self-fashioning ... link(ing) the male-dominated sphere of politics to a masculinist
conception of creativity, invoking such ideals as self-sufficiency, individual agency, and fame.”
400

The image on the cover of New-England Psalm Singer (1770) showed psalm singing – usually
performed by men and women together – as a masculine activity, “an abstract masculine
community – perhaps even a political gathering, should the setting be perceived as a tavern,
itself a locus of masculine self-expression and revolutionary organization.”
401

Figure 4.2. Social Singing Settings, Secular and Sacred Spaces, 1739 and 1770

 Two images of social spaces, drinking, and song (though the people are not shown singing) show, first, men engaged in sharing
pipes, drinks, and advice, and second, drinking and smoking by men and women taking place after Cupid has shot his arrow and
gone to sleep; the man points at the cherub to make clear the involvement and, perhaps, responsibility of amor. The spaces, though
not the themes, are recognizable in William Billings’ “abstract masculine community” for singing sacred song, as described by Crist.

402

But it also closely mirrors the way that images in songbooks – the form providing the
clearest expression of song intentionality – show men singing together in sociable settings. The
only settings of women and men together in sociable settings (other than courtship) are

400
Elizabeth B. Crist, "Ye Sons of Harmony": Politics, Masculinity, and the Music of William Billings in
Revolutionary Boston, in The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp.
333-334.
401
Crist, WMQ, p. 338; Kroeger, “The Worcester Collection,” 1976.
402
Calliope, 1739, pp. 13, 27; Billings, 1770, cover; and Crist, WMQ.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.198

suggestive of much more than singing or drinking; it would seem there were certain problems
associated with men and women singing certain songs together.
Songs and the images that accompanied also say a great deal about the “power” of
drinking and its association with notions about manliness. Drinking is usually done in company
with other men, as shown in “The Advice,” and songs about drinking almost always use the first-
person plural, not singular. Songs and images of men drinking alone are rare, and usually
indicate some lack of moderation, as in the case of Hogarth’s “Gin Alley,” where foreign spirits
destroy while good English beer nourishes.
403

The image that accompanies the song “Bacchus Defeated” in the 1739 edition of the
songbook Calliope, or English Harmony
404
shows an older man out-drinking the spectre of the
Greek god of wine, Bacchus; the lyrics indicate the man’s indifference to the needs and fate of
“states and Empires,” and a willingness to sacrifice “Earth ... Air and Sea” for wine.
405

Figure 4.3. Song and drinking, 1739

 An image from Calliope (1739) show a man drinking alone with the spectre of Bacchus, outpacing the god in ways that lead to
indifference to social duties; in another image from the same book, drinking together leads to allusions of dereliction of another
sort of “duty.”

403
“Beer Street” (engraving by William Hogarth) (London: Publish’d according to Act of Parliament, 1751);
and “Gin Alley” (engraving by William Hogarth) (London: Publish’d according to Act of Parliament, 1751).
404
Calliope, 1739, p. 84.
405
Calliope, 1739, p. 84.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.199

But in the same edition, another song in conversation with different classical deities
suggests a different sort of immoderation. The image accompanying the song “An Address to
Vulcan” follows the same format as other depictions of sociable male drinking in company – the
raised glasses, the pipes, the table, the interior setting – as they toast Vulcan, the metalworker
to the gods, asking him to craft “such a Cup, As Nestor us’d of Old ... damask(ed) ... round with
Gold,”
406
and “large” enough to be “fill’d with Punch / Up to the swelling Brim.”
407
The
seventeenth-century theatre song “Man is for the Woman Made” had long before revealed the
sexual implications of the “can,” another name for a drinking vessel; just as another sort of
container – “the scabbard” – was intended for “the blade,” so was “the can” intended to be
filled by “liquor.”
408
In The third verse explains what will happen with the cup:

Carve me thereon a Curling Vine,
And add two lovely Boys ;
Whose Limbs in am’rous folds entwine, &c.
409

The Types of future Joys &c.

This allusion is right out of Foster’s explanation about earlier notions of male sexuality,
and the acceptability of a love between young men; the boys – likely cupids – might suggest
youthful innocence, but the lyrics indicate their connection to, and even modeling for, “future

406
Nestor is identified with a gold shield as well as his bravery and prowess in battle, even in old age, but
accounts from Homer suggest a paradox: the “wise” Nestor may not give such good advice. Roisman,
Hanna. "Nestor the Good Counselor." Classical Quarterly 55 (2005), pp. 17–38.
407
Calliope, 1739, p. 33.
408
Smith, The Mock-Marriage, pp. 49-50; “Man is for the Woman Made” continued to appear in sociable
song collections right up to the end of the early modern period, even as late as the 1788 edition of the
songster Calliope.
409
“&c.” indicates a refrain or other lyric element in which the entire company, or “chorus,” joins in,
facilitated by its repetition.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.200

joys.” Calliope, though intended for a sophisticated audience, was not of the lewd-but-witty
category of songbooks that carried texts for songs like “The Black Joke,” and the “Address to
Vulcan” does seem to steer the discourse back to eighteenth-century manliness, in that after
the drinkers “With wine ... wash away ... Care,” they will “then to my Love again.” The text
doesn’t specify which “love” that might be, but it does describe a progression from one to the
other, from whatever the wine represents to who or whatever he loves.
Songbook images also depict men singing in organized singing groups, such as the
“Country Choir” seen in Chapter One, or the image of the “Gregs,” or Gregorians, an English
fraternal group devoted to singing, in a songbook contemporaneous to Calliope, entitled The
Musical Entertainer.
410
But as seen in other examples, men were less likely to be shown singing
in many occasions relating to their masculinity even when the lyrics suggest that that is what
they were supposed to do with the songs, i.e., men were depicted playing an instrument rather
than singing the song to a woman; or hunting songs, where the horn sounds but the men
involved in the chase are not singing; or the recruitment songs, where the sergeant appears to
counsel, rather than sing, the reasons for enlisting. Once again, the songs model behavior for
future deployment, but the images do not reflect their actual application.
The pictures that accompany songs about war and the nation – the songs most urgently
needed to be sung in a world at war – do not feature singing, either.
411
The images of Britannia
and her defenders and enemies were perhaps meant more to inspire singing (or the behaviors
described in the lyrics) than to depict it. Yet newspaper accounts reveal that in the use of the
song “Yankee Doodle” by soldiers and in skirmishes, something else might be going on.

410
“The Merry Gregs,” in Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. 2, p. 64.
411
That singing proved problematic in the military is covered in Chapter Three.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.201

The terms “Yankee,” “doodle,” and “Yankee Doodle,” appear in extant colonial
American newspapers nearly 150 times between 1750 and 1783. Of those, 57 are news
accounts from three distinct periods. The first group, 1768-1769, is in a series of “Journal”
articles that originated in John Holt’s New-York Journal.
412
The second, and largest, group, is
newspaper coverage from the spring and summer of 1775, beginning with reports of the
skirmishes at Lexington and Concord continuing with various expressions of colonial outrage as
far south as Virginia. The final group is different iterations of the same article, in 1781,
describing the battle of Yorktown. Some of the articles mention “Yankee” as a term – including
three copies of a 1775 “Etymology” explaining where the term came from, and another saying
that “Yankee” was what “they” call us – but most of the articles mention “Yankee Doodle.” But
none mention it as being sung, only as a tune that was played.
Of the other newspaper references – eight advertisements, and some installments of
“M’Fingal,” where John Trumbull’s epic poem refers to the defenders as “Yankees” – there are
41 satires, again largely grouped around 1769 and 1775, and one item each from 1773 and
1777, two from 1778, and four from 1783, concerning the peace. These items contain mentions
of various of the three terms; examples include references to “Yankees” or “doodles,” or
mention, again, the tune being played, but not sung.
413

The remaining 35 examples are songs. Of these, six are satires by James Rivington – two
before any fighting had begun, and four, after. Of the first two examples, one, in December
1773, is the first recorded song expression of the destruction of the tea in Boston harbor a little
more than a week before, and also the first documented example of the pairing of the words
“doodle” and “dandy.” The other, in January 1775, is a verse that may or may not have been

412
John Holt, “A Journal of Transactions in Boston,” New-York Journal, October 13, 1768, p. 2, col. 3, iss.
1345, and beyond.
413
These and more in Appendix M (“Doodlebase”).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.202

intended to be sung; signed by “No Yankee,” the postscript reads: “I fret, I storm, I spit, I spew,
/ At sound of Yankee Doodle Do.” This phrasing calls to mind not the “Yankee Doodle” familiar
to us, but another song with a long history in English musical plays and songbooks, having the
refrain “Doodle, Doodle, Doo.” A sociable song that fell into the category of obscene-but-witty-
therefore-acceptable (in certain company), this tune was parodied two more times by Rivington,
in 1778 and 1779, as was the “Yankee Doodle” meter form we know, in the two remaining
examples, in 1778 and 1780. Six of the seven advertisements mentioning “Yankee Doodle”
came from Rivington’s subsequent sale of one of the songs, “Yankey Doodle's Expedition to
Rhode Island,” in broadside form.
414
So closely associated with these tunes was Rivington that
his name was coupled with that of “Yankee Doodle” twice in news coverage, once in a complaint
about his work, and in another, when New Yorkers broke into his office, stole his types, and
“marched out of town to the tune of Yankee doodle.”
415

Of the remaining 29, eleven use the “Doodle Doodle Doo” format, but only one of them
follows the Rivington pattern of changing the refrain to “Yankee Doodle Doo.” This example
was published by William Goddard in the Maryland Journal, at the end of a difficult year in
which Goddard, a man otherwise known as an ardent Patriot, got into a fight with the local Whig
club and was accused of being a Tory.
416

The next example, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, is not properly a “Yankee Doodle”
variant; the author simple mentioned in his introduction that it is a “Yanky song” set to the tune

414
“Yankey Doodle's Expedition to Rhode Island,” in broadside form, was advertised in Rivington’s New
York Gazette on: March 2, 1781, p. 2, col. 3, iss. 469; March 31, 1781, p. 3, col. 3, iss. 470; April 7, 1781,
p. 4, col. 2, iss. 472; April 11, 1781, p. 4, col. 2, iss. 473; April 14, 1781, p. 4, col. 2, iss. 474; April 18,
1781, p. 4, col. 2, iss. 475; and April 21, 1781, p. 4, col. 2, iss. 476.
415
Yankee Doodle parody lyrics appeared in Rivington’s New York Gazette on: December 2, 1773, p. 3,
cols. 1-2, iss. 33; January 12, 1775, p. 2, col. 3, iss. 91; October 3, 1778, p. 3, col. 2, isss. 210; November
11, 1778, p. 3, cols. 1-2, iss. 221; November 27, 1779, p. 3, cols. 3-4, iss. 330; and January 22, 1780, p. 3,
cols. 3-4, iss. 346; the report of Rivington’s ignominious departure from New York appeared in the
Connecticut Journal, November 29, 1775, p. 2, col. 1, iss. 424.
416
“A New Song,” in Maryland Journal, December 9, 1777.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.203

of the “Queen’s Old Courtier. Which is a kind of recitativo, like the chaunting of those psalms in
cathedrals.”
417
The December 1781 example by “Tacitus” echoed news coverage of how the
British “butchers were forced, their weapons to ground, / And dance Yankey doodle, in front of
our line,”
418
and a year later, the London satire “The Georges” – about the king and Washington,
and reprinted in four American newspapers – could be sung to the tune we know as “Yankee
Doodle,” but while the lyrics reference that song, the tune direction given is “Push About the
Jorum,” a different tune altogether.
419

That leaves twelve – or, to be precise, three songs of which there exist four examples of
each, from various American newspapers. All of them appeared in late 1781 and early 1782,
after the American victory at Yorktown. All of them are in the meter we know today for “Yankee
Doodle,” and use that refrain.
The first, titled either as “A” or “Another” “New-York Address,” first appeared in the
New-York Journal on November 7, shortly after the conclusion of the battle of Yorktown had
concluded on October 19, and amid a rash of newspaper reports of the same – and notifies
(warns?) the “loyalists” across the river that the author (and brethren) would soon be back. The
printer, John Holt, made good on that promise; in the penultimate edition of the Chatham, New
Jersey publication’s run came the notice that “the paper would be discontinued ‘at the

417
“The King’s Own Regulars, and their Triumph Over the Irregulars,” in Pennsylvania Evening Post, March
30, 1776.
418
December 1781 example by “Tacitus” song in the Independent Ledger, December 24, 1781.
419
"THE GEORGES, A Song." Independent Ledger, May 27, 1782; Freeman's Journal, June 19, 1782; New
York Gazeteer (Albany), July 15, 1782; and New Jersey Journal, August 7, 1782. Both tunes, “Jorum,” and
the “Yankee Doodle” known today, are long meter, so the text could be paired with any number of tunes.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.204

evacuation of New-York,” which happened in late 1783.
420
The address-in-song would be
reprinted in three other newspapers.
421

“THE DANCE. A Ballad, to the tune of 'Yankey Doodle’” has been reprinted in many
sources over the past two centuries, and tells the story in song of how the British were made to
“dance” to the “Yankee’s” tune, in various ways at various times over the years of the conflict.
422

And, appropriately, the war-era songs end with “a new song” entitled “Who’s the Noodle,”
which uses the traditional partner of “doodle” to complete the inversion; you called us this
name, but it’s really you.
423

In considering the newspaper references to the song and the words that comprise its
title, the only singing reported was in satires by either the British or Tory/later Loyalist sources.
American use of the word was limited to news accounts of the tune, not the song, until after the
battle of Yorktown, with the lone except of the unusual Goddard example. Regionally, in the
Atlantic mainland colonies,
424
no one mentioned the word “Yankee” until shoving it back into
the British troops’ face after Lexington and Concord, except Mein, during a newspaper row with
Edes in 1768-1770, and the many publishers who reprinted the New-York Journal’s

420
Clarence Brigham, The History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690-1820 (Worcester, MA:
American Antiquarian Society, 1947), p. 495, quoting from New Jersey Journal, November 12, 1783, vol. 5,
no. 248.
421
"ANOTHER NEW-YORK ADDRESS." New-Jersey Journal, November 7, 1781; Pennsylvania Packet,
November 20, 1781; Boston Gazette, November 26, 1781; and Norwich Packet, November 29, 1781.
422
"THE DANCE. A Ballad, to the tune of 'Yankey Doodle.'" Pennsylvania Packet, November 27, 1781;
Independent Ledger, December 31, 1781; Connecticut Courant, January 8, 1782; and Massachusetts Spy,
January 17, 1782.
423
"WHO'S THE NOODLE. A New Song." Pennsylvania Packet, August 31, 1782; New York Gazeteer
(Albany), September 23, 1782; Independent Ledger, September 30, 1782; and Connecticut Gazette (New
London), October 11, 1782.
424
Only limited newspaper samples were considered from colonies in present-day Canada and the
Caribbean, not enough to make any claims, but in those few examples, the words/song/tune “Yankee,”
“doodle,” or any combination thereof, aren’t present, either.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.205

“Occurances” of Boston’s suffering.
425
Mentions appear in the south only in the two Charleston
papers, and in Savannah.
426

But many of the most ardent Patriots never printed the words “Yankee” or “doodle” in
any context until very late in the war – including Edes, whose paper famously was laid out every
Saturday afternoon with the participation of many of Boston’s architects of opposition.
427
And
the entire period following the Boston Massacre and right up to Lexington and Concord was
“Yankee-” and “doodle-”free except for: Rivington’s poke immediately after the tea went into
the harbor; the reprinted London article in Connecticut; and the widely distributed “Doodle
Doodle Doo” song concerning the scandalous story in which George III’s brother was named in a
very public divorce case.
It is striking that succeeding generations strove to depict this song as beloved by
Americans even before the revolution, when it never appears in a newspaper source of any kind,
even before the fractious 1760s, in any way. Even more striking is the way that the name
“Yankee” appears to be unfamiliar to New Englanders in 1775 -- otherwise, why would an
article on its etymology be published in several newspapers at the exact time the tune metaphor

425
The “Journal” series of “transactions” or “occurrences” was reprinted by the Fleets in Boston, the Halls
in Salem, Timothy Green in New London, William Goddard in Philadelphia, and in New York by John Holt
(the originator) and Hugh Gaine, but not by James Rivington, the frequent-flyer of “doodling.”
426
doodle mentions in the two Charleston papers, and in Savannah; Drapers’ Boston News-Letter
427
Others didn’t mention the song, tune, or even the words, either. Some, like the Drapers’ Boston News-
Letter, avoided song and all things notorious, and generally sided with the government; John Green of the
Boston Weekly Post-Boy was the Drapers’ in-law and similarly oriented; Parker et al’s New-York Gazette,
definitely on the Patriot side, never had much to do with any song; John Carter succeeded to the
Providence Gazette after the Goddards, and while he printed many songs (relatively speaking), he didn’t
print this one, either; Ezekiel Russell, who peregrinated around several papers and ended up a ballad-
monger in Boston, printed newspaper songs, too, but not this one nor the words. Isaiah Thomas, while
printing songs in his Boston newspaper and magazine, led the coverage of “Yankee Doodle” being played
by “the 2nd brigade march(ing) out of Boston” to Lexington and Concord; yet none of his publications
spin-offs in various parts of New England joined in the “doodle” rhetoric, either, until Thomas’ Worcester
Massachusetts Spy did. Isaiah Thomas, ed., “Worcester, May 10,” Massachusetts Spy, May 10, 1775, p. 3,
col. 2, iss. 220. Many other examples underscore that the printers who were most involved in what
became the revolution didn’t use the words “Yankee” or “doodle,” much less this song or its tune, unless
or until others began to – and often, not even then. See citations in Appendix M (“Doodlebase”).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.206

was first turned on the British (following Lexington and Concord) – an article with the
explanation “what they call us,” not what we call ourselves.
If “Yankee Doodle,” or the component words of its name, were used in newspapers –
the source which has been demonstrated to be the one for which we have the most complete
record, and for which we have the most accurate accounting of date and place – only in the
specific ways demonstrated above, the broadside record would seem to suggest something
different. One example, The Procession, and several others of the “father and I went down to
camp” variant, were dated by bibliographer Evans and his successors as 1770 and 1775,
respectively, and yet another, a sheet dated 1760, also contains the song “The Recruiting
Officer.”
428
These dates could suggest that either there are newspaper or other “Yankee
Doodle” examples not extant that would explain the disconnect, or that perhaps broadsides and
newspapers were being used differently in these cases. But a third explanation might be a
misdating of the undated broadsides.
Most scholarship about American song in the centuries since the nation’s founding has
been devoted to national song, and no song has been written about more than “Yankee
Doodle.” The palpable discomfort of the founding generation about the way that song had been
used against them by the British has been thoroughly examined, and very careful scholarship
dating from the mid-19
th
century to the present found reason to date some of the examples to
prior to the revolution. A brief overview is appropriate.

428
“The Recruiting officer. Together with Yanky Doodle.” (Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 49233,
1760); “The Procession, with the standard of faction: a cantata.” (Early American Imprints, Series 1, no.
11827 [filmed], 1770); “The farmer and his son's return from a visit to the camp” (Early American
Imprints, Series 1, no. 49300 [digital supplement], 1775); “The farmer and his son's return from a visit to
the camp: with the Jolly miller, & Jaded pedlar.” (Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 49301 [digital
supplement], 1775); “The farmer and his son's return from a visit to the camp.” (Early American Imprints,
Series 1, no. 42814 [filmed], 1775); and “The Yankey's return from camp.” (Early American Imprints,
Series 1, no. 49299 [digital supplement], 1775).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.207

It is perhaps useful to start not at the Bicentennial, or even the Centennial, but with
what could be called, in biblical terms, the jubilee – the end of the first half-century of the great
American experiment, when it seemed relatively certain, for the moment, that war with the
mother country might be over. On the first July 4
th
of the new half-century – 1827 – George
Jones was a young schoolmaster and chaplain aboard the iconic American frigate U.S.
Constitution, anticipating the long Naval career he was ultimately fortunate to experience. In a
memoir presented as an epistolary collection and published upon Jones’ return to Boston
following an 1825-1828 tour of duty aboard Constitution and another frigate, the Brandywine,
the schoolmaster described the moment as “nine men of war, English, French, and Austrian,”
watched as the human tragedy of the impending fall of the Acropolis played out before them. It
being evening, the ships’ bands were on deck to entertain the men during the “dog watches” of
shift changes, and Constitution engaged in a song swap with HMS Cambrian of the two nations’
respective national songs, the British returning “Yankee Doodle.” Jones reaction:

I have a word to say about Yankee Doodle: it is a tolerably good tune,
when played slowly and well, as our band plays it; but rattled off, as it was on
board their ship, this evening, I am sure it must have produced a general laugh
there, as it did with us. To me, at least, it produced mortification, also. You
know, probably, how we come by this tune as a national air: the English played it
in the revolutionary war, in ridicule, and we adopted it in earnest, making good
use of it, too. It is a lively, cheerful tune, but vulgar; and not befitting the dignity
of a national air. It ought to be expunged. Another may easily be formed: "the
star-spangled banner" would make a good one; if not, "Hail Columbia" will do
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.208

alone, or others may be found; but let us get rid of Yankee doodle doodle do, as
soon as possible.
429

The anecdote was republished – anonymously, just as Jones originally published his two-
volume memoir, and as befitted the discretion of a man with Jones’ role and aspirations. For
decades afterward, the anecdote would appear in other sources and grow to present an
accepted, conventional wisdom for a beloved, but problematic, national song.
Jones’s use of the word “vulgar,” echoing Joseph Addison’s and Isaiah Thomas’ similar
assessments the common people, even the “rabble,” reflect the sensibility perhaps of a different
century; whereas Sidney found virtue among barbarians, and Addison believed that “universal
approval,” even by “the rabble,” could reveal beauty, Jones found it undignified, and in need of
being expunged.
The comment also prefigured an article on national song, whose author surely knew the
Jones anecdote. Stephen Salisbury, Worcester, Massachusetts scion of a loyalist family and a
representative of the generation whose members were among the last to have had an
opportunity to know actual participants in the revolutionary era, addressed the American
Antiquarian Society shortly before the centennial year of 1876, summing up in a single
paragraph both the value of, and problem with, “Yankee Doodle:”

“Yankee Doodle” is a national property, but it is not a treasure of the
highest value. It has some antiquarian claims, for which its warmest friends do

429
[George Jones], Sketches of Naval Life, Vol. 1 (New Haven, CT: Hezekiah Howe, 1829), Letter XL, Frigate
Constitution, May 14, 1827.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.209

not care. It cannot be disowned, and it will not be disused. In its own older
words,
“It suits for feasts, it suits for fun,
And just as well for fighting.”

And its easy utterance and fearless and frolicsome humor make its
accompaniment welcome on fit occasions, and preserve its popularity. It exists
now as an instrumental, and not as a vocal performance. Its words are never
heard, and I think would not be acceptable in America for public or private
entertainments. And its music must be silent when serious purposes are
entertained and men’s hearts are moved to high efforts and great sacrifices. As
a song Yankee Doodle has not a national character.
430

Salisbury brought out the point about song rhetoric – the tune was of that sociable
variant not suitable for “serious purposes” – but also a “character” problem that made the song
unsuitable even in private entertainments, so much so that Salisbury’s generation preferred it (if
at all) as an instrumental only, even while understanding that the song could never be
“disowned,” given all it had meant to the nation in its formative years for its usefulness for
“fighting.”
Over the years, Salisbury’s prediction proved true. “Yankee Doodle” was the vampire
song that just wouldn’t stay dead, no matter how assiduously its opponents tried to put a stake
through its melodious heart (“it will not be disused”), perhaps because people really did (and

430
Salisbury, Stephen, An essay on the Star Spangled Banner and National Songs : read before the
American Antiquarian Society at their annual meeting, October 21, 1872 : ... (Worcester, MA: American
Antiquarian Society, 1873), p. 12. This article was one step in a long line of attempts, ultimately successful,
to propose the Star Spangled Banner as the national anthem.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.210

do) love it so much, but also because its apologists have done such a good job of reframing its
meaning. Here again, no one was “lying,” but perhaps something more like “hoping” there was
a better explanation for the song than the one suggested by the historical sources.
The most thorough assessment of these nineteenth-century accounts, at its time, was
the one commissioned of the music librarian at the Library of Congress on the nagging question
of whether and when the U.S. should adopt a national anthem of its own. Oscar Sonneck
complied an amazingly thorough accounting of the meanings of the words “Yankee” and
“doodle;” the coupling of the two terms; the tune they were appended to; and what it all
meant.
431

Sonneck, while cautioning that his report was not a “history … for popular
consumption,” did a great social science job with the myriad creation narratives.
Methodologically, though, he was unwilling to toss out all of the sources documented after the
revolutionary era, and ultimately concluded there was a possibility of an earlier genesis for the
song largely because of the existence of the term “Yankee” in manuscript sources from the
Seven Years War/French and Indian War period, and also because of the song’s use as an “Air”
in a suppressed comic opera written and published in Pennsylvania and New York, respectively,
in 1767, which suggested the audience was expected to know the tune. Elsewhere, though
Sonneck convincingly took many of the more untenable accounts off of the table, though many
of them – particularly those left behind by Philadelphia antiquarian John Fanning Watson –
continue to be retold in scholarly books to this day, perhaps because of the extent to which they
were cited by other scholars.
432

431
Sonneck, Report, 1909; the article on “Yankee Doodle” spans pp. 79-156 as well as many facsimiles of
manuscript and print sources in Appendix M (“Doodlebase”).
432
Sonneck described Watson’s treatment of “Yankee Doodle” in the second edition of Annals of
Philadelphia as a “bouquet of historical gossip and blunder.” Sonneck, Report, 1909, p. 97; John F.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.211

Sonneck’s work was updated over the intervening half-century leading up to the
Bicentennial, notably by S. Foster Damon in 1959,
433
and in a 1976 article in the William and
Mary Quarterly by Leo Lemay, who acknowledged that while Sonneck had produced the “best
known account of the origin of ‘Yankee Doodle’” – both “the origin” and “the verse” – that there
were new reasons to recognize certain versions as prerevolutionary, based on the scholarship of
the previous decades as well as his own involving woodcuts and “other printer’s ornaments,” as
well as literary structures.
434

Lemay’s examination of the text is flawless and convincing – that the text revealed
American “irony” rather than British “satire” – but, like Sonneck, he relied on sources first
documented in the nineteenth century as well as those from the documentary record of the
eighteenth. The arguments he made about story elements that took place in 1745 provide a
terminus post quem before which the song could not have been written, but no limit on when it
might have been written after. The use of historical stories in broadside songs about war was a
common practice, with recycling of similar themes, layout, and even woodcuts of previous
battles and songs, to link an earlier message with a new one.
435
A similar argument could be
made about the Evans broadsides that clearly use the familiar “Yankee Doodle” song, but do not
line up textually or chronologically with the newspaper examples that clearly place the “ironic”
American use of that song and theme after victory at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time … in Two Volumes (Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott & Co., 1870).
433
S. Foster Damon, Yankee Doodle (Meriden Gravure Co.: Meriden, CT, 1959).
434
Lemay, “Yankee Doodle,” WMQ, 1976.
435
For example, two undated broadsides at the Massachusetts Historical Society show that a woodcut of
three soldiers at a military camp was used on the broadside “Battle of Bunker Hill” as well as the
broadside “The Death of General Wolfe,” even though the events took place sixteen years apart. In the
record, they are given the terminus post quem date of 1775. “The Death of General Wolfe,” and “Battle
of Bunker Hill. This Song was composed by the British, after the engagement” (broadsides at the
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1775).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.212

The eighteenth-century uses of “Yankee” cited by Sonneck seem persuasive that the
term was in use during the Seven Years War on both continents, but one of the print sources he
mentioned has been particularly problematic, both in its own time, when its performance was
suppressed, and up to our own, as scholars continue to disagree over who wrote it and where it
was published. Could there also be a problem with the date of the version that appeared in
“New-York” in “1767?”
The comic opera The Disappointment did exist in 1767 – the newspaper record
documents it – but that doesn’t mean the pamphlet that survived, allegedly published in “New-
York” – considered by some to be a subterfuge – is the 1767 text. The ads (in Goddard’s
Philadelphia paper) indicate the pamphlet “will be sold,” not that it ever was, and even though
the ads continued through the end of the month, notices in two other Philadelphia papers
indicated that the play was not fit for performance, and would be replaced by another. But IF
the pamphlet is what it claimed to be, a representation of the 1767 text, that presents an even
more intriguing possibility, if in fact it is the first example in print of the existence of a song
called “Yankee Doodle,” and especially if, as recent scholarship indicates, it was written by that
musical founder, signer, and framer, Francis Hopkinson, at a time that this chapter suggests the
terms “Yankee” and “doodle” were not being deployed by members of Patriotic circles.
436

In an edition produced under the auspices of the American Bicentennial Commission,
David Mays produced the only edited edition of The Disappointment
437
since its two publications
in the eighteenth-century – the one from “New-York 1767,” and a 1796 Philadelphia edition that

436
David Mays, ed., Thomas Forrest, The Disappointment; or, The Force of Credulity (Gainesville, FL:
University Press of Florida, 1976), p. 23. Mays described the author as a "gifted amateur" and “something
more than a dilettante.”
437
In keeping with its connection to the larger Bicentennial celebration, Mays offered this as a more
accessible adaptation, altering grammar, syntax, spelling, etc., for the ease and comprehension of the
presumed audience. Mays, ed., The Disappointment.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.213

includes the song previously identified as being sung to the air (tune) of “Yankee Doodle” – but
the tune reference had been removed. Specific to this chapter are various theories by theater
historians recounted by Mays concerning, particularly, the character who sang the song,
Raccoon, and his fellow “dupes” who were being scammed concerning a fictional pirate
treasure. Among the theories: 1., Raccoon’s dialect could indicate that he was an African-
American (Mays “reluctantly” disagreed,
438
and suggested Swedish, based on a Delaware River
community and a revolutionary war reference to the New Jersey militiamen as “raccoons”); 2.,
whether the author was John Leacock (Sonneck’s choice) or Thomas Forrest (the traditional
choice; Mays concurred); 3., where it was published (Mays agreed that it was Philadelphia);
and 4., why it was suppressed, a circumstance made clear by the only extant contemporary
testimony, a letter written by college student Jack Macpherson to William Patterson
439

suggesting that the play had, at least, been performed perhaps in a private reading.
Macpherson could “only say it was very well recd by the people here, who found no fault in it,
but that it savored too much of partiality.” The result: The Disappointment “never was acted
here” (Philadelphia), “the opposition to it being so great as not to admit of it,” a point confirmed
by the newspaper accounts.
440

Macpherson identified the real-life models for the fraudsters: “Quadrant is intended for
an old Instrument maker, by name Cappock, Hum for one Yeates a Tavern Keeper, Parchment
for Reily the decd Scrivener, (and) Rattletrap for one Rudiman Robeson, formerly a Commander
of a Vessel.” No cultural or national marker was imposed on any of these characters, but every
one of the names is a label for their profession. Conversely, three of the four “Dupes” had

438
Mays listed several complications; he couldn't have lived with a non-African American woman,
couldn't have been a Mason, couldn't have been in the militia, etc. Mays, ed., The Disappointment, p. 19.
439
Hornor, Esq., ed., “Extracts from the Letters of John Macpherson, Jr., pp. 52-53.
440
Hornor, Esq., ed., “Extracts from the Letters of John Macpherson, Jr., pp. 52-53.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.214

either accents or other linguistic markers of foreignness: Raccoon, characterized by the curious
“de” and “dis” patois used in Anglophonic literature of all types for various “others,” especially
the French, Irish, and Africans; Trushoop, the Irish cooper, who regularly invokes the names of
Catholic saints; and McSnip, the tailor, with his thick Scots brogue. These stereotypes were
understood by Macpherson, who told Patterson that “Trushoop” was “a merry countryman of
yours, & Mr Snip (was) a foolish one of mine.”
Such clarity, however, was by no means the case for many others of the time; sources
regularly used “Scots” and “Irish” interchangeably to designate ethnic Scots migrants from the
north of Ireland, easily identified by their Protestantism, while Irish Catholics from the southern
part of Ireland were relatively rare in prerevolutionary America.
441
Scots were routinely vilified
because of their association with Lord Bute and the king’s ministers in general (Scottish or not),
with visual depictions of tartan, bagpipes, thistles, and boots (the pronunciation of “Bute”) in
prints from both sides of the Atlantic. Mention must be made, too, of the fourth dupe,
Washball the barber; Mays described the character as “not without a touch of androgeny,”
442

which suggest another kind of otherization, on the spectrum of “nascent sexual types” proposed
by Foster.
There is a question of manliness, too, in the way the author, through the character of
Moll, described Raccoon as a “poor old fool” and “deficient” (both in the money he owes her,
and other ways too), “Cooney, cock-a-pidgeon, sugar-plum, cock-a-dandy, and all the sweet

441
Billy Smith’s study of Philadelphia showed that there were very few Catholics in Philadelphia, and that
the largest increases in minority death rates for the study period were among Dutch Lutherans and
Presbyterians, which could be applied to the “German,” “Scots,” or “Irish” parodized in The
Disappointment, or other populations. The study also shows a significant number of burials in the
“stranger” burial ground, many of them new arrivals who did not survive the “seasoning” process of
becoming accustomed to the continent’s diseases and environment. Billy G. Smith, “Death and Life in a
Colonial Immigrant City: A Demographic Analysis of Philadelphia,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 37,
No. 4 (Dec., 1977), pp. 863-889.
442
Mays, ed., The Disappointment, p. 10.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.215

things I can think of,” language she acknowledges belongs to “little children, playing baby.” Not
the sort of manly talk one would expected between lovers, but then again, it doesn’t appear
that they were; the masculine side of the relationship is on the distaff side, as Moll closes the
scene by singing a song set to the air of “Shambuoy,” a military march better known as the
Marquis of Granby – yet another sign of feminine masculinity in song. The author provides one
further clue to Raccoon’s character – he is a Mason. Granted, one of the hoaxers is also a
Freemason – “Broder Hum” – but the Lodge association appears to be a necessary plot device to
lure Raccoon into the dupe in the first place, bringing the other dupes along with him. But Hum
has character issues of his own; he tries to justify the joke on the basis of Raccoon’s “credulity
and love of money,” but admits that he’s in it for “the diversion.”
443

Whatever the ancestry of “Swan the Hatter,” the man identified by Macpherson as the
model for “Raccoon,” he was being called something more (or worse?) than simply a foreigner.
The “Dramatis Personae” lists Raccoon as “an old Debauchee,” but his given name, Mays found,
was unlike “McSnip” for a tailor or “Washball” for a barber, in that Raccoon's name was not a
label – except, of course, that it is.
444
But of what?
The OED indicates an English understanding of the word raccoon dating back to John
Smith (“Rahaughcums”).
445
Eighteenth-century dictionaries
446
and other sources
447
provide
examples of how the word was used in the early modern English-speaking world. First and
foremost, “raccoon” was either American, or specifically North American, or from New-England.
References relate to animal sciences; raccoon skins in trade and associated costs, or converted

443
Hopkinson, p. 9.
444
Mays, ed., The Disappointment, p. 18.
445
Smith, True Travels, in OED – citation.
446
Johnson, “Rackoon,” Dictionary, 1766, page headed RAD-RAG.
447
EBBO has a handful of references to “raccoon” from the end of the seventeenth century; Evans has 97;
the American newspapers have nearly 2,000 (I read and catalogued 200); ECCO has 139.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.216

into clothing; in connection with Indians; and as a place name for towns and waterways.
Culturally, raccoon appears by the end of the century as the name of a small British ship in the
naval lists; a term for militiamen (as Mays also found); the play The Disappointment; and even
a poem by Joel Barlow, “The Hasty-Pudding,” which sums up this conventional wisdom about
the animal: a thief by night, a corollary to the squirrel by day, who takes from men’s industry
yet is to be pitied because he cannot do what a man can do – in this case, boil a hasty-
pudding.
448

One further reference, a catalog of “rarities” kept at a Chelsea coffeehouse for the
amusement of its clientele, lists, at no. 67, “The Pizzle of a Raccoon.”
449
The word “pizzle”
doesn’t turn up in dictionary until the nineteenth century, but citations of its use as the name of
an animal penis date to the fifteenth century. It is more likely, though, that what the
coffeehouse had was actually a baculum, or penis bone, common to many mammals, including
some primates, though not man.
Now this might not suggest any special significance; after all, there were three pizzles in
the Don’s collection.
450
But of the hundreds of curios on the list, and given the wide range of
mammals available for harvest, at home or abroad, there might have been something special

448
Joel Barlow, The hasty-pudding: a poem, in three cantos. Written at Chambery, in Savoy, Jan. 1793 by
Joel Barlow, Esq. Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 33373.
449
Don Saltero's Coffee-house (London, England). A catalogue of the rarities to be seen at Don Saltero's
coffee-house in Chelsea. To which is added, a compleat list of the donors thereof. London, Printed in the
Year MDCCXXXV. [1735], p. 7; on p. 12, the coffeehouse also lists “the head of a raccoon.”
450
Page 12 of the inventory includes a listing, at no. 224, for a “Sea Horse’s Pizzle, with which Cramp Rings
are made,” and another, on page 16 at no. 347, for “A Whale’s Pizzel,” which, depending on the type of
whale, could be quite an impressive specimen for any caffeinated consumer. The OED contains a 1711
reference for a 1694 use of “a great semicircular Tusk” of “The Morss or Sea-Horse” that was “very much
valued..for their (use) in Medicines, as to make Cramp-rings ... to resist Poison and other malignant
Diseases.” Given, though, that some of the “rarities” on the Don’s list were clearly ironical – “an Irish
brogue,” for example – and that the “Tusk” was identified as a “Pizzle,” the reader may also have
understood a punning reference to a series of tools or parts, also identified in OED, using the word
“cramp,” all of them have a hook, screw or some other means of capturing or holding things together.
“cramp-ring,” in Account of Several Late Voyages. ii. (1711) 193, and “cramp (2),” both in OED, online
edition, accessed April 30, 2013.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.217

about this one. As it turns out, a great many people thought so, and have for centuries,
including our own; an unscientific search of the Internet shows that interest in the raccoon
baculum is still high, with no shortage of intriguing claims concerning its folkloric origins and its
properties relating to love, and sex. These beliefs have been documented by archaeologists at
two eighteenth-century plantations in the North American mid-latitudes associated with two
storied U.S. presidents: Mount Vernon, and the Hermitage. Both studies found raccoon baculi
in the trash pits of enslaved persons, and the Mount Vernon study connected this find not to
West African traditions – where the animal, if not pizzles, was unknown – but to Native
American traditions.
451

Science can shed some light on this elusive piece of folk history, because there indeed
are distinctive traits to the raccoon baculum, and you don’t have to be a specialist to notice
them. One is the proportion to the size of the animal, and the other is its distinctive shape,
somewhat like a fish-hook. One study suggested that the unusual shape of the raccoon baculum
is believed to “(resist) removal of the penis and effect friction on the vaginal wall.”
452

Reverse the logic: if the raccoon was understood by the American audience intended
for The Disappointment to be a virile animal, then that could account for militiamen and others
whose virility was necessary to society to be given the label, rather than Raccoon adopting the
name through his status as a militia man, or his “color,” or ancestry. And in keeping with the
American sense of irony so well documented by Lemay, a virile animal that creeps around at
night stealing the fruits of other men’s industry could be a very apt – and hilarious – name for an

451
Aaron E. Russell, “Material Culture and African-American Spirituality at the Hermitage,” in Historical
Archaeology, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1997), pp. 67-68; and Mark P. Leone and Gladys-Marie Fry, "Conjuring in the
Big House Kitchen: An Interpretation of African American Belief Systems Based on the Uses of
Archaeology and Folklore Sources," in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 112, No. 445, Theorizing the
Hybrid (Summer,1999), pp. 372-403.
452
Charles A. Long and Theodore Frank, "Morphometric Variation and Function in the Baculum, with
Comments on Correlation of Parts," Journal of Mammalogy, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Feb., 1968), p. 35.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.218

“old Debauchee” playing at stud, keeping a “Woman of the Town” (prostitute) on the side, given
the testimony of that woman, Moll Placket (a word for a slit in clothing, do the math), that, not
only can he not please her, but she is forced to cuckold him with the strapping sailor, Topinsail
(a sail that can only be raised when the mast is fully extended). What’s more, since a real man
does not require a baculum to remain erect, Raccoon is not manly.
Just as every tune selected for the songs in the play connects in some way to the
character of the person singing it, something about Raccoon must relate to the tune used to
introduce him in song to the audience: “Yankee Doodle.” If the pamphlet with the “Yankee
Doodle” reference really is from 1767, that would put the reference in Philadelphia a year and a
half before newspaper accounts of British reinforcements arriving in Boston with that very tune
on their lips.
The business of decoding the name “Yankee Doodle” is complicated and treacherous, as
the careful scholarship of more than two centuries demonstrates. The consensus to date is that
the best contender for the meaning of “Yankee” is that it is the Dutch form for Johnny: “Yan” is
“John”, and “kie,” in various spellings, is a diminutive. Whether eighteen-century Americans, or
British officers in the Seven Years War, thought so, too, is another matter.
453

English attitudes about the Dutch can be seen in prints of the time – rather stodgy,
unfashionable in an old-fashioned way, and unsure of themselves. There would be reason both
to justify that rationale, or to fear the alternative. On the one hand, the Duke of York (later
James II) had easily swept the Dutch from New Amsterdam in 1664, and the Dutch king who

453
Some effort has been devoted by theater historians to prove that Raccoon represents the Germanic
people of Philadelphia – and there are as many problems drawing a line between “Dutch” and “Deutsch”
in this culture as there are “Scots” and “Irish,” though the former pair most properly represent two
different migrations of two different peoples, for different reasons. Seilhamer believed Raccoon to be
German, but as Mays pointed out, Raccoon couldn’t read the German almanac Moll gave him. George
Overcash Seilhamer, History of the American Theatre, vol. II (Philadelphia: Globe Printing House, 1888);
Mays, ed., The Disappointment.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.219

married the Duke’s daughter and took his crown had not been able to produce a child, the end-
game in the early-modern masculinity matrix, as discussed by Foster. Yet song culture from
1689 makes perfectly clear that the English understood the arrival of the Prince of Orange as a
successful Dutch invasion of their country that would not have happened in Elizabeth’s reign,
454

necessitated by a need to take the throne from a Catholic English king who couldn’t produce a
male heir without material assistance from the resident papal nuncio.
The use of “Yankee” on the American continent, then, could derive from Continental
precedents and anxieties or those closer to home, regarding the great sea power of olden days
that one had been the only significant imperial presence in the heart of the British Atlantic,
other than the British themselves.
John and Jan are Everyman-names, the most common male names in their respective
languages and Christian cultures, named for the disciple most beloved by Jesus, John the
Apostle. And like other common names in other languages – Peter, Willie – it is often used to
identify the body part that most obviously indicates a man’s sex, just as the common male
names for animals – cock, bull, buck – are used interchangeably for men and their genitals.
Which brings us to “doodle.” We have been told from earliest childhood that this
means stupid, and every modern dictionary will confirm that. But in the early modern world, it
also meant penis, coming from the onomatopoeic sound of the proud, strutting male animal
that was the first thing the members of a producer society heard when roused from sleep each
morning: the rooster. Cock was used as an interchangeable name for man and penis, as already

454
According to the final stanza of “Private Occurrences; Or, the Transactions of the four last Years” in the
first of four anonymous collections of “popery” songs: “Ah, England, that never couldst value thy peace: /
Had matters been now as in Elsabeth's Days, / The Dutch had ne'r ventur'd to fish in our seas.” Anon. A
collection of the newest and most ingenious poems, songs, catches, &c. against popery, relating to the
times Several of which never before printed. London : [s.n.], printed in the year MDCLXXXIX. [1689] Wing
(2nd ed., 1994) / C5206.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.220

discussed, without embarrassment, in a world far more accustomed to regularly encountering
the circle of life at close hand: birth, death, and yes, procreation. Nineteenth-century
associations of “common” and “vulgar” with class concerns were on the horizon, and
eighteenth-century conduct literature was already pointing the way, but cultural manifestations
in song lyrics use the language with ease, and frequently.
But the penis known as “doodle” was not just any penis. The OED politely tells us that it
is a child’s penis. Yet early-modern examples of the doodle apply the word to adults. A search
of the more than two hundred uses of “doodle” on EEBO and ECCO shows that the
overwhelming majority of sources using the word “doodle” were plays, poems, and songs, or
collections of the same, with plays being the largest source, either comedies that used the word
in text or for a cast member, or songs, especially those using the tune with the popular refrain,
“doodle doodle doo.”
Use of the word to describe the animal or its crowing is slight; nearly all of the
references can be interpreted as a slur applied to a man, usually of a sexual nature.
455
Whereas
the dictionaries acknowledged that the word could mean stupid, when you see the word used in
context in other sources, the connection with stupidity clearly is associated with some sort of
misuse, or malfunctioning, related to sex, the point being made clearer in the frequent coupling
of “noodle” (often spelled “noddle”), meaning “head,” with “doodle.” If stupidity were the
issue, the terminology indicated the locus.
The pairing of “Noodle” and “Doddle” was ubiquitous, whether in the coffeehouse –
remember, the Don had both the raccoon’s noodle and doodle – or in the theater, as in the
example of W. R. Chetwood’s “tragi-comi-farcical ballad opera” entitled “The generous Free-

455
Appendix M (“Doodlebase”) includes a list and analysis of all references to “doodle” in the early
modern databases EEBO, ECCO, and the various sections of the Archive of Americana, as well as
undigitized print and manuscript sources in archives consulted for this project.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.221

Mason: or, the constant lady,” subtitled, “With the humours of Squire Noodle, and his Man
Doodle.”
456
The author of a 1730 review wanted to distance himself from the political meaning
of the play, though he very well knew to whom it referred, having been “informed by wiser
heads” of the models for of “two very grotesque figures, whom the author distinguished by the
names of Noodle and Doodle.”
457
Ballad scholars know, too: Noodle was meant to represent
British prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, and Doodle, his brother Horace, in an interaction with
“the Spaniard, as the King of Spain ; and the Cardinal, as Cardinal Fleury” – the two persons
portrayed playing a tune together while the prime minister fumed in European Race for a
Distance.
458

The characters representing the Walpole brothers were portrayed by their
contemporary reviewer as:

... pretending to everything, and understanding nothing, thrusting
themselves into all affairs, and outwitted by every one they have to deal with.
Noodle is supposed to be the eldest brother of the two ; he seems to have a
kind of superiority over Doodle, treats him as his servant, and sends him of his
errands ; but yet, you see that next to himself, he thinks Doodle the prettiest
fellow in the whole world.

456
William Rufus Chetwood, The generous Free-Mason: or, the constant lady. With the humours of Squire
Noodle, and his Man Doodle. A tragi-comi-farcical ballad opera (London: J. Roberts, 1731).
457
[Charles Molloy?], Select Letters taken from Fog's Weekly Journal, Vol. II (London: Printed and Sold by
the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1732), pp. 79-85.
458
J. Milton Percival, ed., Political Ballads Illustrating the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, in
Historical and Literary Studies, Vol. 8 (London, UK, Oxford University Press, 1916), p. xxiii. The Percival
edition also finds the Walpole brothers represented in “A New Norfolk Ballad” to the “Tune of a Trifling
Song, “A dialogue ... (that) concerns chiefly the second Vienna treaty (signed in March 1731), and the
upshot of the argument is that Walpole has a majority in Parliament which will approve any treaty, no
matter what its provisions.” Percival, Political Ballads, p. 189.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.222

If this passage raises suspicion of double entendre, read on – does the reviewer describe
the characters themselves, or the body parts represented by their names? Noodle “treats
(Doodle) as his servant ... (and regards him) next to himself ... (to be) the prettiest fellow in the
whole world,” and Doodle (is) “fool enough by nature, but he is always endeavouring to make
himself appear greater ; he even affects absurdities ; but, tho' he has no wit himself, it must be
owned he is a proper subject to be witty upon, and he that never makes a jest may be the jest of
the place, wherever he goes.” The reviewer concluded that the author of the play had proven
himself “a perfect master of the foibles of human nature ... sound(ing) the depth of folly.” He
may have proven himself master of hysterically funny double entendre as well.
Specific to the characteristics of manliness, Noodle boasts of being a hunter and a
sportsman, but is actually a “bully” and a “rank coward,” and both Noodle and Doodle allow the
Spaniard and the Frenchman to “cajole ... and frighten them out of their wits (if a man may use
that term of two such boobies).” Ultimately, Noodle is denied the promise hand of the
Spaniard’s daughter – the Frenchman gets her, as has, it turns out, been previously arranged” –
making Noodle yet another loser in the end-game of masculinity: marriage, and procreation.
459

The early modern English authors most associated with use of the term “doodle”
include four in particular: Samuel Butler, Edward Ravenscroft, Ned Ward, and Henry Fielding,
native-born English wits of the sort so prized by Aikin. Their combined body of work, bridging
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, blended earlier royalist and anti-Puritan views with
an ultimate championing of Tory values, and a loathing for all things Whig.
Hudibras, the enormously popular series by Butler – a royalist who liked to poke fun at
popery and Puritans – was so influential, that not only was it constantly reprinted throughout
the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but also emulated – notably by fellow “doodle”-

459
Fog’s, 1732, pp. 79-85.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.223

user Ned Ward – or counterfeited, so much so that “only a handful” of the dozens of works
published under his name “could plausibly” have been his work.
460
For the public as well as his
admirers among writers, the impact on, and reach of, of Butler’s likening of the Presbyterian
Hudibras to a “doodle” – “Where sturdy Butcher broke your Noddle, / And handl'd you like a
Fop-doodle” – cannot be underestimated.
461

The only other author who came close to the number of citations for “doodle” of these
native-born wits (in English translations) is the model for Ravenscroft and Fielding, each in their
respective centuries: Molière. Ravenscroft “built” his successful playwright career on “shock
values,” and “borrowed ... freely from others” especially Molière, using the d-word to ridicule
Puritan characters in such plays as “The Citizen Turned Gentleman,” and “The London
Cuckolds.”
462
Fielding, whose forays into the doodle-oeuvre include Tom Thumb, The Lottery,
and The Modern Husband, evidently loved Molière almost as much as he hated Walpole,
skewering the latter in text to such an extent and with such impact that Walpole found it
necessary to take the highly unpopular step of suppressing Fielding’s very popular political
works.
463

The “doodles,” then, were a parade of boobies, debauchees, cuckolds, fops, foreigners,
Puritans, and Freemasons, men whose “stupidity” was rooted less in intellect than in what was
perceived as their witless or depraved behavior choices regarding the body part id that most

460
Hugh de Quehen, “Butler, Samuel (bap. 1613, d. 1680),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/4204, accessed
29 April 2013].
461
Samuel Butler, Hudibras in three parts (London: W. Rogers, 1684), p. 381.
462
Louis A. Knafla, “Ravenscroft, Edward (fl. 1659–1697),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/23171, accessed
29 April 2013].
463
Martin C. Battestin, ‘Fielding, Henry (1707–1754)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/9400, accessed 29 April
2013] – as of the date of this project, I have found no scholarship on a connection between Fielding and
the “noodle/doodle” story discussed in The Walpole Ballads.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.224

defined them as men, identified by the name for a childish penis. Some were identified by age,
but frequently by other associations: their nationality, their foreign tastes, even their
membership that suspicious, odd, secretive group, the Freemasons, with their strange notions
about loving their fellow man rather than beating the snot out of him when duty called. And in
all cases found in this study, the term is applied to someone, not by someone to themselves,
with the possible exception of the characters “Noodle” and “Doodle,” whose audience explicitly
understood them not to possess the wit to understand, or alter, their unfortunate names.
“Doodle” never appears, in this period, as an example of self-deprecating irony.
If “doodle” was a catch-all term for any penis that didn’t perform in the way the early-
modern world expected it to, in ways that were not manly, then Raccoon, a specifically
American manifestation of the term, perhaps even a vestige of the olden Dutch days (and,
therefore, too old to “doodle doo”), saddled with the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” would make
perfect ironical American sense. But if the association wasn’t about nationality, then maybe
what was foreign about Raccoon (as implied by the accent) was his foreignness to manliness,
owing to a doodle that didn’t work the way it was supposed to. The accent sets him apart in a
specific way that had been used in story and song for more than a century in the documentary
record to identify foreign enemies of England, enemies that the state sent Englishmen to fight.
In high-toned loyal song, you would foster that enmity in an almost reverent way, almost always
with religious overtones; in simple love songs and pastorals that reminded men how beloved
they would remain, even after being maimed in battle. And in the realm of sociable song, you
questioned their manhood.
In all cases, the “doodles” deviated from ideas of early-modern manliness in a specific
way that emerged in the print record of the early seventeenth century, continuing throughout
the Commonwealth and picking up impetus during the Restoration, ultimately going into
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.225

overdrive in the century that followed. It is difficult to imagine that anyone living in a colonial
America marinating in English print culture would have misunderstood this, or likely chosen to
call themselves “doodle,” however ironically.
464

Taking the methodology one step further, having isolated and systematically examined
the eighteenth century examples to see what they tell us about the terms and the songs, what
remains in the post-1768 record that intersects with the masculinity discourse of “doodle” are
two stereotypes known to every American from early childhood: Rivington’s “dandy,” and
Watson’s “macaroni.”
465

Ever the most sophisticated and witty of the American printers and booksellers, James
Rivington was an early adopter of the term “dandy;” his December 1773 “song” ridiculing the
tea-partiers is the earliest example I have found of “doodle-dandy,” though it was not attached
to “Yankee.” A close cousin and perhaps updated version of Shakespeare’s tried-and-true “fop-
doodle,” Johnson didn’t deign to distinguish dandy with an entry, not even in 1830.
466
But
Francis Grose, author of the world’s first English slang dictionary, helpfully offered in his first

464
This is not the first time that scholarship has taken note that “Yankee Doodle” might have sexual
overtones. Henry Abelove noted that its “phallic joking sites the song within the traditions and
conventions of eighteenth-century libertine writing,” and identified masturbation as the subtext of the
song; he further explained how, within the insult, “patriot soldiers” came to see “the yankee doodle as
the forward line of a developing American power,” an “early version of what Walt Whitman would later
call a ‘rough,’ and what Mark Twain would later all a ‘rapscallion’” and “eventually (contribute) to the
making of an American nationality. Henry Abelove, "Yankee Doodle Dandy," The Massachusetts Review,
Vol. 49, No. 1/2 (Spring - Summer 2008), pp. 17, 20. Nor is it the first time anyone has noticed that
“doodle” embedded sexual messages into early-modern texts. See Bill Prosser, “Beckett’s Barbouillages,”
Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui, Vol. 22, Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies (2010), pp. 373-374.
465
Sonneck identifies Watson as providing some of the earliest datable documentation of verses to
“Yankee Doodle,” including the familiar stanza containing the word “macaroni,” appearing in Annals as
well as an article published in 1861 but written nearly three decades earlier. Sonneck, Report, 1909, pp.
97-99; Watson, Annals, Vol. 2, pp. 333-335); and “June Meeting … Letter of John F. Watson …,”
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 5 (1860 - 1862), pp. 202-218.
466
“The Dandy-O,” a tremendously popular theater song introduced in the 1780s and widely parodied in
the early national period; based on the earlier traditional tune “The Bonney Lass of Aberdeen,” which
appears in the military tune book of Giles Gibbs (1777). Kate Van Winkle Keller, Giles Gibbs, 1974.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.226

edition “dandy prat, an insignificant, or trifling fellow”
467
– a descriptor that echoes from the
“trifling” tune of the Walpole ballad – and “DANDY GREY RUSSET, a dirty brown.” Three years
later, in a new edition, Grose included the stand-alone term “dandy, That’s the dandy ; i.e. the
ton, the clever thing : an expression of similar import to ‘That’s the barber.’ See BARBER.”
468

Johnson, in 1766, indicated the origin of “barber” in the French word for beard, but his
entry associates the word specifically with the act of shaving the beard, i.e., removing the
symbol of manliness, rather than grooming it, and also powdering the hair and “dress(ing)
out.”
469
But Grose, in 1788, provided an even more enigmatic entry:

The BARBER, or that’s the barber, a ridiculous and unmeaning phrase, in
the mouths of the common people about the year 1760, signifying their
approbation of any action, measure, or thing.
470

Clarity emerges in the 1823 entries:

BARBER’s CHAIR. She is as common as a barber’s chair, in which a
whole parish sit to be trimmed ; said of a prostitute.

BARBER’s SIGN. A standing pole and two wash-balls.
471

467
Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London, [1785]), page headed DAV.
468
Grose, Dictionary, [1788]), page headed DAV.
469
Johnson, “Barber,” Dictionary, 1766, page headed BAR-BAR.
470
Grose, Dictionary, [1788]), page headed BAS.
471
Pierce Egan, Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue ... (London: Printed for the Editor, 1823),
page headed BAR.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.227

Recalling Mays’ commentary on the character of Washball in The Disappointment – he
found something “androgenous” about him, “giv(ing) the impression of a rather fussy
hairdresser.” And while I am confident that a “washball” was indeed, as Mays described, a cloth
implement used in the act of barbering, the dictionary entry makes abundantly clear an
intended visual pun of the lewd-yet-witty English variant.
472

By 1823, the definition of “dandy” had been expanded to include a second definition,
and a poem:
DANDY. In 1820, a fashionable non-descript. Men who wore stays to
give them a fine shape, and were more than ridiculous in their apparel.

Now a DANDY’s a thing, describe him who can ?
That is very much made in the shape of a man ;

472
Given the lag in the appearance of other terms in dictionaries when compared to their use in other
sources, it may not be anachronistic to use the 1823 example to explain the 1767 use. Suggestive singing
about barbering dates as early as circa 1500, when “Allons ferons nos barbe” told of a “barber's wife who
shaved two at a time.” Note from Adam Knight Gilbert, Thornton School of Music, private conversation.
Macpherson’s letter identified the identity of the man parodied as Washball: “an old decd Barber called
Dixon,” perhaps a name but possibly a word play for another slang term for the penis, as in “Dick’s son,”
like Johnson, also a contemporary expression for penis. Hornor, Esq., ed., “Extracts from the Letters of
John Macpherson, Jr., p. 52. Extensive etymology for penis slang is available in: Jonathon Green, Green’s
Dictionary of Slang (Edinburgh, London: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2010); Green, in an online blog,
helpfully answered the question, “What is the etymology of ‘Johnson’ as a slang term or euphemism for
the penis?,” with citations for “Johnson” and its predecessors as “part of a group that uses a proper name
… to give a slang name to the male genitals” – a group including “Willie” and other personal male names;
though Green’s first documented use of “johnson” dates only to 1863, a “family” of names can be
documented much earlier, as “The first uses of this ‘proper name’ form seem to stem from the 16th
century jockum” (c.1566), which “led to jock,” (1790), and is related to “Jack” (1604). Jonathon Green,
“What is the etymology of ‘Johnson’ as a slang term for penis?,” written 30 Sep 2011, Quora.com,
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199829941.001.0001/acref-9780199829941
Green’s findings would seem to bear out a modern study in which Deborah Cameron identified as the
“first category” of penis nicknames “personifying,” with the subcategory "connot(ing) intimacy" including
the names Dick, Peter, Percy, (and) John ... (or) Johnson;" though Cameron’s was a twentieth-century
study of American college students, she drew upon English popular culture for corroboration, such as the
observation that the use of the name "willie” for “penis” was “common in British English.” Deborah
Cameron, “Naming of Parts: Gender, Culture, and Terms for the Penis among American College
Students,” American Speech, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 367-382.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.228

But if for but once could the fashion prevail,
He’d be more like an APE if he had but a tail.

I’m sure with the DANDIES we well may dispense,
As neither possessing wit, learning, nor sense ;
And if in such follies they still will persist,
Throw them all in the Thames, and they’ll never be miss’d.
473

The dandy, having acquired a tail, was clearly identified as not being a man, and lacking
wit. Ergo, a doodle.
But the dandy was not the first doodle to be instantly recognizable in his fashion sense,
by being “more than ridiculous in (his) apparel.” For the mid-eighteenth century, that
distinction was reserved for the “macaroni.”
Similar to what we learned about the other terms, intervening generations taught that
the “macaroni” was a fashion statement, and maybe we can blame Grose for that. His 1785
entry read:

MACCARONI, an Italian paste made from flour and eggs ; also a fop,
which name arose from a club, called the maccaroni club, instituted by some of
the most dressey travelled gentlemen about town, who led the fashions,
whence a man foppishly dressed, was supposed a member of that club, and by
contraction stiled a maccaroni
474

473
Egan, 1823, page headed DAV.
474
Grose, Dictionary, [1788]), page headed MAN.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.229

Editions of Grose, through 1823, never deviated from that story, and if you didn’t know
the meaning of fop (another word from Foster’s spectrum of “nascent sexual types), masked
here in the rhetoric of fashion), that might be it.
But way back in 1766, Johnson had already told the world that “maccaroni” meant,
albeit with some conflation with the term for “macaroone:”

MACAROONE. s. [macarone, Italian.]
1. A coarse, rude, low fellow : whence macaronick poetry.
2. A kind of sweet biscuit, made of flour, almonds, eggs, and sugar.
475

By 1830, the conflation – if that’s what it is – continued; Johnson’s successors (and
Watson’s contemporaries) found vulgarity associated with both culinary terms:

MACARONI, n. s. [maccaroni, Ital.] A kind of paste meat boiled in broth,
and dressed with butter, cheese, and spice. B. Jonson. A sort of droll or fool ;
and thence the application of the word to a fop. Addison.

MACARONICK, n. s. A confused heap or mixture of several things.
Colgrove.

475
Johnson, “Macaroone,” Dictionary, 1766, page headed MAC-MAC.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.230

MACARONICK, a. A kind of burlesque poetry, intermixing several
languages, Latinizing words of vulgar use, and modernizing Latin words.
Warton.

MACAROON, n. s. [maccaroni, Ital.] A pert, meddling fellow ; a busy
body. Donne. A kind of sweet biscuit, made of flour, almonds, eggs, and
sugar.
476

The dressy fop, who belonged to an exclusive club (not unlike the Freemasons), one
associated with fashion and an Italian confection – alternately described as “sweet” or “spicy,” a
“biscuit,” or a “paste” – conflated with a half-century of terms like coarse rude, low, droll, fool,
vulgar, pert, meddling, a busy body, and don’t forget intermixed, and confused. Who is this
man?
Well, sometimes, he was a woman. If the prints are to be believed, cross-dressing was
alive and well in late-eighteenth century London. Men and woman were depicted
experimenting with each other’s mode of dress, as in the comparison of an English actress
dressing up in male drag,
477
and the famous French “Female Freemason” d’Eon.
478

476
Johnson, “Macaroon,” Dictionary, 1830, page headed MAC-MAC.
477
“An Actress at her Toilet, or Miss Brazen just Breecht, From the Original Picture by John Collet, in the
possession of Carington Bowles." London: "Printed for & Sold by Carington Bowles, [date erased, 1779].”
478
“The discovery or female Free-Mason.” London: Printed for S. Hooper, 1771.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.231

Figure 4.4. Cross-Dressing, 1771 and 1779

Men and women shared equally in the macaroni style of dress, and a woman so
desperate to achieve a more male physique involves the whole household in an ordeal of
bondage.
479

Figure 4.5. Macaroni Men and Women, 1768

479
“Grown Ladies taught to Dance. 'Engraved after an Original Picture of Mr,, John Collett, in the
Possession of Mr. Smith.” London: Printed for Robt. Sayer, [circa] 1768; “Grown gentlemen taught to
Dance. 'Engraved after an Original Picture of Mr. John Collett, in the Possession of Mr. Smith.” London:
Printed for Robt. Sayer, [circa] 1768; “Tight Lacing, or Fashion before Ease. From the Original Picture by
John Collet, in the possession of the Proprietors” (London: Bowles & Carver, [1777?].
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.232

But nowhere did the discourse of the masculinity and Macaronis intersect more clearly
than in the work of John Collett. As his macaroni images make abundantly clear, macaroni
fashion was a warning label for a disturbing interior quality lurking within.
Collett’s A Macarony taking his Morning Ride in Rotten-Row Hyde Park (1772)
introduces the stock character best known in modern popular culture as a fashion statement but
clearly known in late-eighteenth-century Anglo Atlantic as code for sodomite.
480
Perhaps Collett
intended a pun on the putative French origins of “Rotten-Row” (Route de Roi) in placing the
French Macarony on the fashionable London promenade and meeting place, but it is also true
that parks were among the favorite meeting places for men seeking same-sex physical
encounters.
481

Collett’s commentary on masculinity and nation shows a pugnacious, barrel-shaped
Englishman in London trying to “make a man” out of the reedy French man identified in the
Hyde-Park print as a “Macarony,” while the man grooming the unwilling Englishman in Paris on
the right could appear to be trying to “make a woman” out of him.
482

480
John Collett, “A Macarony taking his Morning Ride in Rotten-Row Hyde-Park” (London: Robert Sayer,
1772).
481
Randolph Trumbach, "Blackmail for Sodomy in Eighteenth-Century London," in Historical Reflections /
Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 33, No. 1, Eighteenth-Century Homosexuality in Global Perspective (Spring
2007), p.23.
482
“The Frenchman in London, after John Collett.” London: Robert Sayer, 1770; “The Englishman in
Paris, after John Collett.” London: Robert Sayer, 1770.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.233

Figure 4.6. Collett and Macaronis, 1770-1772

Three views of “Macaronis” after Collett:

 A Macarony taking his Morning Ride
in Rotten-Row Hyde Park (1772)

 Near right, The Frenchman in London,
after John Collett

 Far right, The Englishman in Paris,
after John Collett

In both cases, the advances of the man on the left are unwelcome to the one on the
right; the Frenchman in London recoils from an English conception of manliness, while the
Englishman in Paris, seated, quite literally won’t sit still for the Parisian makeover. Even the
stance assumed by the two “attackers” is identical, but whereas the Englishman is bare-fisted,
offering a fair fight – with the female gaze in the background – the Frenchman on the right
appears to be assaulting the seated Englishman with a weapon – presumably with his prior
permission, but perhaps without the victim understanding what was going to happen to him. It
is tempting, when looking at the Frenchman in London, to hear an echo of Butler’s Hudibras:
“Where sturdy Butcher broke your Noddle, / And handl'd you like a Fop-doodle.”
In one sense, the macaroni was, literally, a “noodle” with a “doodle,” who didn’t know
how to use either accordingly to English expectations of manliness. And the creator of
“Washball” the barber – and maybe more than a few in his audience – must have been familiar
with images like the Frenchman dressing hair in “The Englishman in Paris.” As in Collet’s
comparative images of “City Chanters” and “Country Choristers” seen in Chapter One, here he
again used binary oppositions to construct political and gendered space: the Englishman was
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.234

short but plucky versus the Frenchman, tall and delicate; he courageously, and fairly, fought
with his bare fists instead of a “weapon;” his “arena” was outdoors versus indoors, framing an
actual workplace in the center of the background versus an artificial leisure space; rough
cobblestones supported his actions, versus elegant tiles. On the left, the door to the shop is
closed to the French intruder; on the right, the door is open for the English man to make his exit
– if only he will. And both of the “attackees” will, presumably, leave their respective scenes in
disgust, but only the French “Macarony” displays fear, compared to the “stoutness” of both
Englishmen – stout in body, but also stout in heart. Courageous, the characteristic demanded of
English recruits who would next encounter Britain’s foe, the French, in actual battle.
Macaronis, seemingly, were everywhere – of many varieties but, as the series shown
above explained (in the caption of “The Farmer-Macaroni),” “alike, are MACARONIES” ... all
“dressed” up, and ready to “mount their Ponies.”
483

Figure 4.7. MDarly Macaroni caricatures, 1772

483
“A Macaroni. in a Morning Dress in the Park,” Pub by MDarly April 23d.1772 accor to Act (39) Strand;
“The Southwark Macaroni.” Published according to Act Augt. 24.1772, by M Darly, No. 39, Strand; “The
Simpling Macaroni.” Pub accor to Act by MDarly Strand July 13
th
, 1772; and “The Farmer-Macaroni.”
Pubd. accordg. to Act July 24
th
, 1772 by MDarly 39 Strand; all four prints from Characters, Macaronies &
Caricatures, by MDarly, Vol. 4. London: 1772; there were six series of four caricatures by MDarly during
the 1770s.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.235

Not surprisingly, the imagery carries into the military realm. “The Military Macaroni”
walks delicately on tiny feet and carries a tiny hat (for his noodle), sword at his side but pointing
downward and used almost like a cane instead of a weapon (a misuse of his tool), with high-
piled hair gathered in the back by an enormous bow.
484
A solitary figure – unlike the men who
drink and rescue in company – he goes to meet his “Angelic Wh—e,” to whom he is “sincere.”
The image is associated with John Wilkes through its reference to a “poli[ticia]n, or “Perhaps
intended for Colonel Luttrell, Wilkes's opponent at the Middlesex election 13 April 1769. When
attacked by the mob at Brentford he was said to have lost nothing but his hat.”
485

Figure 4.8. Macaronis and the Military, 1768-1777

When comparing “The Military Macaroni” to the British personification for its fighting
Navy men, Jack Tar, it is clear to the viewer which one understood the song lyric, “Man is For the
Woman Made.” In the image “A Rescue or the Tars Triumphant,” sailors preserve the virtue of a

484
“The Military Macaroni,” from Characters, Macaronies & Caricatures, by MDarly, Vol. 6. London: Pubd
accor to Act by MDarly 39 Strand Feby 9 1773.
485
M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, Vol. V (London,
UK: The British Museum Trustees, 1935).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.236

“girl” being abducted by a stylish man (macaroni?), while their officer wards off the local
authority, identified by the copy of “The Compleat Peace-Officer” in his pocket, who failed to
protect the “girl” in the first place. The sailors are manlier than the attacker in many ways;
even without his left leg, a sailor can still lift the “girl” aloft, out of harm’s way, while her would-
be abductor lays in the street, nursing his bald head, his walking staff on the ground; near his
hand, a text proves to be a Middlesex warrant for his arrest. While virtue may be its own
reward, the triumphant Tars are further rewarded by “embraces” from “the girl's middle-aged
waiting lady and a companion” who “(hold) up her cloak and a paper labelled ‘Hearts of Oak are
our Men.’” – the opening line of the refrain of the song originally written in celebration of
Britain’s victorious sailors and which would provide the most widely parodied tune in the
“liberty song” genre, “Heart of Oak.”
486
In the martial context that the scene so obviously
emulates, battle is depicted as fun, with a sailor accustomed to life in the mast “tops” scaling up
the coach to its “top,” cheering and waving his cap in the face of “enemy” combat.
But when Jack Tar was himself in need of rescue from his own unmanly behavior – in
this case, fornication with a woman he is slipping coins to (i.e., a prostitute) – the tars were
there to rescue him as well.
487
The title, “Bachelors Fare – of Bread and Cheese with Kisses,”
suggests a meal to be consumed; the young man wears a gentleman’s uniform indicating rank –
possibly a midshipman – and his walking stick is left, disused, leaning against a table by the door.
Sailors of obviously lower station, the leader with a smile and a finger alongside his nose (like a
wink), nevertheless break up the scene. Two items hanging on the wall hint at manly
responsibility: though “The Free Briton closely engaged with the Charming Sally” may have, at

486
“A Rescue or the Tars Triumphant,” after John Collet, mezzotint in the collection of the British
Museum, 1768.
487
“Bachelors Fare – of Bread and Cheese with Kisses.” From the Original Picture by John Collet in the
possession of Carington Bowles. London: 1777.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.237

times, “A Light Heart & a thin Pair of Breeches” as he “goes through the World,” the former
phrase is the caption of a sea battle, wherein “Sally” is an enemy ship to be sunk, and the latter
phrases comprise the title of a sociable song parodied in prerevolutionary American print,
describing characteristics that Jack Tar must not possess. As mentioned in the previous
example, manly sailors had the “stout” (i.e., courageous) “hearts of oak,” whereas “light” and
“thin” would be characteristic of the unmanly, breeches or otherwise – but of course, like the
“ass” in the 1751 Freemason example in the Boston Evening Post, any reference to the posterior
can suggest unmanly sexuality.
While the tone of much song and visual evidence of unmanliness tends toward the
jocular, the newsprint record did not, as in the case of perhaps the most famous convicted
sodomite of his era, Captain Jones. Citations of “macaroni” are few in colonial American print,
and non-existing in the manuscripts consulted, but of those examples that exist in print sources,
all four references “macaroni” in prerevolutionary newsprint refer to the case of a man known
as “Captain” though his real rank was lieutenant, brought up in summer 1772 on charges of
sodomy with 13-year-old Francis Henry Hay. Though Jones protested the charge, and even
produced female witnesses to testify to his “manly” behavior with them, he was convicted and
sentenced to hang.
488
But through a pardon on the morning of the day scheduled for the
execution – facilitated by the brother of George III – Jones and his valet (recalling, perhaps,
“Squire Noodle, and his Man Doodle”) were able to leave the country and settle in the south of

488
Rictor Norton, in “Old Bailey,” cites examples of other men arrested for sodomy who acknowledged
and defended their “behavior” as what we would today call “identity.” See also Gary Nash and Thomas R.
Frazier, The Private Side of American History: To 1877 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979);
Rictor Norton, Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830 (London: GMP,
1992); and Netta Murray Goldsmith, The Worst of Crimes: Homosexuality and the Law in Eighteenth-
Century London (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998). The Jones case is troubling on many counts: layers of
meaning, including the hypocrisy of the court worrying about the boy’s age but only insomuch as it might
affect his ability to testify rather than his ability to consent to the act.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.238

France, close to the country that produced the “sweet,” “spicy” confection, but within the
confines of the nation identified in Collett’s images as the real home of the macaroni.
Song culture that made it into print never got closer to the subject of sodomy other than
to recommend its antidote – “man is for the woman made,” though Jones himself was
connected to song culture through the publication, in 1771, of “A Treatise on Skating” that
included “A Skater’s March.”
489
But newsprint dared to go where song would not; by early
October, news of the trial had reached New England papers, with London coverage reprinted in
the Connecticut Courant; the Connecticut Gazette, in New London; and the New Hampshire
Gazette, in Portsmouth. Jones, the account intoned, “was an associate of those insignificant
creatures called macaronies, whom all men dispise, was a frequenter of masquerades at Mrs.
Cornelys, where he acted in the character of Punchinella, Bear, Monkey & Holland Skaiter.”
Moreover, “We are assured that Mrs. Cornelys, is now confin’d in the King’s Bench Prison,” and
further, “that a treat of marriage was on foot, between Mr. Sheriff Wilkes and Mrs. Teresia
Diana Felicia Cornelys.”
The question of who might want to marry John Wilkes preoccupied 1770s London print
and prints, though not song.
490
“The Macaroni Courtship Rejected” poses the question, what
woman would submit to the advances of a doodle?
491
Wilkes, a bachelor whose adult daughter
served as his social hostess, was the model for the suitor in the satirical portrait, and in 1772,
yet another pair of engravings appropriated his image again, this time telling the story of

489
R. Jones, Gent. A Treatise on Skating: Founded on certain Principles deduced from many Years
Experience. The Second Edition. London, 1772; the second edition went into print the year of the trial.
490
Songs mentioning Wilkes had themes of liberty, not love, and a dance tune called the “Wilkes Wriggle”
turned up in song tune direction and even in an American military tune book. Blake, Diary, 1776.
491
“The Macaroni Courtship Rejected.” Mezzotint in the collection of the British Museum. London: John
Bowles, 20 March 1772.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.239

another courtship, resulting in the “nuptials” of Wilkes and the aforementioned French female
Freemason, the Chevalier D’Eon De Beaumont.
492

Figure 4.9. Macaronis and Marriage, 1772

Wilkes found it politically expedient during his run for Alderman to distance himself
from macaronism by coming out strongly against the Jones pardon, characterizing it as yet
another indication of corruption associated with the monarchy; to what extent the position
assisted him in winning the seat is debated, but win he did, though he never shook the
“unmanly” labels entirely.
493

Disapproval of Jones and the pardon turned into outrage in 1777 when another
condemned man did not receive mercy. In November, Boston’s The Independent Chronicle
reprinted a letter, article, and an epitaph occupying the entire front page and into the second,
concerning the execution of the Reverend Dr. William Dodd, for forgery. Dodd’s case fueled
opposition to capital punishment for certain crimes, and his was the last execution in Britain for
forgery. The comparison of the Jones case was not forgotten:

492
See two recent books regarding Wilkes, d’Eon, and sexuality. John Sainsbury, The Lives of a Libertine
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); and Arthur H. Cash, John Wilkes: the Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
493
An example: The Slave Trade, a 1788 etching depicting a group of “black” politicians, including Wilkes,
“supplicating” to the king, front and back.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.240

To the SONS of MEN !
FOR Murder and for Sodomy,
He may escape the fatal tree –
Remember Jones and Kennedy –
But thou, O Dodd, for Forgery,
A crime the smallest of the three,
(Such Judges are the powers that be)
Thou, thou shalt die on Tyburn tree ;
Though thousands supplicate for thee,
Of high and low, of each degree !
Mark thine advisers, GEORGE ! can this be right,
Whilst wilful murd’rers live – live – and the Sodomite !
BECKFORD’s GHOST.

The upshot: the “sons of men” – the real men – “high and low,” were unlike the king’s
“judges” and “advisers,” and sodomy as a crime was equivalent to murder, and deserving of the
same punishment.
The clear connection of the French connection to “macaronies” and other forms of
“doodles” made it necessary, apparently, to even humble that universal symbol of virility and
national symbol of France, the cock. Images like that of a cock scratching at the fallen Union
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.241

standard in a print commenting on the 1756 loss of Minorca also might provide commentary on
French manliness: a cock scratching at the ground like a hen was not a manly cock.
494

But Britain had other imperial enemies in this century of war, too, as images and song
amplify. One broadside song from the time of the coronation of William III and Mary II in 1688
proves to be something of a Rosetta Stone for decoding English national associations.
“The Court of England” printed the supposed reactions of six nations to the coronation:
English, Welsh, Scots, French, Irish, and Dutch. While all of the “national” headers are in black
letter fonts – “Taffy,” “Sawny,” “Monsieur,” etc. – only the Scotsman “Sawny” and the
Dutchman “Mynheer” expressed themselves in the old-style black-letter throughout. All foreign
words, as was common, were italicized (except those in black-letter), along with all words
spoken by the Welshman “Taffy” and the Irishman “Teague,” even words of fractured English.
Of all of the “foreign” speech, only the Frenchman “Monsieur” and the Irishman “Teague” use
the “de” and “dat” for “the” and “that” (along with similar substitutions for other words) that
figured so prominently in English songs about the French and Irish – and “doodles” like Raccoon
– throughout the seventeenth- and eighteen-centuries.
495

494
Anon., “The English Lion Dismembered (satirical print in the British Museum)” (London: Publish’d
according to Act of Parliament. Sold by the Printsellers of London & Westminster, c. 1757).
495
Anon. The Court of England. Or, The Preparation for the happy Coronation of King William and Queen
Mary. [Edinburgh : By the heir of A. Anderson, 1689].
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.242

Figure 4.10. English national associations, 1688

Other cultural linguistic similarities link the French and Irish in materials printed in
London over the two centuries, and one of them may take us back to the discourse of
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.243

“nonsense” syllables and explain the curious “pa pa pa” that joined the “doodle doodle doo
refrain” in the eighteenth century, notably in the Goddard and Rivington versions of the song
aimed at the “Yankee Doodles” in 1777 and 1779, respectively.
496

In a 1706 French play printed in London, a lawyer, M. Patelin asks for M. Guillaume’s
beard in payment; the man responds, “Pa, pa, pa ; voilà me payer en belle monnoie,”
497
with
“pa” sounding very much like part of the French construction for negation, i.e., “no, no, no.” In
mid-century, a book of Irish jests put the same expression in the mouth of an Irishman, with a
slight alteration: “po, po, po,” instead of “pa pa pa;” the interjection is sprinkled liberally across
the pages of the book, often in conversation with Frenchmen, and in one place warns that
anyone who gets involved with the Irish will have trouble with them.
498
A third example, in
1806, is sung by a Frenchman – named “Monsieur Hurdy-Gurdy” for the old instrument by this
time derided by the English yet beloved to this day by the French as part of their national
folkloric heritage.
499
“Monsieur” tries to make himself understood to the English audience and
hints at yet another part of “doodle” song practice: the use of the word “sir” to punctuate the
end of the second and fourth lines of the verses of the version of “Yankee Doodle” that, by

496
Newspaper songs aimed at the “Yankee Doodles” using the “pa pa pa” refrain in 1777 and 1779: “A
NEW SONG,” Marland Journal, December 9, 1777, p. 4, col. 1, iss. 214; and “A NEW SONG TO AN OLD
TUNE, Written by a Yankee, and sung to the Tune of Doodle-doo.” Rivington's New York Gazette,
November 27, 1779, p. 3, cols. 3-4, iss. 330.
497
L’Avocat Patelin. Comedie en Trois Actes, de Brueys; Répresentée par les Comédiens François
ordinaires du Roi, le 4 Juin, 1706. Nouvelle Edition. A Londres : Chez T. Hookham, Libraire, dans Bond
Street, au Coin de Bruton Street. M.DCC.LXXXV, p. 39.
498
The Irish Miscellany, or Teagueland Jests : Being a Compleat Collection of the most Profound Puns,
Learned Bulls, Elaborate Quibbles, Amorous Letters, Sublime Poetry, and wise Sayings, of the Natives of
Teagueland. Being a Sequel to Joe Miller’s Jests. The Fourth Edition. London: Printed for R. Adams, at
Dryden’s Head, Holborn Bars, 1750.
499
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the hurdy gurdy – reviled as old and base (doodlish?) in many
Hogarth representations – “had become a regional folk instrument” in France, and by the nineteenth
century could be found in many parts of the country. Jeremy Barlow, The Enraged Musician: Hogarth’s
Musical Imagery (London: Ashgate, 2005); Francis Baines, et al. "Hurdy-gurdy." Grove Music Online.
Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed August 25, 2016,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/13583
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.244

1806, was well known to anyone in contact with the English-speaking world. The song even
returns to “Noodle,” making it a marvelous mélange of two centuries of the evolving “doodle”
song family. The central theme: international relations in the context of the early Napoleonic
Wars, with a recap of English national attitudes similar to those seen in “The Court of England”
in 1689 – and yes, it is English, for “Jean Bull ... The Scotch he despise, and de(te)st the vild
Irish.” With respect to “Les Ameriques, his old friends so trusty ... Dey fight—but de Frenchman
he join de Yankee, / Who got what he wanted, and no say tankee.” Once again, Frenchmen are
coupled with the “Yankee” doodles.
The reference to the “vild Irish” had long been a common English reference to “savage”
people who lived beyond the pale of Dublin. Even Dean Swift, an Irishman himself, used the
term, applied to “wild Irish Papists;” (his italics, as in a “foreign” term),
500
and Pope feared a
friend who had been sent to Ireland would die there, for surely he’d been roped into
“administring laws to the wild Irish.”
501
And the Scots of Scotland became associated with the
term during the second Jacobite rebellion of 1745-1746 in that the Stuart claimant for whom the
rebels fought brought back memories – and rhetoric – of the 1680s. The author of one
collection of essays published soon afterward reminded his readers of Protestant estates being
turned to “the wild Irish” by James II, a harbinger, perhaps of what might accompany a second
Stuart restoration.
502
In the “doodle” literature, Hudibras, in Canto I, has a reference to the
“wild Irish” as “learn’d.”
503

500
Jonathan Swift, Miscellanies, In Prose and Verse. Volume the Sixth. Which with the other Volumes
already published in England, compleats this Author's Works. London, MDCCXXXV [1735], p. 249.
501
Alexander Pope, Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, And Several of his Friends. London, MDCCXXXVII.
[1737], Letter CXVII, pp. 205-206.
502
Henry Brooke, Essays against Popery, slavery, and arbitrary power, published during the late unnatural
rebellion. Manchester, [1750?], p. 110.
503
Hudibras, p. 19.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.245

This century of associations of the French with the “wild” Irish in song – and far longer in
battle –implicates the Irish in the doodle discourse. Again, the difficulty of determining, in the
eighteenth century, which Irish, lingers; the temptation is to identify the Irish who shared
religion with the French doodle variant (macaronies), but as macaronies were “every where
seen,” even reliable Protestants among their own kinsmen in the English and American
examples, we must return to the possibility identified in the dissection of “Raccoon” that the
“doodle” could be anyone who was foreign in some way – religion (Catholic), politics (Wilkes),
behavior (fop) – in a way that compromised (or one hoped or believed would compromise) their
manhood.
504

At some point, the “wild Irish” and the “doodle” discourse converged in Boston, applied
to their own increasingly “foreign” tormenters – the British regulars.
As T. H. Breen summarized in a relatively recent, unpublished paper given at Notre
Dame, large numbers of recent Irish arrivals fought on the American side, “blam(ing) the English
for the poverty and oppression that had been visited upon the people of Ulster, upon
Presbyterians as well as Catholics.”
505
But the Celtic component, too, of the British regulars in
colonial America, with “many of the infantry battalions (bringing) together English, Welsh, Scots,
and Irish soldiers in the same military formation,” was both undeniable, and unavoidable.
506

In the hot summer months that followed the deaths of five youths in the streets of
Boston in early March 1770, a plan was fixed to “‘banish all the Scotchmen’ from Boston.”

504
With respect to which Irish, Benjamin Franklin’s “Yanky” song of 1775 (before Americans had
embraced the name in the extant literature), even though it is not properly a “Yankee Doodle” variant,
uses the tune of the “Queen’s Old Courtier” in “a kind of recitativo, like the chaunting of those psalms in
cathedrals,” perhaps to “Yanky-fy” the British regulars of Scots Irish extraction. “The King’s Own Regulars,
and their Triumph Over the Irregulars,” in Pennsylvania Evening Post, March 30, 1776.
505
T. H. Breen, “Empire and Violence on the Scotch-Irish Frontier,” unpublished paper delivered at Notre
Dame University, 2013[?], p. 3. A large body of work lays behind this, including Patrick Griffin writing
about Pennsylvania, and David Hackett Fisher, Albion’s Seed. (citations)
506
Stephen Conway, “The British Army, “Military Europe,” and the American War of Independence,”
William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 1 (January 2010), p. 73.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.246

According to Colin Nicolson, not only were ethnic Scots among the British regulars in fear for
their lives, but also their wives and children, even those born in Boston; all were forced to seek
refuge at Castle William, the fortified island in the harbor.
507
Though such an expulsion never
happened, tensions related to associations of Scots with the hated administrators of colonial
policy in London – not to mention one very unpopular Scots publisher right there in Boston,
John Mein of the Boston Chronicle – created tensions with between the locals and all “Scots,”
whether their roots were in Irish Ulster or otherwise, for the duration.
But the “wild” Irishmen among the Regulars were being noticed. Holt’s “Journal” series,
reprinted in several colonial newspapers, reported how officers, thwarted in their desire to
dance after a Boston Court Concert in January 1769, demanded that “the band to play the Yanke
Doodle tune, or the Wild Irishman, and not being gratified they grew noisy and clamorous.” In
the ensuing melee (which left the “weaker sex” suffering “no small terror”) even “The old
honest music master, Mr. Deblois, was roughly handled by one of those sons of Mars ... actually
throatled, but timeously rescued by one who soon threw the officer on lower ground that he at
first stood upon.”
508
A little more than a year later, the Pennsylvania Journal reported the
debut of “a new comedy, called, The Wild Irishman.” Theater scholarship identifies this play as
actually being Love in a Bottle, written by the great Londonderry-born playwright of early
eighteenth century British theater, George Farquhar – another ethnic Scot from Ireland; as Love
in a Bottle had played to generations of theater-goers in the British Isles, what was “new” about

507
Colin Nicolson, "A Plan 'To Banish All the Scotchmen:' Victimization and Political Mobilization in Pre-
Revolutionary Boston," Massachusetts Historical Review, Vol. 9 (2007), pp. 55-102.
508
New York Journal, no. 1364, February 23, 1769, supplement, p. 1.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.247

the Philadelphia production was its name, ostensibly for its protagonist, “An Irish Gentleman, of
a wild roving temper ; newly come to London.”
509

The “Wild Irishman” tune does not appear to have been an early variant of “Yankee
Doodle” – it is documented in American military tune books of the revolutionary period as a
single jig.
510
The soldiers appeared to be asking for either song, equally boorishly – another
characteristic of the “doodle,” like the bully Noodle (Walpole) who was, in actuality, a coward,
choking poor Mr. Deblois, whose own description carries three more markers of doodledom:
French name, old, and musician, as in Locke’s “odd company.” By picking the weakest target in
the room to vent their disappointment, the officers – not even just the soldiers, but their
leaders, who should have been modeling manly wit – showed themselves to be the real doodles,
the “wild Irishmen” of the piece. The inclusion of “The Wild Irishman” in American military tune
books provides yet another example of a tune that needed no words to deliver an embedded
message – in this case, to an audience in vital need of a useful reminder of the unmanliness of
the enemy they would face in the field.
This understanding of the British regulars occupying Boston as “wild” and “Irish”
apparently even extended to London, if a cartoon published in London in summer 1775 is to be
believed. And it included one more character from the by-now familiar doodle pantheon: the
ass.
The 1751 Boston Evening Post article and cartoon about Freemasons has already made
painfully clear that the connection of “ass” with “arse” was already manifest – although, as in

509
Pennsylvania Journal , no. 1432, May 17, 1770, page 3; George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle, a Comedy.
London: Printed for Richard Standfast, 1699. Texts consulted thus far on American musical theater are
silent on the matter.
510
Examples appear in: William Morris, of Captain Tucker’s Company, New Jersey’s First Regiment,
Hunterdon County, Tune-book. Manuscript at the New-York Historical Society; and Blake, Diary.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.248

other etymological examples, the dictionaries were slow to catch up with the culture.
511
If it
were already established that the British regulars, from the top down, were “doodles,” then it
was just one small step to convert them into the animal (not man) punningly connected with the
body part of interest.
And convert they did – but in London, where the duration of support for Americans
resisting British colonial policy has sometimes been underestimated.
512
“The Retreat,”
published in London after the arrival of news of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord,
reveals an English willingness to side with the Americans against their own army, through a
shared national bond of Englishness over the “hated Scots” and “despised” Irish – who, as the
caption and drawing indicate are, literally, “Wild Irish Asses.”
513

511
Foster, “Antimasonic Satire, Sodomy, and Eighteenth-Century Masculinity,” p. --.
512
Jack Greene, 2012, paper delivered at the American Origins seminar, USC-Huntington Early Modern
Studies Institute.
513
The Retreat From Concord to Lexington of the Army of Wild Irish Asses Defeated by the Brave American
Militia M
r
Deacon M
r
Loeings M
r
Mulikens M
r
Bonds Houses and Barn all Plunder’d and Burnt on April 19
th
.
Published according to Act June 29 1775. Etching in the Brown Library JCB Political Cartoons Collection.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.249

Figure 4.11. British “Doodles,” 1775

In the now-familiar litany of “doodle” dastardliness, the “asses” were cowardly (“My
Lord the Rebels are to hard for us / I am Wounded”); instead of seizing a cache of arms, they
burned the colonists’ houses and outbuildings, and stole their possessions (“Ill Run for whats in
this box will be the Making of me”); they disobeyed a direct order from their superior (“Wheres
the Troops a going that I have mett / I am come with succour”); and most unmanly of all, they
ran (“Ill Run for they are / at our heels”). And they were not drawn as men, but as “asses” –
Anglophonic code for sodomites – illuminating the reason for the explosion of articles in spring
1775 underscoring the way in which the army that had marched out of Boston to beat of the
hated tune had returned: “Since which Yankee Doodle sounds less sweet to their ears.”
514

514
Massachusetts Spy, no. 220, May 10, 1775, p. 3. Isaiah Thomas got the credit for this quip-heard-
‘round-the-colonial-world, but it resonates with a quote from a May 2 letter “published, a few days ago,
at New-York, in handbills” – delivered also to “ the ---famous Mr. Rivington,” the frequent-flying
doodlemeister – gleefully claiming that “Gage’s band were surfeited in dancing to the tune of Yankie
doodle.” Connecticut Courant, May 8, 1775.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.250

By contrast, the American militia, marching under a Union flag emblazoned, “LIBERTY,”
stands bravely, guns erect, and ready to follow leaders who have the wit to know the danger but
think not of themselves, shouting encouragingly, “Come on My Brave Boys let us Die or be free”
(officer astride), and “We will do for this Bloody Crew” (foot soldier ahead of the line, leading his
comrades-in-arms).
One very long year later, the London narrative had reversed.

Figure 4.12. American “Doodles” [1776]

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.251

“The Yankie Doodles Intrenchments Near Boston” once again uses the “doodle” label for
unmanly behavior.
515
The “Yankee” soldiers, crude in speech and dress and cowardly to boot,
are depicted as being in the thrall of a duo of sinister-looking religious figures lurking in the
back, safely behind the wall – cowardly leaders, as the 1769 Holt article had portrayed the
British officers. The ministers encourage the crew with the comments: “Tis Old Olivers Cause /
No Monarchy nor Laws,” and “I don't feel cold to Day,” to little avail; the “doodles” whine, “I
fear they'll Shoot Again,” and “they'll warm us I fear.” Even their military leader, identified by
some sources at Israel Putnam, bottle in hand (drinking alone), also lacks confidence: “The
sperit (note the pun) moves us in Sun-dry places &c. / Yet I fear the Lord is not With us.” The
most prominent of the “doodles” – apparently lacking the wit to get down off the wall and out
of the line of fire: “I Swear its plaguy Cold Jonathan; I don't think / They'll Attack us. Now You”
– Jonathan being accepted by scholars as the earliest known representation of “Brother
Jonathan,” who would emerge during the early national period as the symbol personifying the
U.S. republic. The only semblance of uniform shared by the “doodles” also labels them – they
are crowned with the liberty cap associated not only with a decade of “Sons of Liberty” rhetoric
and demonstrations, but also with that leader among macaronis, John Wilkes.
The “Yankie Doodles” in their “Intrenchment” radiate weakness in every sense of the
word, the antithesis of English manliness. In song, these sons of “Old Oliver” – the men of
Congregationalist Boston, epicenter of endemic American Puritanism – carried the contagion of
their progenitor’s seventeenth-century doodleness into a new manifestation, further implied by
the modifier attached to Cromwell’s name: old.

515
The Yankie Doodles Intrenchments Near Boston 1776, etching in the British Museum; as the BM’s
notes indicate, another of the Bicentennial-era re-evaluations “suggested that this satire is not British, but
American from the pro-Loyalist side. See E. P. Richardson, “Four American Political Prints,” American Art
Journal, VI, November 1974, pp.36-44.”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.252

Enter Manly. Or, to be precise, Manley.
Figure 4.13. American manliness, 1775

Privateer in peace and hero in war, John Manley, a native-born Englishman who may
have served in the Royal Navy before immigrating to Boston sometime before 1757, took
command of the Lee, a merchant schooner acquired and refitted at the direction of George
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.253

Washington to harass British shipping as summer 1775 turned to fall. Manley’s November 29
capture of the brig Nancy was “the first legitimate prize taken by a Continental warship.”
516

For a Yankee Doodle-fatigued movement in dire need of an authentic symbol of
American masculinity, Manley’s success – and his name – could not have been more opportune.
By April 1776, a broadside version of this “favorite new SONG in the American Fleet” was in
print – having lost the “e,” perhaps making the song all the more, well, manly.
517

The Salem imprint belonged to Ezekiel Russell, whose latest venture into newspaper
publishing, the Salem Gazette and Newbury and Marblehead Advertiser, had failed several
months before, causing him to move his press to Danvers before ultimately returning to Boston
to live out his printing career in the same sector where Isaiah Thomas’ had begun: ballad-
mongering.
518
The tune direction is “Washington,” but the refrain instantly suggests “The Jolly
Toper,” known to earlier generations as “A-Begging We Will Go,” wildly popular long before its
most-remembered use in John Gay’s 1728 “A Beggar’s Opera,” a sociable tune connected to the
common man at the most fundamental level: a man with no possession save himself.
519

Russell’s misfortunes could be attributed to timing and politics as well as merit.
Previously, the Portsmouth Mercury and Weekly Advertiser, founded by Russell in partnership
with Thomas Furber in 1765-1766, folded after its competition, Daniel Fowle’s New-Hampshire
Gazette, gained the support of the Stamp Act opponents who had initially supported the Furber-
Russell enterprise. Another Russell endeavor, The Censor, a 1771-1772 “political publication ...

516
John A. Tilley, “Manley, John,” in American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000, accessed May 2,
2013.
517
Manly. A favorite new song, in the American fleet. Most humbly addressed to all the jolly tars who are
fighting for the rights and liberties of America. By a sailor. Salem, 1776.
518
Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Vol. II, pp. 74-75; Brigham, Newspapers, 1947, p. 397.
519
Claude Simpson found this tune associated with “a great many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
ballads … all of them dating from 1684 or after,” including “The Cries of London City.” Claude Simpson,
The British Broadside Ballad, p. 42.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.254

supported ... by those who were in the interest of the British government,” failed, too.
520
The
Salem paper also proved short-lived; the dramatic shifting of the political tectonic plates at the
onset of hostilities in spring 1775 caused not only the Salem Gazette’s demise but also that of
the town’s longtime newspaper, the Essex Gazette, which would be moved to Cambridge by its
ardently patriotic publishers, Sam and Eb Hall, and renamed the New-England Chronicle.
521

Russell’s failure as a newspaper publisher must have stung sharply in the face of his
brother’s success. Joseph Russell’s long running partnership with John Green, in-law to the
Draper dynasty of the official Boston newspaper, the News-Letter, comprised both the
successful Boston Post-Boy as well as a vendue business on the side.
522
Ezekiel Russell had
attempted both professions, but ultimately returned to the print sector from which Manly
emerged.
Thomas’ comments about the Russells were generally favorable, though more so for the
elder brother, Joseph, and he counted both brothers as reliably in the “patriot” column, despite
Ezekiel’s competition with the Halls. The younger Russell certainly shared in common with
some, though not all, of the most ardent patriot printers: he never once printed the words
“Yankee” or “Doodle,” not even in news coverage, not even in 1775.
The word he could get behind, “manly,” never appears in Grose or other “slang”
dictionaries – perhaps because the real thing was nothing to jest about? Johnson attributed the
word to those twin deities of language, Locke and Dryden, meaning “dignity ... bravery ...
stoutness” and the condition of being “undaunted” and “undismayed.”
523
And like so many of

520
Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Vol. I, p. 155.
521
This left Salem with only one publication; an early Thomas franchise, the Essex Journal, doing business
under the succeeding partners, Ezra Lunt and Henry-Walter Tinges, hung on until 1777. Thomas, The
History of Printing in America, Vol. II, p. 76; Brigham, Newspapers, 1947, pp.373-374.
522
Thomas, History of Printing in America, vol. II, pp. 57-59.
523
“Manliness,” and “Manly,” Johnson, Dictionary, 1766, page headed MAN-MAN.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.255

the key words in the early-modern rhetoric of Englishness, Johnson identified its root as
“Saxon.”
An examination of the lyrics of “Manly” sends us back to a familiar, deep rhetorical well
– “Manly,” instead of “Yankee;” “Heroes” and “Hearties,” instead of “Doodles,” and without a
single mention of a body part. No strong hands, arms, or shoulders, even the use of “heart” was
disembodied, referred to only though the "oak" in the biggest song metaphor of the era, “Heart
of Oak.”
524
Here again, “heart” means “central,” as in the location of the oak in the tree from
which it was cut, rather than the literal human organ. Similarly, "Hearties" referred to having
heart as a quality, rather than having an organ. This is important not least of all because, as so
many examples demonstrate, the first thing any parodist would have done would have been to
perform a doodle transplant thereupon.
The masculinity of Manly required no such physical manifestation, vulnerable to the
wages of war and time, but instead arose from interior traits revealed by how a man acted. And
Manly is most profoundly a song of action – more than any other part of speech, verbs
dominate the song text, rather than by whom, what, or how, the verbs were to be executed.

524
“Heart” was often repurposed as "Hearts" in reprintings and parodies, though not by David Garrick,
lyricist of the original. Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad, pp. 299-301.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.256

Table 4.1. American manliness in song: “Manly,” 1775
Who

what they are

(adjectives):
what they do

(verbs)
who they
protect/what
they get:

not afraid
of:
opposites

(enemies):
proper noun

 MANLY
 WASHINGTON
 HOPKINS
 MANLY
 HOPKINS
 brave MANLY’s
COMMODORE
 MANLY

noun

 boys
 Sailor
 Lads
 Heroes
 Heroes
 Hearties
 Sailor Lads
 Tars
 Landsmen
 bold Seamen
 hearty Souls
 (not) Cowards

Allusions

 NEW-ENGLAND
Oaks
 Sons of Thunder
 Sons of Mars
 JOLLY
 fighting
 BRAVE
 stout
 true,
 valiant
 gallant
 (not) dismay’d
 (not) afraid
 not daunted
 resolv’d
 hearty
 strong
 hardy
 free-born
(connected to
Land)
 bravely
 fighting
 Brave
 sure(ly)
 bold

 (sing) sung
 taking
 make
 go
 take
 sink
 burn
 drive
 conquer
 bravely ... die
 rouse
 give (MANLY
now a Cheer)
 catch (sturdy
Ships)
 enter (enlist)
 make our
Fortunes at
their Cost
 take
 rouse up
 give MANLY
now a Cheer
 toast (Here’s
a Health)
 withstand
 Resolve
 conquer
 bravely ... die
 trim(ing) them
(foes)
 scour
 rouse up
 (give) a Cheer
 pray
 enter
 make your
Fortunes
 Defend
 defend
 defend
 (withstand) Surf
... tossing,
Cannon Balls
 subdue
 cheerfully will
die
 rouse
 bless us
 cheer up
 run (to, not
from)
 (don't) stoop to
Fear
 command(s)

 those we do like
best
 our Wives and
Babes
 LIBERTY
 make your
Fortunes
 an INDEPENDENT
STATE.
 Glory

 Cannon Balls
do rattle
 sounding of
the Drum;
 (what sailors
did)
 charming
Fun

 When they
did it: soon

they are (nouns)

 Shuldham
 petty Pirates
 Foes

they are
(adjectives):

 dastard
 desp’rate
they (verbs):

 tremble
 infest
 run (away)
 run for fear
 leave
 They talk
 scourge

(they will be):

 tore

“Manly” eschews the old language of doodledom; there are no body parts, and there is
no name-calling. Instead, the song appropriates the character traits attributed to the doodles of
old and directs them to the Americans’ foes, not with jests and ridicule but with pure, direct,
unambiguous, English descriptors. The most active language was linked to the one thing the
Patriot cause most needed men to do in spring 1776: enlist.
“Manly,” the embodiment of a manly alternative to “Yankee Doodle,” so carefully
constructed to redefine American masculinity after hope failed for conciliation with crown and
country, never caught on, perhaps because of the undeniable power of that old “Yankee” song
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.257

that the enemy (and some friends?) just wouldn’t stop deploying, with the enormous weight of
an ancient rhetoric behind it.
Americans would continue to define themselves with parodies of what they weren’t
well into the early nineteenth century when, during its second half-century, a new symbol of
state evolved. Uncle Sam gradually came to represent the state with a new, more confident
rhetoric that didn’t reinforce old ideas by being reactive to them. The symbol reflecting the
personal qualities and behaviors of the common man, Yankee Doodle, became a “visual
distinction between Brother Jonathan, the citizen, and Uncle Sam, the government ... (though)
not universal(ly).”
525
It was only natural that, simultaneously, high-toned song rhetoric set to
appropriated British tunes – “God Save the King,” for example – became the serious contenders
for national anthem-hood, relegating the song of the common man, “Yankee Doodle,” to a social
stratum occupied by that other early-republic personification of America, Brother Jonathan.
Yankee Doodle and Brother Jonathan operated together in song of the 1812 era, the
former being the most widely parodized song of the war years, and the latter, a common binary
opposite to John Bull, “an American alter ego to John Bull.”
526
But the shift of national avatars,
particularly in their gender, began in the run-up to the earlier war with the mother country.
Images of England and her conquered neighbors as Britannia, and America as an indigenous
female savage, each had a long history by the arrival of the American imperial crisis and, for a
time, Amelia Rauser has argued, allowed the Americans to appropriate the liberty “valence” of
the discourse, leaving the British voice confused, until another revolution in France showed

525
Winifred Morgan, An American Icon: Brother Jonathan and American Identity (Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 1988), p. 81.
526
Morgan, An American Icon, p. 71.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.258

how “revolutionary liberty could be made synonymous with licentiousness, chaos and
disorder.”
527
Rhetorically speaking, it was the doodles to the rescue.

Figure 4.14. Gender shifting in imperial symbols, 1730s-1770s

Female symbols of nation across the mid-eighteenth century: left, two competing images of “Britannia” from the same 1740
songbook illustrate both a problem (“The Present State of Little Britain”) and a solution (“Britons Strike Home),” while the traditional
depiction of “America” as a savage woman eating human limbs is inverted, the feminized colonies engendering sympathy when
portrayed as a victim of colonial policies and venal ministers in “The Colonies Reduced” – but not when she fought back against her
mother, as in 1776’s “The Female Combatants.”
528

Song, too, commented on the household nature of the discourse, on both sides of the
Atlantic. The name “Goody Bull” in the song of the same name reflects the relationship of
Britannia, as woman, with the masculine John Bull, a name combining Everyman with a male
name of an animal that had long been a symbol of “old” England, and a trend in song reflected
from the beginning of the century by Richard Leveridge’s powerful, much parodied, theater
song, “The Roast Beef of Old England,” as well as the Hogarth painting it inspired in mid-
century.
529

527
Amelia Rauser, “Death or Liberty: British Political Prints and the Struggle for Symbols in the American
Revolution,” in Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1998), pp. 155, 170.
528
Bickham, Musical Entertainer, 1740, vol. 2, pp. 71, 97; “The Colonies Reduced” (London: Design’d and
Engrav’d for the Political Register, c. 1767); and “The Female Combatants, or, Who Shall” ([England]:
[s.n.], published according to Act Jany. 26 1776).
529
In this case, “old” is not in the doodle sense of infirm, but rather a reminder of the longevity of
England’s greatness and power. “The Roast Beef of Old England,” Claude Simpson, The British Broadside
Ballad, pp. 604-606; “The Gate of Calais or O, the Roast Beef of Old England” (painting by William
Hogarth, 1748).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.259

America, too, was having its own transgendered moment. Images of Indian men appear
in prints following the Seven Years War into the years of crisis, looking increasingly like a
representative of “nation” rather than a bit player.

Figure 4.15. Gender shifting in American symbols, 1765

As usual, there are no representations of singing in these alfresco locales, but song in
implicitly included. The left image, The Great Financier, of British Œconomy for the Years 1763,
1764, 1765, is captioned with six verses of a song parody to the old, treasured, sociable song
with the refrain, “Derry Down.”
530
The song allusion is far more subtle in the image on the right,
The Deplorable State of America or Sc—h Government (Scotch), in which the gibbet on the left
margin of the drawing reads “Fit Entertainment for St-p M-n.”
531
Often, hanging victims were
described as “dancing” while dying, suspended by the rope, and newspaper and manuscript
sources discussed in Chapter Two indicate a practice of posting printed song lyrics high above
the ground on one post of the gibbet, where all could see. For the viewer who understood the

530
The Great Financier, of British Œconomy for the Years 1763, 1764, 1765, print in the collection of the
New-York Historical Society.
531
The Deplorable State of America or Sc—h Government, print in the collection of the New-York
Historical Society.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.260

code, the “fit entertainment” literally included a song and dance, with the condemned in a
starring role.
But for all their male representation, the masculinized indigenous American was not a
man like the British Everyman introduced earlier in this chapter, Jack Tar. Whether enslaved
and flogged while joining in The Court Cotillion, or collapsed on the ground, trampled, and
vomiting amid the Four Confederates, the male American Indian was no longer an Englishman
abroad but a “doodle” portrayed as less manly than the female Indian had been.

Figure 4.16. Britain against America in symbols, 1774-1781

Lord North literally plays the tune while
America, Scotland, and Ireland circle the Maypole
of empire, each lacking the wit to know they have
been duped into flogging each other on, like
animals; the verse, written in the song form of a
“catch,” identifies the men as “brothers,”
implying a shared, bestial masculinity.
532

Jack Tar, alternately the rescuer and seducer of woman, outnumbered
four to one – but it didn’t really matter, in the face of four manifestations
of doodles: old, effeminate, macaroni, and the impotent savage on the
ground.
533

Jonathan shared his name with both “Yankee Doodle” (the Dutch “Jan”) and John Bull –
John, again, being the most common English name, shared with John the Apostle, the disciple

532
The Court Cotillion, or the Premiers new Parl-----t Jig. Engrav’d for the Whimsical Repository, 1774,
print/engraving at the New-York Historical Society.
533
Jack England Fighting the Four Confederates, 1781, hand-coloured etching in the British Museum.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.261

loved best by Jesus, and who bore for him in return a love greater than that for a woman. Jesus
being God incarnate, the early modern world accepted this relationship far more readily than a
parallel case of biblical brotherly love well known to all cultures of the Judeo-Christian world, a
story that was retold in the 1739 three-act oratorio Handel opera considered by many to be the
greatest example of the genre save The Messiah, musical scores for which were as readily
available from colonial American booksellers as in London. Its name: Saul.
The librettist for Saul, Charles Jennens, was a Jacobite nonjuror whose “guiding
principles” were “protestant Christianity and the Stuart cause.” A “patron of the arts” with
independent means, he only wrote for Handel, and only three times – but the trio included not
only Saul but also The Messiah, the idea for which he brought to Handel, and was “his
brainchild.”
534
His involvement with the book for Saul was no less influential, as “Handel
incorporated some crucial alterations which Jennens suggested.”
Jennens was himself influenced by an earlier work on the Saul narrative, which
documented the struggle of King David – giver of the Psalms (from which comes the word
“song”) – to fulfill his destiny, ordained by God, to rule as King, preparing the way for the advent
of the Messiah. That work, Davideis, is only one reason why Abraham Cowley’s significance to
early modern English literature outlived his own century and into Jennens’; his bust is included
in the pantheon that opened the 1723 song collection discussed in Chapter One as the best
representative of the most recent generation of poets, in a line extending back to Homer and
the odists Pindar, Anacreon, and Horace.
535

534
Ruth Smith, “Jennens, Charles (1700/01–1773)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/14745, accessed 27
April 2013].
535
Phillips, 1723, frontispiece.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.262

That Jennens used Cowley’s Davideis as reference is explicit in Jennens’ libretto: “N.B.
MERAB's scornful Behaviour, Act. I. Scene II. is a Hint taken from COWLEY's Davideis, and hath
no Foundation in the Sacred History.”
536

Such a foundation was of enormous importance to a man “ruled” by “protestant
Christianity” and antipathy toward monarchal usurpation, no matter how complex the rationale
for deposition. And in the Saul narrative, no one person is characterized as having been more
responsible for Saul’s demise (other than himself) than his eldest son, Jonathan.
Cowley’s development of the deep attachment between David and Jonathan has been
remarked upon as a defining characteristic of the work, as has Cowley’s own bachelor status;
more than a century later, Samuel Johnson felt the need to provide an explanation for it – a
broken heart over a lost love who chose to marry his biographer instead.
537
.
The story of David and Jonathan, long debated and well known to biblical scholars and
literary wags alike – and to Jennens, through the Davideis if nowhere else. Given his religious
and political “guiding principles,” his handling of this controversial subtext could be read as a
cautionary tale for the behavior Foster identified as threatening to the English concept of
masculine self. The “scornful Behaviour” of Merab (Saul's older daughter and Jonathan's sister)
that Jennens admitted to be without sacred foundation is her refusal to consider marrying
David, even at her father's command. But Jonathan, instantly taken with David, declares,
“Jonathan and David are but one.” His sister replies in an aside, “Yet think on whom this Honour
you bestow, / How poor in Fortune, and in Birth how low !” – paralleling the language of

536
Charles Jennens, Saul, Dublin 1762, was the available version most contemporary to this period.
537
Alexander Lindsay, ‘Cowley, Abraham (1618–1667)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford
University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libproxy.usc.edu/view/article/6499, accessed 27 April
2013]; Lindsay found Johnson’s story not credible, and other theories about Cowley’s bachelor state to
“belong to the realm of posthumous, unsubstantiated tradition.”
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.263

betrothal as much as friendship.
538
Jonathan subsequently refuses his father’s command to slay
David, even though it prompts Saul to disown and even attempt to kill him; it ensures he will
lose his claim to the throne, and it sets up his own death. Yet his resolve is clear: “No ; with my
Life I must defend / Against the World my best, my dearest Friend.”
539

David elegizes the lost youth, and with Jonathan’s younger sister, Michal – his new
intended – sings a duet that concludes:

For thee, my Brother Jonathan,
How great is my Distress !
What Language can my Gref express ?
Great was the Pleasure I enjoy'd in thee !
And more than Woman's Love thy wondrous Love to me !
540

The march that precedes the closing Elegy scene was widely known as the Dead March
in Saul, and like other examples of tunes which needed no text to be understood, to hear the
Dead March was to know that someone had died, or would soon die – but not in a religious
setting, where a sacred psalm or hymn would have been essential to one's salvation. The Dead
March in Saul was the tune specified for military executions, and would have been heard in
every colonial American town during the fractious third quarter of the eighteenth century. It
had been written to animate a scene of grief, but one in which unpleasant conflict had been
resolved, violently, to restore order to a family and a state. The cruel father, and the son who

538
Jennens, Saul, p. 5.
539
Jennens, Saul, p. 10.
540
Jennens, Saul, p. 22.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.264

loved and was loved by David, were both dead, leaving the way clear for the new king and his
royal bride to start anew. The chorus, as usual, has the last word:

Gird on thy Sword, thou Man of Might,
Pursue thy wonted Fame :
Go on, be prosperous in Fight,
Retrieve the Hebrew Name.
Thy strong Right-Hand, with Terror arm'd,
Shall thy obdurate Foes dismay ;
While others, by thy Virtue charm'd,
Shall croud to own thy Righteous Sway.
For the first half-century of their early republic existence, the colonies that became the
United States of America kept as their national symbol and song reworked versions of slurs that
the entire world knew were intended to question their masculinity. No wonder George Jones,
chaplain and school master aboard Old Ironsides, and so many others of his generation and
those that followed, were embarrassed to hear the song “Yankee Doodle” “rattled off” in a
burlesque style by musicians of a British ship of the line with superior firepower. But there has
always been a strength in overcoming the slur-in-song, even in George M. Cohen’s Broadway
reworking commissioned by the Wilson administration, “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” for the same
reasons cited by so many song sleuths: its utility for feasts, fun, and, especially, fighting.
In the same way, perhaps the biblical idea of manhood that allowed for Brother
Jonathan in the first place proved inspiring, as well – this greater love than woman’s love, the
love of one man, one brother, for another, embedded in the rhetoric of Freemasonry, credo of
so many of the founders. Jonathan, whether in a biblical or theatrical context, is a classic heroic
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.265

figure, in giving the last full measure of devotion for the love of a man whom God had ordained
would be king. Jonathan was no doodle, and Americans steeped in English rhetoric, sacred and
secular, knew it.
But in the English cultural conception of its masculinity in the long eighteenth-century at
war and into the nineteenth, Jonathan, as a hero, was problematic. He was the eldest son of a
diseased limb of the family tree, ordained to extinction by God. He disobeyed his father – a
betrayal of patriarchy, no matter how corrupt. And his relationship with David, sufficiently
suspect to engender millennia of debate, wouldn’t go away. So he had to die again, just as
Jennens and Handel had killed him off in song a century earlier. The tall trees fell, to make way
for Michal and David to repopulate the earth, mindful of the lesson of what happens to the cruel
and heroic alike, on every field of Mount Gilboa.
In a world at constant war with itself, songs like these tell us what it meant to be a man,
and they tell us differently than what we can access from other sources. The name “Yankee
Doodle” represented an Everyman gone terribly wrong, assembled out the most common name,
and the body part most in common with his maleness. But, like Frankenstein’s creation, he was
compromised in the creation process, composed of the wrong parts to be a true representation
of America, because the Everyman was foreign and old, and his manliness had failed him.
It must have taken a rare kind of courage, not to mention a great sense of humor –
founded on wit? – along with a powerful tune that just wouldn’t die, for Americans to hold onto
that image for a half-century as a way of denying its power. Manliness. The loss was the
nation’s, for, unlike the Uncle who replaced him (Sam), the Brother knew sacrifice, humility, and
love.
Now that’s manly.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.266

Afterward

The four chapters comprising this dissertation are part of a larger project.

The first section, “The Songs,” is comprised of the first three chapters of this
dissertation:

 Chapter One, “Song,” investigates what the category of song and the act of
singing meant to participants during the early-modern period, as a way of
understanding what the writers of song, and especially the genre known as
“liberty song,” might have intended for the role of song in the years leading to
the imperial crisis; special emphasis is put on rhetorical typography
 Chapter Two, “Source,” examines extant source types, primarily print of many
categories and also a small sampling of manuscript sources that hint at how
individuals may have understood and used song differently than how it was
served up in popular culture
 Chapter Three, “Tune,” explores the element that makes a lyric poem a song,
and the ways that the inherent affective power of music as well as prior uses of
tunes redounded to the effect that song had on the singer and audient alike

The second section, “The Themes,” is comprised of Chapter Four of this dissertation plus
two others, covering some aspects of the dimensions of gender, race, and class:

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.267

 Chapter Four, “Man,” investigates the sort of manliness required – and sung
about – during an age of nearly constant conflicts of empires in which most
combatants were presumed to be male
 Chapter Five, “Slave,” explores what song can tell us about the deft, tragic
sleight of hand that allowed freedom and slavery to coexist in revolutionary
discourse
 Chapter Six, “King,” looks at ideas about kingship as expressed in song as well as
the larger discourse about rank and status that, it has been argued, is the
“revolutionary” aspect of the imperial crisis that resulted in the eventual
formation of the U.S. republic

The third section, “The Times,” is comprised of three chapters that explore what song,
as a distinct type of evidence, can tell us about the coming of the conflict we call “American”
and “revolutionary:”

 Chapter Seven, “Place,” begins with the Anglophonic Atlantic as a place and a
means for the transmission of culture, including song, and narrows its focus to
the places – and people – who produced and, in some cases, promoted song as
a way of influencing audiences differently than with other source types
 Chapter Eight, “Space,” examines the spaces where new song forms influenced,
and were influenced by, the transformation of how public and private spaces
alike were used during the imperial crisis
 Chapter Nine, “Time,” presents three case studies of song dialogues taking place
in three different Colonial American towns during three transformative time
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.268

periods leading up to the beginning of armed hostilities and the break from
Britain

An afterward takes a brief look at what happened after the American Revolution to the
songs investigated in this project, and what that might tell us about the period in which the
founding generation worked its way from Confederation to Constitution.
New chapters will be available periodically after the submission of this dissertation.
More information will be available from the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute,
https://dornsife.usc.edu/emsi and at www.songhistorian.com

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.269

Works Cited

Secondary sources: Books

Charles W. Akers, The Divine Politician: Samuel Cooper and the American Revolution in Boston
(Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1982).
David Allan, Commonplace Books and Reading in Georgian England (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010).
Gillian B. Anderson and Neil Ratliff, Music in New York During the American Revolution: An
Inventory of Musical References in Rivington’s New York Gazette (Boston: Music Library
Association, 1987).
David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2007).
David Atkinson, The English Traditional Ballad: Theory, Method, and Practice (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2002).
Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard
University Press, 1967).
Jeremy Barlow, The Enraged Musician: Hogarth’s Musical Imagery (London, UK: Ashgate,
2005).
Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1999).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.270

Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou, “I have a yong suster:” Popular Song and the Middle English Lyric
(Dublin, Ireland: Four Courts Press, 2002).
Kent Adam Bowman, Voices of Combat: A Century of Liberty and War Songs, 1765-1865 (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1987).
Clarence Brigham, The History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690-1820
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1803” (PhD diss., Brown University, 1976).
Peter S. Leavenworth, “Accounting for taste: The early American music business and
secularization in music aesthetics, 1720—1825” (PhD diss., University of New
Hampshire, 2007).

Secondary sources: Online resources

America’s historical imprints Series I: Evans
America’s historical imprints Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker
America’s historical newspapers
Colonial Music Institute, David Hildebrand in “Early American Secular Music and Its European
Sources, 15891839: An Index”
(http://www.colonialdancing.org/Easmes/Biblio/B018536.htm ).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.289

Early American Songsters: 1734-1820 (Robert M. Keller, online resource, 2009)
Early English Books Online
Eighteenth-Century Collections Online
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Oxford Music Online
Oxford Music Online, Grove Dictionary
Oxford Reference, Jonathon Green, Green’s Dictionary of Slang (online resource, Oxford
Reference)
Oxford Reference, Quora.com, Jonathon Green.
Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, assembled by Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van
Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller.

Primary sources: Books

Joseph Addison, The Works of the late right honorable Joseph Addison, Esq; Vol. 4 (Birmingham:
Printed by John Baskerville, for J. and R. Tonson. At Shakespear's Head in the Strand. M
DCC LXI [1761]), No. 67, Thursday, May 28, 1713).
[John Aikin], Essays on song-writing: with a collection of such English songs as are most eminent
for poetical merit (London: printed for Joseph Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul's Church-Yard
[1772?]).
Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography (Langres, France: 1589).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.290

A.B. Philo-Mus, Synopsis of Vocal Musick : Containing The Rudiments of Singing Rightly any
Harmonical Song .... (London: Dorman Newman, 1680).
Francis Bacon and William Rawley, Sylva Sylvarum: or, a Naturall Historie (London: John
Haviland, 1635).
Joel Barlow, The hasty-pudding: a poem, in three cantos. Written at Chambery, in Savoy, Jan.
1793 by Joel Barlow, Esq. Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 33373.
William Billings, The New-England Psalm Singer (Boston: Edes and Gill, 1770).
Henry Brooke, Essays against Popery, slavery, and arbitrary power, published during the late
unnatural rebellion (Manchester, [1750?]).
Charles Burney, A general history of music, from the earliest ages to the present period (London:
Printed for the Author, 1776).
Samuel Butler, Hudibras in three parts (London: W. Rogers, 1684).
Calcott, Wellins. A Candid Disquisition of the Principles and Practices of the most Antient and
Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons (Boston: McAlpine, 1772).
William Rufus Chetwood, The generous Free-Mason: or, the constant lady. With the humours of
Squire Noodle, and his Man Doodle. A tragi-comi-farcical ballad opera (London: J.
Roberts, 1731).
The Convivial Songster, Being a Select Collection of the Best Songs in the English Language:
Humourous Satirical Bachanalian &c. (London: Printed for John Fielding, NO. 23 Pater-
noster Row, 1788).
Nancy Dawson’s Jests (London: J. Seymour, 1761).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.291

Renatus Des-Cartes (René Descartes) Excellent Compendium of Musick: with Necessary and
Judicious Animadversions Thereupon (London: Thomas Harper, 1653).
Thomas D’Urfey, Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vols. I-VI (London: W. Pearson for
J. Tonson, 1719-1720).
Benjamin Edes and John Gill, Edes & Gill's North-American Almanack (Boston: Edes and Gill,
1770).
Pierce Egan, Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue ... (London: Printed for the Editor,
1823).
John Entick, M.A., The Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and
Accepted Masons (London: J. Scott, 1756. In the Vulgar YEAR of Masonry 5756).
George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle, a Comedy (London: Printed for Richard Standfast, 1699).
John Gamble, Ayres and dialogues for one, two, and three voyces (London: Printed by W.
Godbid, 1659).
Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London: S. Hooper, [1785]).
Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. The second edition, corrected and
enlarged (London: S. Hooper, [1788]).
John Hawkins, A general history of the science and practice of music (London: Printed for T.
Payne and Son, at the Mews-Gate, MDCCLXXVI [1776]).
Robert Henry D.D., The History of Great Britain, Vol. 1 (London: T. Cadell, 1771).
B. Higgons, of the Middle-Temple, Esq, A Short View of the English History (London: James
Mead, 1734).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.292

James Howell, Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ : Familiar Letters Domestic and Foreign (London: R. Ware, et
al, 1754).
The Irish Miscellany, or Teagueland Jests : Being a Compleat Collection of the most Profound
Puns, Learned Bulls, Elaborate Quibbles, Amorous Letters, Sublime Poetry, and wise
Sayings, of the Natives of Teagueland. Being a Sequel to Joe Miller’s Jests. The Fourth
Edition (London: Printed for R. Adams, at Dryden’s Head, Holborn Bars, 1750).
[Charles Jennens], Saul (Dublin: T. Dyton, 1762).
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (London: printed for A. Millar et al, 1766).
R. Jones, Gent, A Treatise on Skating: Founded on certain Principles deduced from many Years
Experience. The Second Edition (London: for the Author, 1772).
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1699).
Colony of Massachusetts, “Acts Passed at the Session begun and held at Boston, on the Twelfth
day of March, A.D. 1711-1712, Chapter 6. An Act Against Intemperance, Immorality and
Prophaneness, and for Reformation of Manners,” Sect. 8, Court Records [6
th
Sess.],
Province Laws 1711-12.
John Mein and John Fleming, Bickerstaff's Boston almanack, for the year of our LORD 1769,
FIRST EDITION (Boston: Mein and Fleming, 1768).
John Mein and John Fleming, Bickerstaff's Boston Almanack, for the year of our LORD 1770
(Boston: Printed by MEIN and FLEEMING, 1769).
Edward Moore. Poems, fables, and plays, by Edward Moore (London: J. Hughs for R. and J.
Dodsley, 1756).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.293

James Otis, The Rudiments of Latin Prosody … (Boston, N.E.: Printed and sold by Benj. Mecom,
1760).
Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1765).
[Ambrose Philips], A Collection of Old Ballads, Vol. 1 (London: printed for J. Roberts, 1723).
Isaac Pinto, translation, Prayers for Shabbath, Rosh-Hashanah, and Kippur, or the Sabbath, the
beginning of the year, and the day of atonements; with the Amidah and Musaph of the
Moadim, or solemn seasons. According to the Order of the Spanish and Portuguese
Jews. Translated by Isaac Pinto (New-York: John Holt, A.M. 5526. [1766]).
John Playford, “Faronells Division on a Ground,” The Division Violin (London: Printed by J. P. and
are sold by John Playford, near the Temple-Church : 1685).
John Playford, Philo-Musicae, A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Music (London: William Godbid,
1667).
Alexander Pope, Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, And Several of his Friends (London: [1737]).
Alexander Pope, The works of Mr. Alexander Pope (London: 1717).
Allan Ramsay, A Second Set of Scots Songs for a Voice & Harpsichord, Vol. II of Thirty Scots songs
for a Voice & Harpsichord (Edinburgh: R. Bremner, 1757).
Allan Ramsay, Tea-Table Miscellany (London: A. Millar, 1740).
Joseph Ritson, A Select Collection of English Songs. In Three Volumes (London: J. Johnson,
1783).
Henry Roberts, Calliope or English Harmony (London: Henry Roberts, 1739).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.294

Multum in Parvo, or a Collection of Old English, Scotch, Irish & Welsh Tunes. Selected by John
Rook (Waverton, UK: 1840, accessed online May 21, 2013).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A dictionary of music. Translated from the French of Mons. J. J.
Rousseau. By William Waring (London: J. French [1775?]).
Don Saltero's Coffee-house (London, England). A catalogue of the rarities to be seen at Don
Saltero's coffee-house in Chelsea. To which is added, a compleat list of the donors
thereof (London: 1735).
Mr. Scott, “A Roundelau by Mr. Motteux,” The Mock-Marriage, A Comedy acted at the Theatre
in Dorset-Garden, by his Majesty’s Servants (London: H. Rhodes, 1696).
Sir Philip Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie (London: [James Roberts] for Henry Olney, 1595).
Christopher Simpson, A Compendium of Practical Musick in Five Parts (London: William Godbid
for Henry Brome in LIttle Britain, 1667).
Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, et al, The Whole Book of Psalms, Collected into English Metre
(London: A. Wilde, 1740).
George Alexander Stevens, The Choice Spirit’s Chaplet (London: John Dunn, 1771 [1772]).
Jonathan Swift, Miscellanies, In Prose and Verse. Volume the Sixth. Which with the other
Volumes already published in England, compleats this Author's Works (London: 1735).
Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, New Version of the Psalms of David (London: Printed by T.
Hodgkin, for the Company of Stationers, 1698).
Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, A Supplement to the New Version of PSALMS (London: W.
Pearson for D. Brown, 1704).
Edward Thompson, The Meretriciad (London: Printed for the author, 1761).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.295

Nathaniel Thompson, A Choice Collection of 180 Loyal Songs (London: N. T., 1685).
Nicholas Tindal, trans., The History of England written in French by Mr. Rapin de Thoyras, Vol. I
(London: John and Paul Knapton, 1743).
Isaac Walton, The Complete Angler: or, Contemplative Man’s Recreation (London: John and
Francis Rivington, 1775).
Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (Boston: Fowle & Draper, 1762).
Isaac Watts, Psalms of David, Imitated in the language of the New Testament (Boston: Printed
by Rogers and Fowle for D. Henchman, in Cornhill, 1750).
John Watts, The musical miscellany; being a collection of choice songs, set to the violin and flute,
by the most eminent masters (London : printed by and for John Watts, 1729-31).

Primary sources: Broadsides

Anon., Americans to arms. Sung to the tune of, Britons to arms ([Salem, Mass.? : Printed by
Ezekiel Russell?, 1775?]).
———, L’Avocat Patelin. Comedie en Trois Actes, de Brueys; Répresentée par les Comédiens
François ordinaires du Roi, le 4 Juin, 1706. Nouvelle Edition (London: T. Hookham,
1785).
———, “British Grenadier : together with the Grenadier’s march, and an excellent new song on
the year fifty-nine” (Broadside in the collection of The American Antiquarian Society
[1760-1769]).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.296

———, “Capt. Andrew's Ghost, to A-l B-g [Admiral Bing] as He Lay at Anchor at Gibraltar. To
Nhe [sic] Tune of Hosier's Ghost” (London: J. Morgan, at the Globe in Pater-noster-row,
1756).
———, The Court of England. Or, The Preparation for the happy Coronation of King William and
Queen Mary (Edinburgh : By the heir of A. Anderson, 1689).
———, “Great honour of a valiant London prentice: being an account of his matchless manhood,
and brave adventures, done in Turkey; and how he came to marry the king's daughter,
&c. To the tune of, ‘All you that love good fellows,’ &c” (Broadside in the collection of
The American Antiquarian Society [1770-1779]).
———, Manly. A favorite new song, in the American fleet. Most humbly addressed to all the jolly
tars who are fighting for the rights and liberties of America. By a sailor (Salem: [Russell],
1776).
———, “New Massachusetts Liberty Song,” (broadside, Evans 42135).
———, The poor man’s advice to his poor neighbours: a ballad, to the tune of Chevy-Chace
(New-York : [s.n.], 1774, pamphlet in the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA).
———, “A sequel to Hosier's ghost: or Old Blakeney's reception into the Elysian fields. A ballad
… Written by a Patriot of Ireland ... Dublin, 10th July, 1756” (London: Printed for J.
Morgan, at the Globe in Pater-noster- row. 1756, broadside at Oxford, accessed online:
http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/search/title/Old%20Blakeneys%20reception%20into%2
0the%20Elysian%20fields%20A%20ballad )
———, “Unhappy memorable song of the hunting in Chevy-Chace, between Earl Piercy of
England and Earl Douglas of Scotland” (American Antiquarian Society, broadside, 1772).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.297

———, The World Turned Upside Down, or The Old Woman taught Wisdom (British Museum,
broadside, 1767), accessed online January 4, 2015).
M. B., “Endeavour to animate and incourage our soldiers, for the present expedition” (Evans
40822 and 40956 Evans [N.B. both numbers reference the same item] (Boston: Green &
Russell [1756?]).
[Richard Glover], Admiral Hosier's Ghost (London: Charles Mosley, Publish'd according to Act of
Parliament July 1740).
Joseph Green, “A mournful lamentation for the sad and deplorable death of Mr. Old Tenor,”
(Massachusetts Historical Society, broadside, [1750]).
Sir F.W., A loyall song of the royall feast, kept by the prisoners in the Towre in August last, with
the names, titles and characters of every prisoner. By Sir F.W. knight and baronet,
prisoner (London: [1647]).

Primary sources: Newspapers

John Anderson, ed., Constitutional Gazette, New York, NY.
Solomon Balentine and Charles R. Webster, eds., New York Gazeteer, Albany, NY.
John Carter, ed., Providence Gazette, Providence, RI.
Charles Crouch, ed., South Carolina Gazette, Charleston, SC.
Benjamin Dearborn, ed., Freeman's Journal, Portsmouth, NH.
Henry DeForeest, ed., New York Evening Post, New York, NY.
Edward Draper and John West Folsom, eds., Independent Ledger, Boston, MA.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.298

John Draper, ed., Boston Weekly News-Letter, Boston, MA.
John Dunlap, ed., Pennsylvania Packet and The General Advertiser, Philadelphia, PA.
Benjamin Edes and John Gill, eds., Boston Gazette, Boston, MA.
Thomas Fleet, ed., Boston Evening-Post, Boston, MA.
Robert Fletcher, ed., Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, Halifax, NS.
Daniel Fowle, ed., New Hampshire Gazette, Portsmouth, NH.
Thomas Furber and Ezekiel Russell, eds., Portsmouth Mercury and Weekly Advertiser,
Portsmouth, NH.
Hugh Gaine, ed., New York Mercury, New York, NY.
John Gill, ed., The Continental Journal, Boston, MA.
William Goddard, ed., Providence Gazette, Providence, RI.
William Goddard, Joseph Galloway, Thomas Wharton, eds., Pennsylvania Chronicle and
Universal Advertiser, Philadelphia, PA.
William Goddard, ed., Maryland Journal, Jonas Green, Maryland Gazette, Annapolis, MD.
John Green and Joseph Russell, eds., Boston Post-Boy, Boston, MA.
Timothy Green, ed., New-London Summary, New-London, CT.
Timothy Green, ed., Connecticut Gazette, New-London, CT.
Samuel Hall, ed., Essex Gazette, Salem, MA.
Samuel and Ebenezer Hall, eds., New-England Chronicle, Cambridge, MA.
John Holt, ed., The New-York Journal; or, the General Advertiser, New York, NY.
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.299

Shepard Kollock, ed., New Jersey Journal, Chatham, NJ.
Samuel Loudon, ed., New York Packet, Fishkill, NY.
Ezra Lunt, ed., Essex Journal, Newburyport, MA.
John Mein, ed., Boston Chronicle, Boston, MA.
Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks, eds., Boston Post-Boy, Boston, MA.
James Parker, ed., New York Gazette & Weekly Post, New York, NY.
Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, eds., Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, VA.
Clementina Rind, ed., Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, VA.
James Rivington, ed., Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, New York, NY.
Ezekiel Russell, ed., Salem Gazette and Newbury and Marblehead Advertiser, Salem, MA.
Solomon Southwick, ed., Newport Mercury, Newport, RI.
Isaiah Thomas, ed., Massachusetts Spy, Boston, MA.
Isaiah Thomas, ed., Massachusetts Spy, Worcester, MA.
Benjamin Towne, ed., Pennsylvania Evening Post, Philadelphia, PA.
John Trumbull, Norwich Packet, Norwich, CT.
Ebenezer Watson, ed., Connecticut Courant, Hartford CT.
Robert Wells, G. Bruce, and John Wells, eds., South Carolina & American General Gazette,
Charleston, SC.
William Weyman, ed., The New York Gazette, New York, NY.

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.300

Primary sources: Magazines and other periodicals

Joseph Addison, The Spectator (London: printed for S. Buckley [1713]).
Robert Aitken, The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum, Philadelphia, PA
(1775-?).
William Bradford, The American Magazine, Philadelphia, PA (1758-1762).
James Davis, North Carolina Magazine, or Universal Intelligencer, Newbern, NC (1749?-1764?).
Benjamin Mecom, The New-England Magazine, Boston, MA (1758-59).
Ezekiel Russell, The Censor, Boston, MA (1771-1772).
Isaiah Thomas, The Royal American Magazine, Boston, MA (1774-75).
Sylvannus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, Vl. XV for the year 1745
(London: Edw. Cave, [n.d.]).
??, The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal: By Several Hands, Vol. XLII. London: Printed for R.
Griffiths, M,DCC,LXX [1770].
[Charles Molloy?], Select Letters taken from Fog's Weekly Journal, Vol. II (London: Printed and
Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1732).

Primary sources: Songsters

The American Mock-Bird (New York: James Rivington, 1760).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.301

The new song-book: being Miss Ashmore’s favourite collection of songs (Boston: Printed and
sold by W McAlpine, 1771).
The Charmer; A Choice Collection of Songs, English and Scots (Edinburgh: Printed for J. Yair,
1749).
Das Kleine Davidische Psalterspiel (Germantown: Christopher Sauer, 1764).
Thomas Deloney, The garland of good will (London: Printed for G. Conyers, in Little-Britain,
[before 1688]).
Der Bauren-Stand: Drey Neue Lieder (Ephrata, PA?: Typis societatis, 1775?).
The Free Masons Pocket-Companion (Edinburgh: Auld and Smellie, 1765).
Sechs Neue Politische Lieder ([?]: 1769).
Elhanan Winchester, Thirteen hymns, suited to the present times (Baltimore: Printed by M.K.
Goddard, in Market-Street, 1776).

Primary sources: Scores

George Bickham, Jr., The Musical Entertainer, Engrav'd, Vols. 1 & 2, (London: Printed for C.
Corbett at Addison's Head, Fleet-Street, 1740).
Calliope, or English Harmony, Vol. 1 & 2 (London: Henry Roberts, 1739).
Thomas Campion, Tvvo bookes of ayres …. Booke I & II (London : Printed by Tho. Snodham, for
Mathew Lownes, and I. Browne Cum priuilegio, [1613?]).
Clio and Euterpe, or British Harmony, Vol. I, (London: John Welcker, 1762).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.302

Starling Goodwin, George Alexander Stevens, The origin of English liberty (Musical scores at the
University of Oxford. Four editions; 1., London: Printed by R. Falkener ... and sold at his
music shop ... 1775; 2., [London]: [publisher not identified], 1770; 3., London: Printed
and sold by H. Fougt ... 1767; and 4., [London]: [publisher not identified], 1760).
Sheet Music for “Neptune's Resignation,” Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads Project, accessed
June 28, 2016, http://www.americanantiquarian.org/thomasballads/items/show/628
John Wignell, A Collection of Original Pieces (London: 1762).

Primary sources: Images

“An Actress at her Toilet, or Miss Brazen just Breecht, From the Original Picture by John Collet,
in the possession of Carington Bowles” (London: Printed for & Sold by Carington
Bowles, [date erased, 1779]).
“Bachelors Fare – of Bread and Cheese with Kisses. From the Original Picture by John Collet in
the possession of Carington Bowles” (London: 1777).
Characters, Macaronies & Caricatures, by MDarly, Vol. 1-6 (London: 1772).
“The Colonies Reduced” (London: Design’d and Engrav’d for the Political Register, c. 1767).
“The Court Cotillion, or the Premiers new Parl-----t Jig” (Engrav’d for the Whimsical Repository,
1774, print/engraving at the New-York Historical Society).
“The Deplorable State of America or Sc—h Government” (print in the collection of the New-York
Historical Society).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.303

“The discovery or female Free-Mason” (London: Printed for S. Hooper, 1771).
“The English Lion Dismembered (satirical print in the British Museum)” (London: Publish’d
according to Act of Parliament. Sold by the Printsellers of London & Westminster, c.
1757).
“The Englishman in Paris, after John Collett” (London: Robert Sayer, 1770).
“European Race for a Distance” (London: Charles Mosley print in the collection of the New-York
Historical Society, 1740).
“The Farmer-Macaroni” (London: Pubd. accordg. to Act July 24
th
, 1772 by MDarly 39 Strand).
“The Female Combatants, or, Who Shall” ([England]: [s.n.], published according to Act Jany. 26
1776).
“The Frenchman in London, after John Collett” (London: Robert Sayer, 1770).
“The Great Financier, of British Œconomy for the Years 1763, 1764, 1765” (print in the collection
of the New-York Historical Society).
“Grown gentlemen taught to Dance. Engraved after an Original Picture of Mr. John Collett, in
the Possession of Mr. Smith” (London: Printed for Robt. Sayer, c. 1768).
“Grown Ladies taught to Dance. Engraved after an Original Picture of Mr. John Collett, in the
Possession of Mr. Smith” (London: Printed for Robt. Sayer, c. 1768).
“Gin Alley” (engraving by William Hogarth) (London: Publish’d according to Act of Parliament,
1751).
“Beer Street” (engraving by William Hogarth) (London: Publish’d according to Act of
Parliament, 1751).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.304

“The Gate of Calais or O, the Roast Beef of Old England” (painting by William Hogarth, 1748).
“Jack England Fighting the Four Confederates” (1781, hand-coloured etching in the British
Museum).
“A Macaroni. in a Morning Dress in the Park” (London: Pub by MDarly April 23d.1772 accor to
Act (39) Strand).
“A Macarony taking his Morning Ride in Rotten-Row Hyde-Park” (London: Robert Sayer, 1772).
“The Macaroni Courtship Rejected” (Mezzotint in the collection of the British Museum) (London:
John Bowles, 20 March 1772).
“A Rescue or the Tars Triumphant,” after John Collet” (mezzotint in the collection of the British
Museum, 1768).
“The Retreat From Concord to Lexington of the Army of Wild Irish Asses Defeated by the Brave
American Militia M
r
Deacon M
r
Loeings M
r
Mulikens M
r
Bonds Houses and Barn all
Plunder’d and Burnt on April 19
th
” (Etching in the Brown Library JCB Political Cartoons
Collection) (Published according to Act June 29 1775).
“The Simpling Macaroni” (London: Pub accor to Act by MDarly Strand July 13
th
, 1772).
“The Slave Trade” (etching in the British Museum, 1788).
“The Southwark Macaroni” (London: Published according to Act Augt. 24.1772, by M Darly, No.
39, Strand).
“Tight Lacing, or Fashion before Ease. From the Original Picture by John Collet, in the possession
of the Proprietors” (London: Bowles & Carver, [1777?].
“The Yankie Doodles Intrenchments Near Boston 1776” (etching in the British Museum, c. 1776).

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.305

Primary sources: Manuscripts

John Adams, diary 15, 30 January 1768, 10 August 1769 - 22 August 1770 [electronic edition]
(Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, manuscript at the Massachusetts
Historical Society, 1770, http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/ ).
William Almy, Letter to Elisha Story, 29 August 1765. (manuscript at the Massachusetts
Historical Society, 1765).
F. Baird, Mr. James Hunter His Book by F. Baird (manuscript at the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, 1755).
John Barstow, “Americans to arms” (manuscript at the Gilder Lerhman Institute, circa 1777,
accessed December 13, 2012 at http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collections/treasures-
from-the-collection/patriotic-verse-schoolboy%E2%80%99s-math-book-during-
revolutionary )
British soldiers’[?] song at Philadelphia New Goal, January 1776 (manuscript at the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania, 1776).
Henry Blake, Diary, 1776 (manuscript at the American Antiquarian Society, 1776).
Orderly book of Lieut. Abraham Chittenden, adjt. 7th Conn. reg't. (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood
& Brainard, 1922).
Samuel Cooper, Mr. Pope’s Messiah imitated (manuscript at the Henry E. Huntington Library, c.
1745).
John Greenwood Music Book (manuscript at the New-York Historical Society, c. 1780).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.306

Shubel Hammett, Logbook of William Hammett, 7 Dec 1788-20 Jun 1789 (manuscript at the
Houghton Library, 1788-1789).
Naaman Holbrook, “A Song of Young & Old,” Wellfleet, August 31 1772” (manuscript at the
Houghton Library, 1772).
Jacob Hubley, Eight Solos for a German Flute with a Thorough Bass for the Harpsichord :
Composed by Sigr. Cerretto. Opera Terza. February 8
th
1775 (manuscript at the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1775).
Jacob Hubley, Music Book (Lancaster, PA [?]: manuscript at the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, c. 1769).
Orderly book of Francis Marion (manuscript at the Henry E. Huntington Library, 1775-1779).
Jeremiah McIntosh His Book of Accounts (manuscript at the Huntington Library, 1776-1777).
John McKesson Collection (manuscript at the New-York Historical Society, c. 1760-1820).
William Morris, of Captain Tucker’s Company, New Jersey’s First Regiment, Hunterdon County,
tune book (manuscript at the New-York Historical Society, 1776-1777).
Orderly books of William Moultrie, June 20 1775-February 12 1780 (manuscript in the collection
of the Henry E. Huntington Library, 1775-1780).
Diary of Experience Wight Richardson 1728-1782 (typescript of a manuscript at the
Massachusetts Historical Society, 1728-1782).
John Sandey, John Sandey His Book 1756 (manuscript at the American Antiquarian Society,
1756).
Salisbury Family Papers, 1674-1916 (manuscript at the American Antiquarian Society, 1767-
1768).
8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.307

Orderly book with accounts of Capt. Nathan Strong's company the 4th New York Regiment
(manuscript at the Henry E. Huntington Library, 1777-1778).
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Society, 1755-57).
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manuscript at the Henry E. Huntington Library, 1762).
Letter from Mercy Otis Warren to Abigail Adams, February 27 1774 (manuscript in the collection
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1774, accessed online).
Alexander Watson, Alexander Watson His Rec
e
pt Book 1772
&
/3 (manuscript at the New-York
Historical Society, 1772-1773).

8 December 2016 “EDITED for Thesis Center,” p.308

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract In the decade preceding the American Revolution, a new kind of oppositional song increasingly appeared in print media of British Colonial America. "Liberty song" gave tune and voice to the imperial crisis involving the British government and its American colonies. These songs were rooted in two centuries of radical political ideology and followed decades of serious philosophical debate about the affective qualities and proper societal role of music and -- specific to this study -- song. This project explores what these songs, and others of the period, tell us about the coming of the conflict we call "American," and "revolutionary," and offers evidence as to why song may be a distinct category of evidence, something more than just "more of the same" information coming from a different evidentiary sources. The chapters explore the genesis of this different kind of prerevolutionary song expression (in its production as well as presentation), the role of song in articulating and, sometimes, mobilizing opposing sentiments, and the degree to which these songs built upon British Atlantic practices honed over the preceding two centuries, wherein familiar tunes were appropriated for their specific associations with past social and political causes as well as the "affective" musicological properties of the tunes chosen to animate them that may have tended to incite a particular emotional response in the auditor. Statistical data drawn from both the songs themselves (texts and tunes) as well as their use in print media, supported by manuscript sources that provide first-hand testimony of uses and effects of sound in general (and music where noted) on contemporaries' emotions, hopes and fears, suggests development of a political functionality of song that was documented (and, in some cases, fostered) by British American printers and publishers and their contributors and sponsors, especially in newspapers but also in broadsides, magazines, pamphlets, and books, whose messages, creators, and audiences overlapped. These practices suggest that the purveyors of print culture and, in some cases, the social and political interests they represented, intended a specific role for song in the informing and opinion-forming process, even to the point of explicitly calling on the population to mobilize on one side or the other of the difficult decision to renounce British allegiance and go to war. An exploration of reception of these songs as revealed in printed and manuscript diaries, letters, and journals, as well as newspapers coverage of events and opinions where song had a mobilizing effect, help unpack what John Adams might have meant when he famously described the role of political songs -- and specifically the singing of them -- as "cultivating the Sensations of Freedom," and why and how some songs were, as a 1770 broadside proclaimed, "Fit to be sung in Streets."

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