Annotation:Philander

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PHILANDER, THE. AKA – "Ah! cruel bloody Fate." English, Air (cut time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. This tune by the English composer Henry Purcell dates to c. 1680 and appears in a song in Nathaniel Lee's tragedy of Theodosius; or, The Force of Love (Act v, sc.1) produced in that year. The song's first line (the lyric was written by Lee) is "Ah! cruel bloody fate," by which the tune is sometimes called. A copy of the broadside is in the Roxburghe Collection, founded by Benjamin Heywood Bright, and it proved to be a popular ballad, so that a sequel (to the same tune) was subsequently produced called "The Deceiver Deceived; or, The Virgin's Revenge." Purcell's tune was published by John Playford in Choice Ayres, Book III (1681, p. 29) and Apollo's Banquet [1] (1687, No. 49, p. 22). The tune appears two songs in Loyal Songs (editions of 1685 and 1994, p. 126, in parody form, entitled "Dagon's Fall" and "The Bully Whig"), and is given in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. iv, 284). The first stanza of Lee's words begins:

Ah Cruel Bloody Fate,
what canst thou now do more?
Alas 'tis now too late,
Philander to Restore;
Why shou'd the Heavenly powers persuade,
Poor Mortals to believe,
That they guard us here,
And reward us there,
Yet all our joys deceive.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Doyle (Plain Brown Tune Book), 1997; p. 34.

Recorded sources:

See also listing at:
Hear the song on youtube.com [2]

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