Annotation:Pinks and Lillies

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PINKS AND LILLIES. AKA - "Phillis at a Nonplus." English, Country Dance Tune (cut time). C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune and dance directions ("Longways for as many as will") were published in London by John Young in his Third Volume of the Dancing Master (2nd edition, 1726) [1]. It was later published by John Walsh in his The Third Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1735, p. 165). It is Song 58 in Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (), and begins:

Do not ask me, charming Phillis,
Why I lead you here alone,
By this bank of pinks and lillies,
And of roses newly blown.

'Tis not to behold the beauty
Of these flowers that crown the spring;
'Tis to—but I know my dury,
And dare never name the thing.

"Pinks and Lillies" was the vehicle for songs in a number of early 18th century ballad operas, beginning with Johnson's The Village Opera (1729) and Fielding's The Mock Doctor, or the Dumb Lady Cur'd (1732). The verse is considerably older however, and appears in The New Academy of Compliments (1671).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes), 1986. Bentley (The Fallibroome Collection, vol. 4), 1971.

Recorded sources:

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