Annotation:Come then all ye social powers

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COME THEN ALL YE SOCIAL POWERS. AKA and see "Once a Night," "Ye Social Powers." English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time). D Major (Raven): G Major (Aird). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABCC. "Come then, all ye social powers" (often shortened to "Ye Social Powers") was the finale song in the opera Lionel and Clarissa, as well as the finale in Bickerstaffe's School of Fathers. The lyric in Lionel and Clarissa begins:

Come then, all ye social powers,
Shed your influence o'er us,
Crown with bliss the present hours,
And lighten those before us.
May the just and gen'rous kind,
Still see that you regard 'em;
Clarissas to reward 'em.

...while Bickerstaffe commences:

Come then, all ye social powers,
Shed your influence o'er us,
Crown with bliss the present hours,
Enliven those before us:
Bring the flask, the music bring,
Joy shall quickly find us;
Sport and dance, and laugh, and sing,
And cast dull care behind us.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch English Irish and Foreign Airs vol. 3), 1788; No. 407, p. 157. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 30 (as "Ye Social Powers"). Thompson (Twenty Four Country Dances), 1774

Recorded sources:

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