Annotation:Rosasolis

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X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x

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ROSASOLIS. AKA and see "Morris Off," "Black Eyed Susie (1)," "Three Jolly Sheepskins (1)," "Alas my little bag." English. Bayard (1981) states the tune is one of the earliest traceable folk-airs, going back to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1610) where it was set by Giles Farnaby (c. 1560-c. 1600). It also appears in Jehan Tabourot's Orchesographie of 1588 in much the same form as it has today when used in English morris dances, where it is called "Morris Off" (it is called by Kidson and Moffat the earliest recorded morris tune). A variant of the Fitzwilliam version appears as a Welsh harp tune in Bennett's Alawon Fy Ngwlad (vol. 2, p. 136, 3rd tune). Later, from the early 17th century and throughout the 18th, in England a derivative of the tune was called "Three (Jolly) Sheepskins," and in Ireland it can be found in collections as "Aillilliu mo Mhailin" (Alas my little bag). The American derivative of the air is "Black-Eyed Susie."

According to the website Cordial Waters [1]:

On their first arrival in England in the late 1400s, distilled cordial waters had been strictly used as alcoholic medicines, prescribed in small doses to invigorate the heart and revitalise the spirits. By 1700, these forerunners of modern liqueurs were being imbibed for their intoxicating effects as well as their medicinal virtues, and most eventually became recreational drinks. Cordials containing precious ingredients like gold and pearls were thought “to renew the natural heat, recreate and revive the Spirits, and free the whole Body from the malignity of diseases”. Such were the now forgotten stillroom preparations like Royal Usquebaugh, a spicy liqueur fortified with flecks of gold leaf, descended from the Aureum potabile (drinkable gold) of the alchemists. Other early varieties of alcoholic cordials were flavoured with spices and herbal ingredients which were thought to settle the stomach after excessive eating, leading to the collective name of ‘surfeit waters’.

Many cordials were also considered to act as aphrodisiacs, a view which encouraged their consumption in a social rather than medical context. Most important of these was Rosa Solis or Rosolio, a drink that probably originated in Renaissance Turin. Distilled over large quantities of the insectivorous bog plant sundew, it included hot provocative spices like cubebs, grains of paradise and galingale. According to the seventeenth century medical writer William Salmon, sundew “stirs up lust”. He goes on to say that the distilled water “is of a glittering yellow, like Gold, and colours Silver of a Golden Colour if put therein”. In Salmon’s time, rosa solis was used in England at the banquet course to wash down other venerous food items such as kissing comfits and candied eryngo roots. Rosolio, or Resoil, is still produced in some European countries, notably Italy and Spain, though it no longer contains sundew as an ingredient.