Annotation:Philander

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PHILANDER, THE. AKA - "Ah! cruel bloody Fate." English, Country Dance Tune (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 (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), Loyal Songs (editions of 1685 and 1994, p. 126), in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. iv, 284)

Source for notated version:

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

Recorded sources:

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