Annotation:I Often for My Jenny Strove
Tune properties and standard notation
I OFTEN FOR MY JENNY STROVE. AKA and see "Cupid's Revenge." English, Song Air (6/8 time). E Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. According to Chappell (1859), the tune appears in The Banquet of Music (1689, “Songs sung at the Court and Theatres”), Apollo's Banquet (1690), The Dancing Master (1695 and later editions), Pills to Purge Melancholy (all editions), and The Jovial Crew and other ballad operas. The tune was the vehicle for numerous broadside ballads.
I often for my Jenny strove,
Ey’d her, tried her, yet can’t prove
So lukcy to find her pity move,
Ize have no reward for love.
If thou wouldst but think on me,
And now forsake thy cruelty,
I for ever could be, should be, would be,
Join’d to none, but only thee.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times), vol. 2, 1859; pp. 61-62.
Recorded sources: