Annotation:Frog Galliard (The)

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FROG GALLIARD, THE. AKA - "Now o now I needs must part." English, Country Dance Tune (3/2 or 6/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. This 16th century air appears in Morley's Consort Lessons (1597), Thomas Robinson's New Cithren Lessons (1609), Nederlantsche Gedenck-Clanck (1626), Stichtelycke Rymen (1647), and a lute MSS. in the Cambridge University library. John Dowland (1563-1626) published it as a song in "Now, o now I needs must part" in his First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597), but it was Robinson in his New Cithearen Lessons (1609) who set it as an intrumental version along with other some other of Dowland's songs. However, the earliest the tune was published was in 1649 in the Netherlands in a volume called Der Fluyten Lust-Hof (The Flute's Garden of Delights) by Jacob van Eyck (c. 1590-1657), a recorder player, carillonneur of the Utrecht Dom Cathedral, and director of all the bells and clock-chimes of the city. He called it "Harte Diefje, Waerom Zoo Stil" (Little Thief of My Heart; Why so Still?). Musicologist William Chappell (1859) notes that several ballads were written to the tune.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Time), vol. 1, 1859; pp. 274-275.

Recorded sources:




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