Annotation:London's Loyalty
LONDON'S LOYALTY. English, Old or Triple Hornpipe (3/2 time). D Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. A later addition to the Playford Dancing Master [1] series [2], this triple hornpipe first appears in the 13th edition of 1706, the first to have been published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns. It was retained through the 18th and final edition of 1728. The tune also appears in the second volume of D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy (London, 1719-20, pp. 132-4), Walsh & Hare's Compleat Country Dancing Master (1718, p. 46), Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing Master, Volume the Fourth (1740), and Johnson's Wright's Compleat Collection of celebrated country Dances, vol. 2 (London, 1740, p. 49).
The song set to the tune in "Wit and Mirth" is a reprint of one published by Thomas D'Urfey in 1683 during the reign of Charles II. It begins:
Rouse up great Genius of this potent land,
Lest Traytors once more get the upper hand;
The Rebel crowd their former Tenets own,
And Treasons worse than Plagues infect the Town.
The sneaking May'r and his two pimping Sheriff's,
Who for their honesty no better are then Theives;
Fall from their Sov'raign's side to court the Mobile,
Oh! London, London, where's thy Loyalty.
