Annotation:Of All Comforts
X:1 T:Of All Comforts M:C| L:1/8 R:Country Dance B: Young - Second Volume of the Dancing Master, 1st edition (1710, No. 195) K:Amin A,2A2^G2E2|A2B2c2C2|D2E2F2 ED|E2^G2A2A,2| A,2A2^G2E2|A2B2c2C2|D2E2F2ED|E2^G2A2A,2:|| A2e2 c2A2|f2 ed e2^g2|agfe dcBc|dcBA e4| A2e2c2A2|f2 ed e2^g2|agfe dcBc|dcBA e4| C2C2G2G2|E2E2 A2 AB|c2 DE F2 ED|G2G,2C4| d2e2c2A2|fe(d/c/B/A/) ^G2E2|A>cB>d c>fe>d|c2 BA A2||
OF ALL COMFORTS. AKA - "Of all comforts I miscarry'd," "White Chapel Mount." English, Air and Country Dance Tune (cut time). A Minor (Young): D Minor (Oswald). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The country dance tune and dance instructions appeared in all four editions of London publisher John Young's Second Volume of the Dancing Master, produced from 1710-1728. Young was the successor to the Playford publishing concerns in the city. "Of All Comfort" was also printed by rival publishers (John) Walsh & Hare in their own Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1710). The song "Of all comforts I miscarry'd" was printed by poet and songwriter wikipedia:Thomas_D'Urfey in his Pills to Purge Melancholy vol. ii (1719-20, p. 136-138), under the title "The Curtain Lecture, a New Song"[1] in the form of a dialogue. The tune was used for Air V ("Of the states in life so various") in Cibber's ballad opera The Devil to Pay, and again in Momus turned Fabulist. Alfred Moffat and Frank Kidson, when they printed the tune in their Minstrelsy of England (1901), deemed D'Urfey's original words "totally unfit for present day singing" (which usually means they were suggestive or otherwise 'immoral'), and wrote a new words for the song beginning "While o'erhead the storm is howling." D'Urfey's words are quite tame by today's standards:
He:
Of all comforts I miscarried,
When I play’d the Sot and married;
‘Tis a Trap there’s none need doubt on’t:
She:
Fye, my Dear, pray come to bed,
That Napkin take and bind your Head,
Too much drink your Brain has dos’d,
You’ll be quite alter’d when repos’d.
He:
Oons, tis all one, if I’m up or lye down,
For as soon as the Cock crows I’ll be gone,
She:
‘Tis to grieve me, thus you leave me,
Was I, was I made a Wife to lye alone.
He:
From your Arms my self divorcing,
I this Morn must ride a Coursing,
Sport that far excels a Madam,
Or all Wives have been since Adam.
She:
I, when thus I’ve lost my due,
Must hug my Pillow wanting you,
And whilst you tope all the Day,
Regale in Cups of harmless Tea.
He:
Pox what care I, drink your Slops ‘till you dye,
Yonder’s Brandy will keep me a Month from home.
She:
If thus parted, I’m broken hearted,
When I, when I send for you, my dear pray come.
He:
E’re I’ll be from rambling hindred,
I’ll renounce my Spouse and Kindred,
To be sober I have no leasure,
What’s a Man without his Pleasure.
She:
To my Grief then I must see,
Strong Ale and Nantz my Rivals ve,
Whilst you tope it with your Blades,
Poor I sit stitching with my Maids.
He:
Oons you may go to your Gossips you know,
And there if you can meet a Friend, pray do;
She:
Go you Joker, go Provoker,
Never, never shall I meet a Man like you.
"White Chapel Mount" is given as an alternate title in both Young's and Walsh's volumes. The mount was a high place within the bounds of London that had been the site of a mill and some houses, albeit all went to ruins during the English Civil War of the early 1640's. The mount was fortified with defense works to help guard London from the threat of Royalist invasion, but these were pulled down after hostilities ended. After the Great Fire of 1666, ruble and debris from the fire and rebuilding was dumped on the site of the old fortifications. In the 1750's a hospital was constructed near the site, and, in 1808 the height was levelled.
- ↑ The title refers to the curtains that once surrounded a four poster bed, while a 'curtain lecture' was a scolding from a wife to her husband, after they have gone to bed.