Annotation:Shaking of the Sheets (1) (The)
X:1 T:Shaking of the Sheets [1], The M:6/4 L:1/8 S:William Ballet's Lute Book (1590) B:Chappell – Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G d3e f2 d3e f2|g4 g2 g4 g2|d3e f2 d2 e2 ^c2|d4 d2 d4:| ||=f2|e4 d2c2B2A2|B2G2G2 G4 _B2|A2F2F2 F4 c2| B2 G2 G2 G4f2|e4 d2 c2 B2 A2|B2 G2 G2 G6||
SHAKING OF THE SHEET(S) [1], THE. AKA and see "Nightpiece (The)," "Dance of Death," "Dance after My Pipe." English, Country Dance Tune (6/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. This air, the earlier version of two by the "Shaking of the Sheets" title, appears in William Ballet's Lute Book (1590), which is the same as printed by Sir John Hawkins in his History of Music (1776, vol. 2, p. 934). "Shaking of the Sheets" is frequently mentioned by writers in the 16th and 17th centuries, notes antiquarian William Chappell (1859), who cites numerous instances, including "In the recently-discovered play of Misogonus, produced about 1560...[it is mentioned as a country dance]." A tune of this title appears in the Stationers' Register of 1568/9, and it also appears as "Shakinge of the Sheetes" in William Ballet's lute manuscript (c. 1590). "The Old Abbot and King Olfrey", is a closely similar riddle-ballad. The words that accompany this tune are a witty comparison between the bedsheets (a dance of life) and the winding sheets (the dance of death). That the tune was used early for dances is attested to by a reference in Roxburghe Ballads in which it is mentioned with several other dance tunes in Verse 5 in the old ballad "A West-country Jigg, or a Trenchmore Galliard":
The Piper he stuck up and Merrily he did play,
The shakeing of the sheets, and eke the Irish hay
Then up with Aley, Aley, Up with Priss and Prue;
In came wanton Willy, amongst the jovial crew.
To a merry Scotch tune, or Up with Aley, Aley, & c.
The alternate title "Dance after My Pipe" seems to have been a proverbial expression, stated musicologist William Chappell (1859), as this quote from Vox Borealis (1641) illustrates:
I would teach them to sing another song, and make
them dance after my pipe, ere I had done with them.
Francis Collinson (The Bagpipe, 1975, p. 110) finds “Dance after My Pipe” mentioned by Ben Jonson in Every Man out of his Humour.