Annotation:South Sea Ballad
SOUTH SEA BALLAD. English, Air and Country Dance Tune (6/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. "South Sea" AKA "South Sea Ballad" was published as a country dance in The Third Volume of the Dancing Master (London, c. 1726), published by John Young, the successor to the Playford Dancing Master publications. It was later published by John Walsh Jr. in his Compleat Country Dancing Master vol. 6 (1756). The air was employed by playwright John Gay for his Beggar's Opera (1729, Act 3, Air XLII) as the vehicle for his song "My love is all madness and folly.” Frank Kidson (1922) noted it was a tune "to one of the many ballads contemporary with the South Sea Bubble," which refers to a financial scheme of the time[1] which collapsed in 1720 leaving many investors impoverished.
"A south-sea ballad: or, Merry remarks upon Exchange-Alley bubbles. To a new tune, call'd the grand elixir, or the philosopher's stone discover'd" was published in London and Edinburgh in 1720, attributed to Edward Ward (1667-1731). The first stanzas go:
In London stands a famous pile, And near that pile an Alley,
Where merry crowds for riches toil, And wisdom stoops to folly.
Here, sad and joyful, high and low, Court Fortune for her graces;
And as she smiles or frowns, they show Their gestures and grimaces.
’Tis said that alchemists of old Could turn a brazen kettle, Or leaden cistern into gold;
That noble tempting metal. But (if it here may be allowed,
To bring in great with small things) Our cunning South Sea like a god,
Turns nothing into all things.
- ↑ Sometimes called the world’s first financial crash, or the world’s first Ponzi scheme, brought about by what we now refer to as 'insider trading'. Many investors were ruined by the share-price collapse, and as a result, the British national economy diminished substantially.