Annotation:As Down in the Meadows

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AS DOWN IN THE MEADOWS. AKA - "As down in a meadow." English, Air (6/8 time). E Flat Major (Chappell): C Major (Cibber). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The song appears in The Merry Musician (ii. 129), Watts's Musical Miscellany (i. 62), Polly (1729), "and many other Ballad Operas" according to Chappell. The melody was the vehicle for a song in Theophilus Cibber's Scotch ballad opera Pate and Peggy (1730, Air VI). The words to the song begin:

Her age, I am sure, it was scarcely fifteen,
And she on her head wore a garland of green;
As down in the meadows I chanc'd for to pass,
O there I beheld a young beautiful lass.
Her lips were like rubies, and as for her eyes,
They sparkled like diamonds or stars in the skies;
And then, O her voice, it was charming and clear,
As sadly she sung for the loss of her dear.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times, Vol. 2), 1859; p. 127.

Recorded sources:

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