Turkeyloney (If Ever I Marry)

DESCRIPTION: "If ever I marry, I'll marry a maid; To marry a widow I'm sore afraid"; widows "know too much," but maids are agreeable. He extends the comparison, and says at the end that some think bachelors are happiest of all
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: tune is known from 1596; text is from "the reign of James I" (source: Chappell)
KEYWORDS: marriage nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 95-95, "Turkeyloney" (1 text, 1 tune, with no evidence that they belong together)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic, pp. 237-238, "Turkeyloney" (1 tune, with no associated text)
MANUSCRIPT: Dublin, Trinity College, MS. 408 [William Ballet's Lute Book]
Roud #23359
NOTES [106 words]: There is apparently a manuscript of this in the Vaughan Williams collection, so I have indexed it, but I have no real evidence that it's traditional -- or, indeed, that Chappell's text and tune belong together. If they were collected together, I rather suspect that it was learned from print. It's certainly not a very nice text.
The primary source of the tune "Turkeyloney," William Ballet's Lute Book, has been scanned and is available at https://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP983457-Ballet%5FW-Lute%5FBook.pdf (accessed 7/15/2023) -- but I can't tell you the page on which the tune is located; none of my sources give that information. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: CPMOTurk

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