King Shall Enjoy His Own Again, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer claims he can forsee the future as well as Booker: "all things will be well When the king shall enjoy his own again"; else "the times will never mend, ... the wars will never cease, ... rejoice will never I again"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1745 (Denis Hempson, according to Bunting)
KEYWORDS: royalty nonballad political Jacobites
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Hogg-JacobiteRelicsOfScotlandVol1 1, "The King Shall Enjoy His Own Again" (1 text, 1 tune)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. When the King Enjoys His Own Again (tune) and references there
NOTES [522 words]: Hogg-JacobiteRelicsOfScotlandVol1: "What Booker doth prognosticate" refers to a man of Charles I's time who "went about prognosticating the downfall of the king and popery, which were terms synonymous at that day." [A slightly exaggerated statement, since Charles I was a genuine Anglican. But he was a very high-church Anglican. The downfall of Charles I meant that religious services got rid of a lot of ritual and costume and repetition and flummery. - RBW]
Hogg-JacobiteRelicsOfScotlandVol1: "It is with particular pleasure that I am enabled to restore to the public the original words of the most famous and most popular air ever heard of in this country; although, at the same time, it must be confessed, that it does not appear to have been originally a Scottish air, though many a Scottish ditty has been made to it.... It was invented at first to support the declining cause of the royal martyr, Charles I.; and served afterwards, with more success, to keep up the spirits of the cavaliers, and promote the restoration of his son; an event it was employed to celebrate all over the kingdom.... [The lines,] 'Full forty years this royal crown Has been his father's and his own.' ... fixes the date of the song to 1643...." [James VI and I, the first Stuart king of England and the father of Charles I, succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne in 1603. - RBW]
Of the harper Denis Hempson, "[in] his second trip to Scotland, in the year 1745 ... being at Edinburgh when Charley the Pretender was there, he was called into the great hall to play ... the tune called for was, 'The king shall enjoy his own again:' he sung here part of the words following: 'I hope to see the day When Whigs shall run away, And the king shall enjoy his own again.'" (source: Edward Bunting, The Ancient Music of Ireland (Mineola, 2000 (reprint of 1840 Dublin edition)), p. 75.) The words quoted by Bunting are not part of Hogg's "original" text, but the pattern matches Hogg's text. As Hogg points out the song had many versions; the air "appears to have had an influence on the popular mind quite unequalled by any thing of the kind ever before known. Nothing can be a better proof of this than the strenuous endeavors of the Whigs to enlist it on their own side," and he follows with a Whig version (p. 156).
The following note from Kate Van Winkle Keller, partner in The Colonial Music Institute, is quoted with her permission.
"You'll find the early history of this tune in Simpson's British Broadside Ballad & its Music [(New Brunswick, 1966)], 764-768. It was heavily used in the 1680s and 90s for political songs in England and faded out by the 1720s. It did persist here and there into the early 19th century and was revived in the 20th century as a candidate for the supposed "World Turned upside Down" tune beat by the British drums after Yorktown. It has been heavily reprinted in reenactor's books and is played by revival fife and drum corps.
I find Hogg's claim a bit on the extreme side, thinking about all the other beautiful Scots song that abound in songbooks of the 1745-1800 period, many of them with Jacobite leanings." - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: Hogg1001

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