Poor Johnny's Dead

DESCRIPTION: "Poor Johnny's dead, I hear his knell, Bim, bim, bome bell! The bell doth toll, O may his soul, In Heacen for ever dwell!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1770? (see notes); 1825 (_The Kaleidoscope_)
KEYWORDS: death nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, p. 301, "Poor Johnny's Dead" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Ox 185)
ADDITIONAL: The Kaleidoscope (1825, London ("Digitized by Google"), Vol. V, No. 257, (May 31, 1825), p. 406, "Poor Johnny's Dead" (1 text, 1 tune)
Thomas Ludford Bellamy, Lyric Poetry of Glees, Madrigals, Catches, Rounds, Canons, and Duets (1840, London ("Digitized by Google"), p. 356, ("Poor Johnny's Dead") (1 text)
Roud #1334
NOTES [125 words]: Oliphant: "Music by W. Cranford, one of the Singing-men of St Paul's Cathedral."
Wildridge at Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO quoting Williams: "They never popular with the ordinary village minstrels and were seldom, if ever, heard at the inns", referring to "Come Hither, Tom," "'Twas You, Sir," and "Poor Johnny's Dead." The Kaleidoscope: "A round"; Bellamy: "Catch, for 3 voices."
The current description is all of the Bellamy text.
Bellamy has the author as "Dr Hayes." The pdf 18th Century Secular Music Three and More Voices & BC (Amsterdam, 2006), p. 20, available at Muziekhandel Saul B. Groen site (copyright Meindert C Heer) lists "Poor Johnny's dead I hear his knell," a catch for three voices, as written by William Boyce, printed in 1770. - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: WT301A

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