Let the singing singers
With vocal voices, most vociferous,
In sweet vociferation, out-vociferise
Ev’n sound itself.
HENRY CAREY: Chrononhotonthologos, ‘being the Most Tragical Tragedy that ever was tragediz’d by any company of tragedians’ (1734)
Carey’s parentage and the date of his birth remain a mystery. Poems on Several Occasions, his first book of poems, was published in London in 1713 (there were eventually three editions), and he spent some time in the capital teaching in boarding schools and private families. A talented musician, he was for a while a pupil of Dr Pepusch. Much of his early career was spent in theatres, writing prologues and epilogues for the plays of other authors, and composing music for their songs. He excelled in writing burlesques. Chrononhotonthologos, premiered at the Haymarket in 1734, parodies the inflated rhetoric of contemporary heroic tragedy, and The Dragon of Wantley (1737) is a wonderful burlesque of Italian opera which was performed sixty-seven times during the first season, thus surpassing Gay’s record of sixty-three nights for The Beggar’s Opera. Despite these successes, Carey remained poor all his life: because there was no adequate system of copyright, he suffered from plagiarism and unscrupulous printers. As he wrote bitterly in 1735: ‘Pyrate Printers rob me of my gain,/And reap the labour’d harvest of my brain’. In 1737 he set 100 of his best poems to music and published them as The Musical Century, which went into a second (1740) and a third (1743) edition. He hanged himself at his house in Dorrington Street, Coldbath Fields, on the morning of 4 October 1743, and also killed one of his sons, thus leaving a widow and four small children. Shortly after his death there was a benefit performance at Covent Garden in which Kitty Clive played a major part.
Many of Carey’s poems were written to be set to music; as he himself wrote in the second edition of Poems on Several Occasions: ‘Poetry being my amusement, not my profession, the following pieces appear in a much worse light than otherwise they would were I less taken up with business.’ Nonetheless, his burlesques and songs, composed in the wake of Gay’s The Beggars’ Opera, assure Carey of a place in eighteenth-century literary and musical history. He also coined the word namby-pamby, used to mock the sentimental poems of Ambrose Philips, which were also pilloried by Pope and Gay. He may possibly have been the author of ‘God save the King’.
The Argument
A vulgar error having long prevail’d among many persons, who imagine Sally Salisbury1 the subject of this ballad, the author begs leave to undeceive and assure them it has not the least allusion to her, he being a stranger to her very name at the time this song was compos’d. For as innocence and virtue were ever the boundaries of his muse, so in this little poem he had no other view than to set forth the beauty of a chaste and disinterested passion, even in the lowest class of human life. The real occasion was this: A shoemaker’s ’prentice, making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam2, the puppet-shews, the flying chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields, from whence proceeding to the farthing pye-house, he gave her a collation of buns, cheese-cakes, gammon of bacon, stuff’d beef, and bottl’d ale, through all which scenes the author dodg’d them, charm’d with the simplicity of their courtship, from which he drew this little sketch of nature; but being then young and obscure, he was very much ridicul’d by some of his acquaintance for this performance, which, nevertheless, made its way into the polite world, and amply recompensed him by the applause of the divine Addison3, who was pleased more than once to mention it with approbation.
Of all the girls that are so smart
There’s none like Pretty Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
There’s ne’er a lady in the land
That’s half so sweet as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart
And she lives in our alley.
[Her father he makes cabbage-nets,
And through the streets does cry ’em;
Her mother she sells laces long
To such as please to buy ’em;
But sure such folks could ne’er beget
So sweet a girl as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart
And she lives in our alley.]
When she is by I leave my work,
I love her so sincerely;
My master comes like any Turk
And bangs me most severely;
But let him bang his bellyfull,
I’ll bear it all for Sally;
She is the darling of my heart
And she lives in our alley.
Of all the days that’s in the week
I dearly love but one day,
And that’s the day that comes betwix
A Saturday and Monday,
For then I’m dressed all in my best
To walk abroad with Sally;
She is the darling of my heart
And she lives in our alley.
My master carries me to church,
And often I am blam’d
Because I leave him in the lurch
As soon as text is nam’d;
I leave the church in sermon time
And slink away to Sally;
She is the darling of my heart
And she lives in our alley.
[When Christmas comes about again,
O, then I shall have money;
I’ll hoard it up, and box and all,
I’ll give it to my honey;
And would it were ten thousand pounds,
I’d give it all to Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.]
My master and the neighbours all
Make game of me and Sally,
And, but for her, I’d better be
A slave, and row a galley;
But when my seven long years are out,
O, then I’ll marry Sally;
O, then we’ll wed, and then we’ll bed,
But not in our alley.
(Beethoven)
God save great George our King,2
Long live our noble King,
God save the King.
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the King.
O Lord our God, arise,
Scatter his enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politicks,
Frustrate their knavish tricks;
On him our hopes we fix;
O save us all.
Thy choicest gifts in store
On George be pleased to pour;
Long may he reign.
May he defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To say with heart and voice,
God save the King.