A PEPYSIAN GARLAND - online book

Black-letter Broadside Ballads Of The years 1595-1639

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	11 The history of Jonas Pepys, i, 28, B.L., three woodcuts, four columns. This may have been the ballad of "Jonas" that was licensed to William Griffith in 1562-63, or "ye story ofjonas" licensed to Alexander Lacy in 1567—68. Evidently similar in nature were ballads called "the mysse Deades ofjonas &c" (1569—70) and "nowe haue with ye to Ninive being a sonnet of Repentance" (September 5, 1586: Arber's Transcript, 1, 205, 355, 410; 11, 457). Edward Allde, the printer of the Pepysian ballad, printed ballads during the years 1584—1628: as a mere guess his "Jonah" may be dated 1615. It is a fairly close metrical paraphrase of the four chapters of the Book of Jonah. Possibly this is the ballad of "Jonas his Crying-out against Coventry" that the Fiddler in Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas (in, iii) says he can sing. The story of Jonah was, like that of Hero and Leander, a favourite for puppet-shows. The great dramatists took especial delight in ridiculing them. "There's a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, to be seen at Fleet-bridge," says Fungoso, in Jonson's Every Man out of His Humour, 1599, n» *• ^n Greene and Peele's Looking-Glass for London and England, 1594, a remarkable stage-direction runs: "Jonas is cast out of the whale's belly upon the stage." The tune of Paggington's (or Partington's) Pound (or Round), a tune (used by Ben Jonson for a ballad of his own composition in Bartholomew Fair) that always entails a very attractive metrical and stanzaic form, is given in Chappell's Popular Music, 1, 123. To the tune of Paggingtons round.
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