Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

300 traditional songs, inc sheet music with full piano accompaniment & lyrics.

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	'TWAS WHEN THE SEAS WE HE ROARING.	129
	ence, catching the latter but taintly, were ready to dissolve in tears, while the rest were so convulsed with laughter, that the drift of the piece was forgotten in the enjoyment. Campbell says of the author: "The works of Gay are on our shelves, but not in our pockets,—in our remembrance, but not in our memories.' His fables are as good as a series of such pieces will, in all possibility, ever be. No one has envied him their produc­tion ; but many would like to have the fame of having written ' The Shepherd's Week,' 'Black-eyed Susan,' and the ballad that begins, "Twas when the Seas were Roaring.'*' Cowper, in a letter dated August 4, 1783, says: "What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or rather Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's, and Gay's, in the ' What-d'-ye-call-it?'—"Twas when the Seas were Roaring.' I have been well informed that they all contributed." The music of the ballad is from Handel. Handel, among the other great composers, is seldom associated with song music, but the time was, in England at least, when no con­cert programme was complete without several of Handel's songs. Many of his most beau­tiful melodies are never heard.
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