Mojo, The Bard, & Me

                                 So merrily,

-Silence

King Henry The Fourth Part II        Act V, Scene iii, Line 21

When I was a kid reading Tolkien I would often skim, if not entirely skip, the parts where he went into song (especially when they got long) in his stories. I really enjoyed his storytelling and I found his verse more or less an unwanted interruption from the story. And besides, I reckoned, JRR was not poet.

Will is a poet, and this is a short song that he's added. It's a scene with Falstaff and the crew in an orchard. Here's the whole song. 

         Do nothing but eat, and make good cheer,
         And praise God for the merry year;
         When flesh is cheap and females dear,
         And lusty lads roam here and there
                           So merrily,
         And ever among so merrily.

And that's it; nice and short. Now when I read, or skimmed, or totally skipped Tolkien's songs (and a lot of them were really long; he often referred to them as 'lays') I assumed that he had written them. This was based on the fact that he was working in a purely fictional world and most of what was going on, including some of the language, was totally made up by him. It wouldn't have made sense for him to be using songs from the real world.

However, when I read/hear/see Will's songs, especially short little ditties like this, I can't help but wonder if Will wrote them or if they are something that was out there already and popular in his day. After all, Will's stories take place in the real world and he incorporates of lot of real stuff in his plays, especially his history plays like this one.

So what do you think? Is Will making up a song, or is this a popular little ditty of the day? I guess we could find a historian who might know the answer, but I sure don't.

Now clearly this guy was either making up the songs, or perhaps getting them from that guy with the beard, but either way they were not from our world!