In addition to creating and producing this lovely Tudor Summit, Heather has the longest continuously running indie history podcast, the Renaissance English History Podcast, which she started in 2009. Even before then, though, she has been writing about history online since 1998 when she built her first history website, the Colonial American Gazette. But her passion for history didn’t start there – she was a student docent at a Revolutionary War home in Lancaster PA from the time she was 15, in 1991.
She is passionate about Tudor music, which was her gateway into the Tudor period (singing William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus as a choral nerd in high school) and she has a weekly radio program in the UK called the Tudor Music Hour. She has just launched the Tudor Radio Network, an internet radio station that is All Tudors All the Time.
She has written for Medievalists.net, has appeared on leading history podcasts, and has publishing several books. She has an online shop where she sells what she lovingly calls Tudor Swag (you can also get the very popular Tudor Planner there) and she created a monthly subscription box service, Treasures from Bess (named after Bess of Hardwick) – a monthly box filled with Tudor themed treats. All of that is at TudorFair.com.
Heather’s Links: The Tudor Radio Network The Renaissance English History Podcast Watching the Tudors: A podcast where we go through each episode of the Tudors and break down the stories behind the drama The Tudor Fair Shop (see below for a special discount for the Tudor Summit!) Tudorcon (see below for a special Tudor Summit discount!)
Books: The Tudor Activity Book of Puzzles Sideways and Backwards, a novel of time travel and self discovery
Here’s the Spotify Playlist from this talk
Video Transcript:
“And welcome back to the Tudor Summit. The next speaker is me! So we’re going to actually do a lot of listening to music during my talk, which is what I like to do during my talks, because my particular passion in Tudor England is the music. So we’re going to do a lot of listening to music. Okay, so
we’re going to actually talk about, and listen to some madrigals for Springtime, which is going to be super fun and I think they’re like top songs, and they have some innuendos, and I think it’s quite fun to listen to them.
So we’re going to listen, but let me introduce myself to you for those of you who do not know who I am. My name is Heather, like I said, and in 2009 I started the Renaissance English History Podcast, which makes it the longest continuously running indie History Podcast. So I’m very proud of that, 10 years old.
And also I have published some books, my novel Sideways and Backwards, a novel of time travel and self discovery where a modern woman gets stuck in 1539 Cambridge, and I do the Tudor Radio Network, which is the world’s first online radio station devoted to all Tudor talk and music. So
I have links to all of this here somewhere on this page.
And I also the world’s first-ever Tudorcon. So if you are anywhere near Pennsylvania and you want to come to to Tudorcon, the world’s first one, October of 2019, there’s going to be you and 120 of your new best Tudor friends. And we’re all going to get together have three days of learning and parties and feasting some of the leading bloggers and authors in the Tudor world are going to give us an amazing talk. So that is what I do. And that’s who I am.
Let me talk to you about madrigals. So I love madrigals because every kid in high school chamber choir sings madrigals like Now is the Month of Maying that was the first one I sang, when I was like 16 and I love it because you see these these kids that are in their tuxedos and their satin dresses. We wore these kind of satiny dresses and singing Now is the Month of Maying which is a song about rolling in the hay with the opposite sex. Right? And I always think it’s it’s quite amusing to to listen to some of these lyrics and play some for you now. So madrigals actually started in Northern Italy and it’s a form of songwriting.
It’s just kind of a verse and then chorus, and they tell stories. So they are more than
kind of a ballad, like of a battle, which is what you see more during the Middle Ages. Famous pieces like the Agincourt Carol, which tells the story of the Battle of Agincourt. Madrigals are more fun,
and such a beautiful example of the culture of the Renaissance, and humanism where we can celebrate what’s going on now in life now, and we can sing just for the sake of singing, and we don’t have to sing about these Tales of Battles in and church music – we can just sing just because it’s fun to sing. Who doesn’t love to sing. Right? And so they migrate north, madrigals do, so that by the age of Elizabeth we have what’s of course called the Golden Age Elizabeth – much of the culture of Elizabeth
is the golden age, right? So there’s two Golden Age of Exploration or the Golden Age of whatever –
Madrigals are huge part of that.
So what I’m going to do, madrigals are great for spring because a lot of them are just set outside and they tell these stories of shepherds and shepherdesses, and they’re all they’re very clever, and a lot of them have great word play. So what I’m going to do is tell you about a couple and I’m going to play them. So this talk is not just me talking it me talking with some music. So it’s a little bit more interactive.
The first one like I said that I’m going to talk to you about is Now is the Month of Maying by Thomas Morley. And so Now is the Month of Maying as the lyrics say, now is the month of maying when merry lads are playing. Each with his bonnie lass upon the greeny grass, and they tell the story of having a good time and rolling in the grass, as one does. One of the lyrics mentions a game and it says shall we play barley break? What was really break? What was this game of barley right that they were talking about? This gets a little bit bawdy. So if there’s little ears around you might want to plug them.
So the game of barley break was very popular during this time, and you get three pairs – a man and a woman so three sets of a man and woman and the pairs were each stationed at three different bases next to each other and a couple in the middle base which was called either hell or prison. They would try to catch the other two. So those other two, they can break to avoid being caught. Once they are caught they were the ones in hell and often plays from this time use the phrase, the last couple in hell and that comes as well from the game of barley break.
So where the grown-up part comes is how this was seen in literature. So in The Changeling written by Thomas Middleton – William Riley, a man who has slept with another man’s wife tells the husband I coupled with your mate at barley break, now we are left in hell. So it generally means something similar to the idea of a roll in the hay. So let’s listen now to Now is the Month of Maying by Thomas Morley and try and see if you can catch that lyric about playing barley break. Okay, and now you know what that is.
[Music]
Wasn’t that fun? I absolutely love this madrigal. I also adore the next one, called Come Again. Got some innuendo there. So it was published in 1597. It sounds kind of melancholy and not really as happy as I was that last one, but it’s lyrics tell the story about this kind of melancholy love.
Come Again,
Sweet love doth now invite
Thy graces that refrain
To do me due delight
To see, to hear to touch to kiss, to die with thee again, in sweetest sympathy.
It’s such a beautiful song and actually, I’m going to play a version that Sting did because there’s very little in the world that goes better than Sting and John Dowland.. He actually had an album several years ago called Songs of the Labyrinth where he played a lot of different music, and one of his was Come Again. So listen to this magical and tell me it’s not one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever heard.
Come Again by John dowland
[Music]
So wasn’t that gorgeous that John Dowland was amazing. The next song we’re going to listen to is called Hey Trolly Lolly Lo. It is an anonymous.
And it’s another very famous one that High School chamber choirs sing – it’s hard to listen to this lyric now in the kind of post me-too movement because it does tell us a story about a shepherd a boy meeting up with a girl, I don’t know if he’s a shepherd, but he’s a boy she is on her way to the meadow to milk her cow and he get this idea that they should go “a-sporting” in the meadow where they won’t be seen, and then she says well, you know, thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to go to a-sporting with you in the meadow because my mom might see me and then I would have lost all my virtue and it’s not worth it for me to do that with you. And so that first lyric says, now in this meadow fair and green we may sport and not be seen, and she says Nay in good faith. I will not meld with you. May God forbid that may not be, that may not be, it with my mother than I shall see. And the the song is basically him pressuring her and he finally lets up. But he warns her that the next time he might not be so cool about it. He says then for this once I shall use bear. next time you must be aware. How in the meadow you milk a cow. And she says let me go and I’m not going to go sport with you.
So it’s a little bit tough for me to listen to these lyrics now, 400 years later and this postmodern world, but I think it’s important to remember that a lot of these songs did… there was euphemism there was
bawdiness going on, and it wasn’t necessarily a reflection of what it was like in real life, but just like today with a lot of the kind of pop songs that aren’t necessarily a complete reflection of real life for most of us. These songs will be sung in jest, and in good fun. And so it’s it’s difficult to not put our
modern ideas on them, but I think it’s important to just let them stand for themselves.
So let’s listen to Hey Trolly Lolly Lo, and the story of the girl going to milk her cow who nearly goes as sporting.
[Music]
Next we’re going to listen to Fair Phyllis I Saw Sitting All Alone. And this is by John Farmer. This is again a late 16th century. I think was published in 1599. And the thing that is really interesting about the song is the way he handles word painting – the word painting was really popular during this time and you see it in all kinds of different madrigals were people are using the lyrics and music to actually add emphasis to the words like in this one. It’s pretty much the best example of word painting in any madrigal that’s out there. So notice how we listen to an exchange with the up-and-down. There’s a lot of the verse is always up and down up and down and it’s very interesting to listen to it. So it tells the story of a young shepherdess. And she was feeding her sheep near the mountain, Fair Phyllis. Then she’s gone missing from the other Shepherds. And her lover Amyntis hurries through the hills wandering up and down up and down up and down looking for her and then he finds her. And they fall down kissing as you do and they’re kissing in the grass and he does a bit more wandering up and down up and down up and down. So it’s a really interesting and fun way that John Farmer paints the picture with the words and it’s got a
really popular song to listen to. So take a listen to Fair Phyllis by John Farmer.
[Music]
It was fun, right?
Next we’re going to talk about Who Made Thee Hob by William Byrd. So generally when I want to talk about Byrd, I talk about him as the recusant Catholic. His Ave Verum Corpus is what got me into Tudor music in high school, listening to this piece that he wrote for Catholics when he was writing under Elizabeth, and learning about him being a recusant – that’s normally what I think of when I think of Byrd. But he did write, in addition to all of the illegal masses that he wrote, he also wrote pop music. So this song, Who Made Thee Hob, he’s talking about a lowly shepherd, in love with a woman much, much higher in rank. And listen again to the word painting when they say. when they’re having this conversation and he says, “Oh, Hob I fear, she looks to high,” listen to the word painting that goes on with that. You can really hear birds clever personality. And I’m sure he probably enjoyed this time to just have some fun outside of the liturgical scene. So this is Byrd, Who Made Thee Hob.
[Music]
So we’re going to listen to two more. First we’re going to listen to John Farmer’s A Pretty Little
Bonnie Lass. And it tells the story of yet another springtime love, or lust, that has gone unrequited.
A Pretty Little Bonnie Lass was walking in the midst of May before the sunrise. I took her by the hand and fell to talking of this and that as best I could devise, I swore I would, yet still she said I should not do what I would, and yet for all I could not.
So listen to how much John Farmer has fun with this and that lyrics again, you can see him coming through in these pop songs. I think it’s a really cool way that musicians were able to show up what they were capable of in a way that was accessible to normal people who wanted to just sing along with it.
[Music]
And the final one we’re going to listen to is another William Byrd madrigal, and this is another favorite. It’s the sweet and merry month of May and Byrd shows why he was able to stay in favor despite being a Catholic. He bring some patriotism into the song. So he says, this sweet a merry month of May, while nature wantons in her prime and birds to sing and beasts to play for pleasure of the joyful time. I chose first for the holiday and greet Eliza with a rhyme o beauteous queen of second Troy, So he’s kind of
appealing to Elizabeth, and appealing to the patriotism, calling her the beauty is Queen of second Troy. If I was Elizabeth I would be happy with that idea as well wouldn’t you?
[Music]
So there we are with some of the most famous springtime madrigals to listen to. I’ll do a playlist of this. So I’ll put a link to a Spotify playlist so that you can listen ongoingly, and as the sun comes out and life gets warmer in spring time comes back, here in the northern hemisphere.
Sorry, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, but as we greet springtime again, I think it’ll be fun to listen to some of these springtime madrigals and have them on rotation.
Let me tell you more about where you can find out about me the Renaissance English History Podcast. It’s at Englandcast.com. And there’s also my shop TudorFair.com where I have products that are at lovingly curated that are Tudor themed, and actually there’s a special Summit Discount going on in TudorFair.com.
And that’s good for I think the next week so you can check that out and grab some two door swag. I also have tudorradionetwork.com, and you can listen to the to Radio Network anywhere you have an internet connection – it’s all Tudor all the time, and there’s apps to listen on your phone, all that kind of stuff. So you can listen to the Tudor Radio Network anytime and then Tudorcon – so the first Tudorcon, so if you are anywhere near Pennsylvania, plan on coming and spending October 18th to 20th with us.
Thank you so much for listening. I talk I love sharing to your music is my favorite thing to do and I’m thrilled that I got to share some of the stuff with you. I hope you had fun listening to it. Alright, see you in the next video.”