The Mousetrap
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"The Mousetrap" also known as "Old Hob" is an English air in 6/8 time and C Major.<br> The air appears in the third and fouth editions of The Second Volume of the Dancing Master<br> (London, 1718), published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns.<br> The same tune and titles were also published by<br> Walsh and Hare in The Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1719) and in<br> later editions of that volume in 1735 and by son John Walsh in the 1749 edition. <br> The song "Mouse Trap" (to the same air as the country dance) can be found in the first<br> volume of Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719, as<br> "Marriage, or, The Mouse Trap"), Watts' Musical Miscellany (1731), and on numerous song<br> sheets. It also provided the vehicle for songs in ballad operas such as John Gay's<br> The Beggar's Opera (1728 as "Maid is like the golden ore"), The Generous Freemason,<br> Fielding's The Patron; or, An Old Man Taught Wisdom (1734) and other staged works. <br> William Chappell (1855) records that the words are by Thomas D'Urfey set to a tune that<br> appeared first in a 1696 play written by Doggett called The Country Wake. <br> Of all the simple things we do, <br> To rub over a whimsical life;<br> There's no one folly is so true,<br> As that very bad bargain, a wife.<br> We're just like a mouse in a trap,<br> Or rat that is caught in a gin;<br> We start and fret, and try to escape,<br> And rue the sad hour we came in.<br> The song was also included in Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany (1725) and other<br> anthologies. <br> It was printed in Chappell's A Collection of National English Airs (1840), Chappell's<br> Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 2 (1855), Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984)<br> and Wooldridge's Old English Popular Music, vol. 2 (1893). <br>
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