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"Cuckolds All in a Row" also known as "Cuckolds All Awry" or "Hey Boys Up Go We" is an English
Jig (6/4 or 6/8 time) in G Major. The air, in its country dance iteration, appears in John
Playford's English Dancing Master of 1651 and in every subsequent edition through the end of the
long-running series, with the 18th (1728), then published by John Young in London.
"Cuckolds All Arow" was also published in all three editions of Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing
Master (1718, 1731, 1754).
As with many Playford country dance tunes, the melody was also used for a ballad (melodies were frequently used for both in the 17th and 18th centuries), registered in the Stationer's Register on June, 9, 1637, with words that are now lost but which began: "Not long ago, as all alone I lay upon my bed..." It was used as a party tune by the Cavaliers, according to Chappell (1859), who states that they sang the words of "Hey, boys, up go we" and "London's true character" to the tune. The latter song heaped abuse on the citizens of that town for siding against the King in the civil wars, and began "You coward-hearted citizens..."; it is printed in Rats rhimed to Death; or, The Rump Parliament hanged in the Shambles (1660) and in both editions of Loyal Songs written against the Rump Parliament. Cuckolds became the subject of ridicule in period broadside ballads and masquerades. Diarist Samuel Pepys (a middle-class government official with a long and successful career in the Navy office) attended a dance at the court of Charles II, misheard the name of the tune, and made this entry in his diary (which he kept in code) on the 31st of December, 1662:
It was printed in Barlow's Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1985), Barnes's English Country Dance Tunes (1986) (appears as "Hey Boys, Up Go We"), Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), Johnson's The Kitchen Musician No. 14: Songs, Airs and Dances of the 18th Century (1997), Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984) and Walsh's Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth (1740). It was recorded by Pyewackett on 7 to Midnight (1985), Kirkpatrick & Hutchings on The Compleat Dancing Master (1974), Hesperus on Early American Roots (1997) and Dance Across the Sea: Dances and Airs from the Celtic Highlands (1990). |