The Gelding of the Devil
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English country dance
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"The Gelding of the Devil" is an English country dance tune in 6/4 or 6/8 time in G Dorian.<br> It is sometimes given in C Minor or A Dorian as well. The parts are sometimes played AA' or ABB<br> but Playford has it as AABB.<br> "Gelding of the Devil" was printed on broadsheet ballads and was also known as "The Prettiest<br> Jest That E'r Was Known" or "The Card Players". The dance version of the tune was first published<br> with country dance directions by John Playford in 1657 in The Dancing Master, third edition.<br> It was retained in the series through the sixth edition of the volume (1679) but in the next<br> two editions the melody was replaced by another tune with the same title. A different melody<br> called "Gelding of the Devil" appears in Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719)<br> where the words begin: <br> Now listen a while, and I will tell,<br> Of the Gelding of the Devil of Hell;<br> And Dick the Baker of Mansfield Town,<br> To Manchester Market he was bound,<br> And under a Grove of Willows clear,<br> This Baker rid on with a merry Cheer:<br> Beneath the Willows there was a Hill,<br> And there he met the Devil of Hell.<br> The ballad in considerably older than D'Urfey's volume and can be found in the Pepys ballad<br> collection of 1656. <br> It was printed in Barlow's Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1985),<br> Merryweather's Merryweather's Tunes for the English Bagpipe (1989), Sharp's Country Dance Tunes<br> (1909). <br> <br>
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