To the Prurient, All Things Are Prurient

I'm rather fond of eighteenth century period popular music. I'm also rather fond of inflicting such music upon my class. There is an enjoyable kind of overweening power and despotic decadence in compelling your students to sing an obscure eighteenth century song like "The Vicar of Bray" ("Sing! Sing about the Stuart and Hanoverian lines right now! Pretend that without Queen Anne, you are doomed!!!!!"). It's a great way to learn the historical context of the literature, it's fun to sing, and it's helpful to see literature as participating in a wider conversation that includes a variety of genres and voices (e.g. philosophy, art, sermons, caricatures, etc.).

Now, to the best of my knowledge, there's not a lot of "popular" 18th century music available on CD, except for the bawdy songs. (Many of the famous 17th century plays actually included popular songs in their performance, but are they available on CD? No! Although I'd be happy if anyone can prove me wrong.) In the 18th century, one of the most famous collections of printed songs was Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy. I'm not really sure how many of the songs are about sex, but apparently, approximately 100% of those on CD are. The two CDs I've been able to find with D'Urfey's music are "My Thing is my own: Bawdy Songs of Thomas D'Urfey," and "Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy: Lewd Songs and Low Ballads from the 18th Century." (I have to admit feeling a little strange, after I put them on my Amazon wishlist, and my parents got me one of them.) It's not as if I'm actively soliciting dirty songs: I just want some 18th century tunes that have some lyrics (so John Playford's instrumentals are out) and have a little life in them, not a petit morte. Even if the songs are bawdy, so is much of the literature I'll probably be teaching one day, such as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. A lot of the songs have interesting things to say about male-female relations that would be useful in teaching a work like Richardson's Pamela, which is about a man who attempts to seduce his maid.

Now back when I was a Latin teacher, there was a special "Love Reading Day" (or some catchy name like that) in which we teachers were encouraged to share with our students something we had read that we really enjoyed. I decided, since I was going to enter a Ph.D program in the eighteenth century, and I was teaching Latin, I would read "Slawkenbergius's Tale" from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Slawkenbergius's Tale, written in both Latin and English, is a fun whimsical story about a man who goes to "The Promontory of Noses" to get a large nose. I thought it would be a great story to share with my students at this nice, conservative Christian school where I was teaching. Well, I learned less than a year later that "nose" was really code for "less visible male anatomy," and suddenly, all the women's wanting to touch the guy's nose and their discussions whether his nose was real no longer seemed quite as innocently whimsical and Wonderlandesque. I share this story only to emphasize that it is very important, as a future teacher, to be able to recognize the ribald so you can be aware when you are poisoning young minds.

Anyway, recognition of this need has led to the odd experience, while listening to these CDs, of training myself to look for double-meanings. This can be more challenging than you might expect. For instance, I was listening to the CD, "Lewd Songs and Low Ballads." Sometimes I think a double-entendre is going on, but I can't for the life of me understand what the phrase actually means. For example, a soldier, a sailor, a tinker, and a tailor all go to propose marriage to "Buxome Joan," who chooses the Sailor because "he let fly at her, a Shot 'twixt Wind and Water, which won this fair Maid's heart." While I inferred that sex was somehow involved, its relation to wind and water was unclear until my wife explained it to me.

The next song on the CD is in the Scottish dialect, about two lovers, Jenny and Jockey. Well, when you don't know half the words because they're Scottish, and all the songs you've been listening to so far are about men seducing women, etc., you presume the Scottish words must have exceptionally naughty meanings. (After all, apparently the Wallace and Gromit movie had a lot of innuendo only detectable to a British audience.) So, I started trying to figure out what's going to be bad this time: "Then Jenny made a Curtsshy low, until the Stairs did touch her Dock;" "Dock? That's sailor talk, must mean something dirty," I think to myself. "Then Jockey tuke Jenny by the Nease"; "Tell him to stop groping you, Jenny!" I think to myself.

At some point in the song, I realize that Jenny and Jockey have entered a church. "Well, that seems a rather strange thing to do in a dirty song," I think to myself. I eventually came to realize that they were getting married, and when Jockey "tuke Jenny by the Nease," he was proposing marriage! Now, bad as it might feel to share a dirty story with a Latin I class, interpreting a marriage proposal as a gropefest can leave you feeling rather unclean.
And I'm still not sure what was going on in the song. But I do feel that there should have been some sort of advisory label, "Warning: Some of the songs contained on this lewd album include lyrics about chaste people getting married," to avoid this kind of thing.