, the habit of performing
songs in three vocal parts. The singers were called Threeman-songmen,
and the songs themselves 'Threeman songs,' or 'Freemen's Songs.'
[_Freemen_ is simply a corruption of _Threemen_. Mr Aldis Wright tells
me it is analogous to _Thills_ or _Fills_, for the shafts of a waggon.
Rimbault, in the preface to 'Rounds, Canons, and Catches,' is highly
indignant with Ritson's 'inconceivably strange notion' that Freemen is
only a form of Threemen. Rimbault's reason was that 'Deuteromelia'
(1609) does contain Freemen's Songs in _four_ parts. Mr Aldis Wright
also gives me the expression '_six_-men's song,' from Percy's
Reliques, also these definitions, which will all go to settle the
matter: Florio, Italian Dictionary, 1611; _Strambotti_, country
gigges, rounds, catches, virelaies or _threemen's songs_; _Cantarini_,
such as sing _threemen's songs_; _Berlingozzo_.... Also a drunken or
_threemen's song_.
Cotgrave, French Dict. 1611; Virelay. m. A virelay, round, _free_mans
song].
Giraldus Cambrensis says that singing in parts was indigenous to the
parts beyond the Humber, and on the borders of Yorkshire. Threeman
singing may still be heard (not as an exotic), in Wales and the West
of England. This last is referred to in the above passage, 'There's
scarce a maid westward but she sings it'--viz., the song in three
parts.
Shakespeare is strictly historical in making a pedlar, and two country
lasses, capable of 'bearing a part' in a composition of this sort.
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