The company of 'men of hair,' calling themselves 'Saltiers,' may
derive their name from the dance, 'Saltarello.' Gallimaufry is
'Galimathias,' a muddle, or hotch potch. (See _Merry Wives_ II, i,
115).
The threemansong men are more particularly described in _Winter's
Tale_ IV, ii, 41.
_Clown._ She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the
_shearers; three-man song-men all, and very good ones_, but
they are _most of them means and bases_; but _one Puritan_
amongst them, and he _sings psalms to hornpipes_.
These musical harvesters square closely with the account given in the
Introduction, of music amongst the lower classes. Here were 24 good
glee singers, with the single defect that their tenors were very weak,
'most of them means [altos] and basses.' The Puritan was most
accommodating, and his singing the words of psalms to the tune of the
hornpipe would tend to shew that the Old Adam was not all put away as
yet. His compromise with his conscience reminds one of the old stories
(all too true) of church singers in the 15th and 16th centuries, who
would sing the by no means respectable words of popular comic ditties
to the solemn strains of the mass 'l'homme arme,' or whatever
well-known melody the music happened to be constructed on.
An example of a threemansong will be found in the Appendix, 'We be
soldiers three.'
Shakespeare also alludes to _sacred_ part-music.
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