In close connection with these funeral songs is the passage in _Hen.
VIII._ IV, ii, 77, where Queen Katherine, sick, requests her
gentleman-usher to get the musicians to play a favourite piece of this
class--
... Good Griffith,
Cause the musicians play me _that sad note
I named my knell_, whilst I sit meditating
On that celestial harmony I go to.
[She sleeps, then, waking from the vision--]
... Bid the music leave,
They are harsh and heavy to me.
It would be of great interest if it were possible to identify Queen
Katherine's 'Knell.'
There is an old song, given in Chappell's Popular Music, 'O Death,
rock me to sleep,' which might be the very one, for both music and
words are singularly appropriate. The Refrain is as follows:--
'Tole on thou passing bell
Ringe out my dolefull _knell_
Let thy sound my death tell,
For I must die,
There is no remedye.'
The song is most plaintive, and has a very striking feature in the
shape of a real independent accompaniment, which keeps up a continual
figure of three descending notes, like the bells of a village church.
Hawkins gives the poem, with certain variations, and two extra verses
at the beginning, the first commencing--
'Defiled is my name full sore,
Through cruel spite and false report.'
and he says the verses are thought to have been written by Anne
Boleyn.
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