Aliens in This World

Probably everybody else knows this but me, but it’s a discovery for me.

As you may know, I’m reading The Worm Ouroboros over on my audiobook podcast, Maria Lectrix. Eddison’s novel includes a good many songs and poems, most of which are well-known Elizabethan or Jacobean poems. Since they’re sung in the text, I’ve been finding tunes for them that fit the same meter and are from the same general period.

This week I’m reading Chapter 9, which includes Herrick’s poem “The hag is astride, this night for to ride, the Devil and she together”. So I started looking around and found a MIDI of one of the dance tunes Playford used: “Devil’s Nag”. But it was not just a match — it was a perfect match! I’m pretty sure that said tune was written for Herrick’s lyrics, or vice versa! And “Devil’s Hag” and “Devil’s Nag” are pretty darned close….

So now I know a new old Halloween song!