The Language of English Lute Songs

This short essay, compiled as a result of coaching many lutenist-singer duos, is intended to provide a bit of help for those whose first language is not English, but who want to understand the words of Elizabethan or Jacobean lute songs, madrigals, etc. Even native speakers who are unfamiliar with 16th or 17th century English literature sometimes have difficulty with these texts because of their often complex syntax and elaborate language, archaic grammar and vocabulary, variable spelling, and old-fashioned writing conventions. Some of these difficulties can be resolved quite easily by following the guidelines below. I write as a lutenist with an interest in old literature, not as a singer, so these explanations may help you to understand the texts, but they cannot help you to sing them!

An initial warning
Ornamented initial letters, especially in printed song books, can be so much larger than the main text, and look so purely decorative, that it is quite easy to omit them! This is especially common if the first word makes sense without that letter, e.g., where - here; she / the - he.

Interchangeable and unfamiliar letters
Both u and v were used as a vowel or a consonant: the rule was to use v at the beginning of a word, and u in the middle of a word, irrespective of whether the vowel or the consonant was needed. ‘Love’ was therefore written ‘loue’, have was written ‘haue’, universe was written ‘vniuerse’, etc.

The letters i and y were interchangeable. The letter j was not yet in use as a consonant, only as another alternative for i, giving us such odd-looking words as ‘reioyce’ (rejoice), ioy (joy), ‘iust’ (just), ‘eies’ (eyes), ‘heroyque’ (heroic), ‘Ielocie’ (jealousy).

The letter s was often written in a long form which looks more like f. The long s was used at the beginning of a word, or in the middle of a word, never at the end of a word. Double ss can be written with both letters long, which can look like ff, or with the first s long, which looks like fs. Ignorance of this rule can lead to disaster in songs such as Robert Johnson’s setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Where the bee sucks there suck I’, or Ferrabosco’s ‘last lamenting kisse which sucks two soules and vapours both away’.

In manuscripts (and many printed lute tablatures) the letter c looks more like modern r.

Common abbreviations and contractions
One letter of the Old English alphabet which survived was the thorn, a letter which, by the 16th century, looked a bit like y but was pronounced like a voiced ‘th’. It survived mainly in a few contractions such as ye (the), and yt (that). Note that ‘ye’ was also used for ‘you’, as in Dowland’s ‘All ye whom loue or fortune hath betrayd’.

A nasal m or n is often replaced with a tilde or macron, a little horizontal line above a vowel, indicating that you add an ‘n’ or ‘m’ after it: e.g., châge (change), lôg (long), strêgth (strength), whê (when). My computer software doesn't offer such niceties, so I have had to substitute a circumflex.

Verb inflections
Two different verb endings were in use for the present tense third person singular, the southern form ‘-eth’ and the northern form ‘-s’; e.g., cometh / comes, maketh / makes, giueth / giues (gives). The ‘-s’ form is the normal modern ending. The ‘-eth’ form was old-fashioned by the late 16th century, but was still used by poets because it offered a different syllabic pattern.

Pronouns
Modern English uses the second person pronoun ‘you’ for both singular and plural, and now makes no distinction based on social status or familiarity, unlike many European languages. However, in earlier English ‘you’ was the plural and polite pronoun, the equivalent of the French ‘vous’ or German ‘Sie’. The second person singular pronouns were thou (subject / nominative), and thee (object / accusative). Possession was indicated with thy (adjective) and thine (pronoun). However, ‘thine’ was also used as an adjective in front of a vowel, e.g., ‘thine eyes’. Using ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ implied familiarity or inferiority, the equivalent of the French ‘tu’ or German ‘du’. Some common verb conjugations using the old singular pronoun are:

thou dost (you do)

thou hast (you have)

thou art (you are)

thou wert (you were)

thou thinkest / thinkst (you think)

thou mayest (you may)

Some examples:
'Hope thy keeper glad to free thee, Bids thee goe and will not see thee, hye thee quickly from thy wrong...' (Dowland, 2nd Booke, ‘Dye not before thy day’)
'Then sit thee downe, and say thy Nunc Dimittis' (Dowland, 2nd Booke).

The use of thou, thee, thy, etc, may indicate closeness or familiarity (e.g., between lovers), or inferiority (and thus sometimes an implied insult), subtleties which are quite impossible to convey in modern English. A common mistake is to assume that ‘thou’ is more formal than ‘you’, since it is now associated with Biblical language, or supposedly high-brow literature.

Word endings
Many words were written with a final e, which is no longer used, e.g., dreame, thinke, daye. Usually these words are simple to recognize, but occasionally they can be confused with a different word, e.g., 'doe' (do).

The past tense ‘-ed’ ending on verbs (looked, played, suffered) was usually pronounced as a separate syllable in Elizabethan English. This last syllable could be lost, as in modern English, but this was usually shown by replacing -ed with -t or -’d, e.g., increast / increas’d (increased). The -ed ending can also be reversed to -de, e.g., ‘loude’ (loved), ‘aymde’ (aimed), ‘depriude’ (deprived). If the -ed ending is used, the final syllable should usually be pronounced, e.g., ‘to bee aduancéd so’ in Dowland’s ‘I saw my ladye weep’. This is very important when fitting words to music.

Words which now end in -y often ended in -ie, e.g.,‘onelie’ (only), lonelie (lonely)

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The Great Vowel Shift
This was a long and complex process of change in English vowel pronunciation, which happened between the 14th and 17th centuries. During this period all long vowels were raised, or became diphthongs. This is not the place for an extended discussion; singers only need to know that pronunciation (and therefore spelling, which was quite phonetic) was in a state of flux during the period when lute songs were written. This can make words harder to recognize, and some flexibility in thinking is required. Some common spelling differences to watch out for include double consonants replaced with single, and single with double; e.g.,‘sinne’ (sin), ‘sadde’ (sad), ‘vppe’ (up), ‘prety’ (pretty). Long vowels were often written double, e.g., shee, mee, bee. Modern diphthongs may be written as single vowels, e.g., ‘grone’ (groan), ‘perl’ (pearl), ‘wold’ (would). Strange-looking spellings may reflect an old or regional pronunciation quite different from the modern pronunciation, e.g., comfit (comfort), tong (tongue), mesur (measure), bewty (beauty) sullayne (sullen). Some words which were clearly intended to rhyme may not rhyme in modern pronunciation. The range of different spellings for the same sounds in modern English will usually offer you some alternatives to try, if you cannot identify a word.

Words found in lute songs, which are no longer in common use:
Beadsman - originally one who offered prayers for another person, by Dowland’s day it meant servant
Dight - to dress, adorn, prepare
Eke - also
Ere - before, previously
Fain(e) has two distinct meanings. 1) glad, gladly, willingly, to be obliged or compelled, e.g. Campion, ‘Faine would I wed a fair young man’. 2) to feign or dissemble, e.g., Dowland, ‘Thinkst thou then by thy fayning sleepe...’
Feat - clever, elegant, neat
Hie - to hasten or go quickly
Hither - here
Physick (various spellings) - medicine, remedy
Sith - since
Sprite / spright - spirit
Sute - courtship, as in suitor
Swain - servant, youth or herdsman/shepherd
Thither - there
Whither - where
Wight - person

Some suggestions for further reading:
Bill Bryson, ‘Mother Tongue: The English Language’, Penguin Books, London, 1990. An amusing and very readable history of world English, this also covers some points of historical development, and the origins of words or grammatical constructions.

Dennis Freeborn, ‘From Old English to Standard English: A Course Book in Language Variation Across Time.’ 2nd edition, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 1998. Very technical. Essentially a study book, with many extracts from original texts, some modernised, some not, and sections requiring the student to analyse texts.

James Orchard Halliwell, ‘Dictionary of Archaic Words’, London, 1850, reprint Bracken Books, London, 1989. Useful and immensely entertaining reference work.

© Lynda Sayce, 2005

 

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