‘JOY to great Caesar’: popular songs on Farinel’s Ground in late 17th-century England

Abstract This article represents a follow-up to a previous article on ‘Farinel’s Ground’, published in the May 2021 issue of this journal. There, I had focused on the numerous instrumental versions of this extremely popular ground bass, not least because the late 17th- and early 18th-century folia—as it was known more widely across Europe—seems to have been primarily an instrumental genre. Nevertheless, the popularity of this ground in the 1680s—and of some of the divisions associated with it—gave rise to a number of vocal versions or ballads, some of which may have been at least comparable in popularity to the instrumental versions printed in The Genteel Companion (1683) and The Division-Violin (1684). Sharing the same melody and bass (whether notated or implied), these ballads were written and published during some of the most turbulent years in British history (1682–1702). While the origins of the first of these, Thomas D’Urfey’s The King’s Health or ‘JOY to great Caesar’, can be traced to the violin and recorder divisions on Farinel’s Ground published at more or less the same time as D’Urfey’s song, the song itself seems to have spawned a number of offshoots, including later instrumental versions referring to its textual incipit. Resulting from a study of the music, text and context of songs on ‘Farinel’s Ground, this article also discusses issues applicable to English broadside ballads of the 17th century more generally, such as changes in the political environment and the at times almost decorative function of musical notation on broadsides.