Henry Lawes and Charles Cotton

Hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton and pious Izaak Walton shared enthusiasms other than their common devotion to angling. Both of these seventeenth-century fishermen had some proficiency in singing, and wrote verse to be set to music. Walton, it will be recalled, “made a conversion of an old ketch, and added more to it,” for which Henry Lawes composed the melody of The Angler's Song. Charles Cotton in imitation of Walton's verse, or out of admiration for Lawes' music, wrote The Angler's Ballad, which can be sung to the tune for Walton's ketch. But Cotton's song writing was not limited to the fitting of new words to old measures. A number of his poems were set by Mr. Coleman, and one, The Picture, received the distinction of being “Set by Mr. Laws,” the composer who had provided the music not only for Walton's Angler's Song, but for Milton's Comus songs, for Shakespeare's sonnet cxvi, and for a great many other sixteenth and seventeenth century lyrics.