Occasional Folk Songs

A Caveat for Cutpurses &

Packington's Pound

Several years ago I was browsing a bookstall at the Society of Recorder Players (UK) national festival when I came across a book of Broadside Ballads. It had a wonderful selection of songs from the 17^th Century complete with tunes and the song “A Caveat for Cutpurses” was taken from that book.

Broadside ballads were songs printed on a single sheet of paper, usually two to four songs on a sheet sometimes with music but mostly without. The more usual practice being to specify a popular tune of the day for the song to be sung to. The Broadsides were sold round the country at local fairs and markets usually for one penny. Broadside sellers were often in league with cutpurses who frequented the fairs relieving people of their money. A common practice was for the seller to gather a crowd round him and before starting his patter would warn the members of the crowd to beware of cutpurses. The natural reaction was for people to check that they still had their purses which would be suspended by a string from their belts, often out of sight under their outer garment so as to prevent the cutpurses taking them. The cutpurses would note which side the people had tapped and move in to take them. A bit of seemingly accidental jostling and an apology and you don't notice your money has gone till it's too late.

The song says something of that as well as pointing out the penalties if you get caught, usually hanging. The original in the book is much longer but most of the verses were simply reiteration of the way they worked so I just kept enough verses to tell the basic story.

The original song, in shorter form, came from a comedy by Ben Jonson called “Bartholomew Fair” which dates from 1614. The tune is called “Packington's Pound” and dates from the late sixteenth century. It is thought to have been named after a courtier of Elizabeth I, Sir John Packington. It was a very popular tune of the period and was often specified for ballads, especially for ones relating to crime and punishment.

My recording, I have kept very simple just using a shruti box to provide a drone accompaniment. At the end, I play the tune at a quicker tempo on an alto recorder. I was originally going to use a soprano recorder for this, but I realised that if I played it on an alto with the same fingering I could keep the shruti box drone at the same pitch.