ing amongst his betters. As he says, 'For Jak wold be a Jentilman that late was a grome.'
Evidently 'Jak' had managed to make good his position as a fashionable teacher of singing, in spite of the defects plainly mentioned in the above verses. In the first verse, 'counter' is a musical term, here used with the meaning of 'to embroider' the tale. 'Knack' is still used in Yorkshire for 'affected talk.' 'Monachord' is the ancient one-stringed fiddle called Tromba Marina, and is here used as a joke on 'monachi' or 'holy water clarks.' In verse 2, 'rule and space' is simply 'line and space,' i.e., on the musical staff. 'Solfyth too haute' is 'Solfa's too high.' The 'my' which was 'too sharp' is the Mi, the seventh note of the scale, mentioned above as the critical point in Solfa. In verse 3, 'lewde lewte' means merely 'vulgar lute'; and 'Rotybulle Joyse' is the title of an old song. The 'payre of clavicordys' is the clavichord, which in 1536 was a keyed instrument of much the same kind as the virginals,[1] with about three and a half octaves. It
- ↑ It was the German clavichord that had 'tangents' of brass at the ends of the key levers. These tangents cut off the proper length of the string, and made it sound at the same time. The Italians called an instrument with a 'jack' action like the virginal by the name clavichord.
