ed Threeman-songmen,
and the songs themselves 'Threeman songs,' or 'Freemen's Songs.'
[_Freemen_ is simply a corruption of _Threemen_. Mr Aldis Wright tells
me it is analogous to _Thills_ or _Fills_, for the shafts of a waggon.
Rimbault, in the preface to 'Rounds, Canons, and Catches,' is highly
indignant with Ritson's 'inconceivably strange notion' that Freemen is
only a form of Threemen. Rimbault's reason was that 'Deuteromelia'
(1609) does contain Freemen's Songs in _four_ parts. Mr Aldis Wright
also gives me the expression '_six_-men's song,' from Percy's
Reliques, also these definitions, which will all go to settle the
matter: Florio, Italian Dictionary, 1611; _Strambotti_, country
gigges, rounds, catches, virelaies or _threemen's songs_; _Cantarini_,
such as sing _threemen's songs_; _Berlingozzo_.... Also a drunken or
_threemen's song_.

Cotgrave, French Dict. 1611; Virelay. m. A virelay, round, _free_mans
song].

Giraldus Cambrensis says that singing in parts was indigenous to the
parts beyond the Humber, and on the borders of Yorkshire. Threeman
singing may still be heard (not as an exotic), in Wales and the West
of England. This last is referred to in the above passage, 'There's
scarce a maid westward but she sings it'--viz., the song in three
parts.

Shakespeare is strictly historical in making a pedlar, and two country
lasses, capable of 'bearing a part' in a composition of this sort.

The company of 'men of hair,' calling themselves 'Saltiers,' may
derive their name from the dance, 'Saltarello.' Gallimaufry is
'Galimathias,' a muddle, or hotch potch. (See _Merry Wives_ II, i,
115).

The threemansong men are more particularly described in _Winter's
Tale_ IV, ii, 41.

_Clown._ She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the
_shearers; three-man song-men all, and very good ones_, but
they are _most of them means and bases_; but _one Puritan_
amongst them, and he _sings psalms to hornpipes_.

These musical harvesters square closely with the account given in the
Introduction, of music amongst the lower classes. Here were 24 good
glee singers, with the single defect that their tenors were very weak,
'most of them means [altos] and basses.' The Puritan was most
accommodating, and his singing the words of psalms to the tune of the
hornpipe would tend to shew that the Old Adam was not all put away as
yet. His compromise with his conscience reminds one of the old stories
(all too true)