"LILLIBURLERO"
Sir,-Henry Purcell’s indifference to politics is the reason given by "M.K.J." in Radio Review for disconnecting Purcell with anything so out of character as the composition "Lilliburlero." Perhaps the assertion that sheer desperation induced the script-writer to credit Purcell with "the tune that whistled James II out of three kingdoms’-the tune, mark you-is a little misplaced. Arthur Bryant, writing in the third volume of Pepys’s biography The Saviour of the Navy (page 200, the year 1688) says, "Half the nation was whistling ‘Lilliburlero,’ the scurrilous antipapist doggerel which the Whig Lord Wharton-Swift’s universal villain-had set to one of Purcell’s irresistible airs." Now I presume Arthur Bryant has not been rash enough to make a statement which the critics could gleefully point to @8 an inaccuracy. Apparently "M.K.J.," in criticising the script-writer, has been too eager to pounce on this seeming error.
B. J.
STEVENSON
(Hokianga).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19531204.2.12.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 751, 4 December 1953, Page 5
Word count
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146"LILLIBURLERO" New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 751, 4 December 1953, Page 5
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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