Author: [BROME (Alexander), editor]:
Title: Rump: Or an Exact Collection Of the Choycest Poems and Songs relating to the Late Times. By the most Eminent Wits, from Anno 1639 to Anno 1661.
Description: London, Printed for Henry Brome...., and Henry Marsh..., 1662. 8vo, 165 x 95 mms., pp. [viii], 376, 72, 83-200, including vertical half-title leaf, engraved frontispiece, engraved title-page, finely bound in 19th century dark green crushed morocco, panelled in gilt on covers, with second enclosed panel with triangular filigree designs in each corner, spine richly gilt in compartments, gilt dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled end-papers. A fine and attractive copy. Alexander Brome (1620 - 1666) was a poet and lawyer, and the title of this collection derives from the so-called "Rump Parliament," which followed the purging of the Long Parliament in 1648. The collection began life as short collection (89 pages) of poems published as Ratts Rhymed to Death in 1660, and reprinted the same year. The present text is obviously much enlarged, with many new poems, including twenty by John Cleveland. The poems in the second part are distinguished, if that's the right word, by their scatological and lubricious content, with obvious jokes and puns around the title word, e. g., "Bum=Fodder or, Waste-Paper, proper to wipe the Nations RUMP with, or your Own." Most of the songs were designed to be sung, with a number giving a tune. "The four Legg'd Elder; or a Relation of a Horrible Dog and an Elders Maid" is to be sung "To the Tune of The Ladies fall; Or Gather your Rose Buds, and 50 other Tunes." How many of these tunes have survived? Samuel Pepys, in an entry for 23 April 1660, alludes to a Rump song: having listened to a composition by Matthew Locke, his host "fell to singing of a song made upon the Rump, with which he pleased himself well - to the tune of The Blacksmith." Wing B4851; Case 127 (c).

Keywords: poems politics literature


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