Cecil Sharp's Note 81 (1916)

No. 81. Jack Hall

Jack Hall, who had been sold to a chimney-sweep for a guinea, was executed for burglary at Tyburn in 1701. The song must have been written before 1719, for in Pills to Purge Melancholy (volume ii, p. 182), there is a song, “The Moderator’s Dream,” “the words made to a pretty tune, call’d Chimney Sweep,” which is in identically the same metre as that of “Jack Hall.” A vulgarized edition of the song was made very popular in the middle years of the last century by a comic singer, G. W. Ross.

I have taken down four versions, the tunes of which, with the exception of that given in the text, are all variants of the “Admiral Benbow” air (see No. 87). The metre in which each of these two ballads is cast is so unusual that we may assume that one was written in imitation of the other. As Jack Hall was executed in 1701 and Admiral Benbow was killed in 1702, it is probable that “Jack Hall” is the earlier of the two.

The singer could recall the words of one verse only. The remaining stanzas have been taken from my other versions. The tune is in the Æolian mode.