News from Hell by John Taylor (1639)

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3 years ago
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Today Piers Cawley (@PiersCawley) was wearing a shirt with 'Hell, Hull and Halifax' on it, during the fabulous song swap he did with Margaret Walters this morning (Australia time):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlxeeUxl-Yg

Not getting the reference, I had to look it up. It appears to be the Thieves Prayer, common in Yorkshire around the time that the English were efficiently lopping off heads with a machine in Halifax (long before France caught up):
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-halifax-gibbet-halifax-england

The phrase appeared in the Dalesman's Litany in the 1900s:
https://mainlynorfolk.info/steeleye.span/songs/thedalesmanslitany.html

Sung beautifully here by Tim Hart and Maddy Prior:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT3A-MazRqY

However, the first written reference to the Hull, Hell, Halifax proverb was by John Taylor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(poet)

So of course I spent a large part of today immersed in John's writings. It seems he might have been the earliest 'influencer'. He would crowdsource the funds for travel blogs and then publish them (not so fancy now gofundme.com). Here is his complete works:
https://archive.org/details/worksofjo00tayluoft

I found this gem, which appears to be a Yelp review of a restaurant under(?) the High Exchequer Bar in Westminster, London. I can't find any other historical references to this establishment. Also not sure if the establishment was actually called Hell.

Sadly the Hull piece doesn't appear in a singable part of John's work, it is a rather boring explanation of the water supply system at Kingston upon Hull, called 'A very Merry-Wherry-Ferry Voyage'.

I have put this in the Broadsides playlist, but only because some of John Taylor's other songs appear there.

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