Thank you for the music: Saint Edmundsbury

(Saturday, March 4th, 1600)

It's my birthday! I've already celebrated my birthday this year in my native time, so am tempted to have a second birthday back here. However, Will Kemp keeps up a cracking pace; even Tom Slye has admitted that sometimes he has trouble keeping up, and he's been a taberer these past fifteen years, five of them with Will.

Since Will has been staying with the Colts family, I have touched base with Master Slye, and am ready for once, when Will sets out before dawn, in the frosty March air. Master Colts' fool is accompanying Will in his dance as a good-sized crowd, some of whom must have been up as early as five a.m. trot along after.

It seems quite a detour to me, but Will Kemp has chosen to make his way through the village of Clare making a visit to the widow Everet.

Since I am not invited to visit I take the time to talk to some of the village folk who know Mistress Everet and their accounts are uniformly full of praise: a woman full of charity and virtue, quiet, devout, modest and well-spoken. I learn from them, that in his time, her husband was a Yeoman, a farmer who owned and worked his own land, which explains her comparative wealth.

By the time we reach the outskirts of St.Edmundsbury the lowering sky has started to snow lightly: tiny tingling flakes that catch in my eyelashes and hair. And my fingers are numbly grasping the reins, scarcely feeling inside my gloves. And the crowds here are busier than anywhere we have visited so far. I learn later, that Sir John Popham, the Lord Chief Justice of the realm was entering the town at the same time, by another route and as the crowds cleared a path for the honorable gentleman, most of them made haste to gawp as Will Kemp danced and frolicked his way into the town, being forced to pause seven times before he could reach the Angel Inn opposite the abandoned abbey.

X:204 T:The Morris March (Winster Processional) M:2/2 C: S:Bacon (MDT) N: A:Winster O:English R:Reel %P:(AB)$^{infty}$ P:(AB)8 K:G I:speed 400 L:1/8 P:A |:g2 d2 d2 ef | g2 d2 d2 ef | g2 d2 d2 c2 | B4 G2 z2 :| P:B |:c2 e2 e2 dc | B2 d2 d2 cB | A2 B2 c2 d2 | B4 G2 z2 :| %abc