Throughout his oeuvre, Warlock returns time and again to certain themes, on occasion (e.g., Passing By and There is a Lady Sweet and Kind) setting the same poem twice, or, in the case of Lusty Juventus, In an Arbour Green, and Youth, thrice. The lady seen in Passing By is a recurring vision of ideal femininity, morphing into visions of the Virgin—for instance, in As Dew in Aprylle—last glimpsed in Frostbound Wood. The Nativity is another preoccupation, and the macabre (e.g., the Three Dirges from Webster) and, of course, the drinking songs for which he is noted, when he is noted. Peter Warlock's Fancy, however, is a most disarming instance of this return, setting in 1924 an anonymous 15th century lyric not quite identical to that used in Good ale in 1922. In the 1922 variant, for instance, the singer demands, "Bring us in no bacon for that is passing fat But bring us in good ale and give us enough of that, And bring us in good ale, and bring us in good ale, For our blessed lady's sake bring us in good ale!" In Peter Warlock's Fancy one hears, "Bring us home no pork, sir, for that is very fat; Neither no barley bread, for neither love I that, But bring us home good ale, sir, bring us home good ale, And for our dear lady, lady love—bring us some good ale." The songs are quite different, the earlier setting four stanzas through which the singer's impatience becomes precipitate, while Peter Warlock's Fancy carols strophically through five stanzas whose melodic flair, rhythmic impetus, and the toper's engaging demands keep one's attention on the stretch. Copley, in The Music of Peter Warlock: A Critical Survey (London: Dobson, 1979), noted, "From its pounding introduction, right through to the last bar, the accompaniment gives lusty support, an added zest being provided by the occasional chromatic side-slips (Parry would have called them impertinences)... The second half of each verse can be sung by an optional unison chorus, and the song gains greatly when this course is followed." Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918) was director of the Royal College of Music from 1895 until his death, who, despite his own considerable works (including a notable cache of Elizabethan settings) came to represent a German-dominated musical conservatism, which the leading figures among Warlock's generation vehemently rejected, and to which Peter Warlock's Fancy looms as a sort of "raspberry."

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