Throughout his biography, Peter Warlock: A Memoir of Philip Heseltine (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934), Cecil Gray's contrasts of the gentle, scholarly Heseltine with the wild and wooly Warlock, so to speak—to the extent of declaring which of the personalities was responsible for which of the songs—may strike the reader as overly schematic. Decried in its own time by people familiar with both men, the deprecation and denial of his slant became a critical ritual, endlessly repeated, toward the end of the 20th century. Yet, an unprejudiced reading of Barry Smith's far more detailed biography, made possible by the passing of so many of the account's participants and the availability of much new material—Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)—substantiates Gray's thesis in broad outline while correcting details. And with the fashion for delivering the songs at century's end with art song preciosity, the world lost touch with the wit, whimsy, gusto, and demotic tang suffusing so many of them; though the listener acquainted with Warlock from recordings of the LP and 78rpm eras may find Gray peculiarly apt, and their understanding of Warlock's expressive geste, as well as their pleasure, deepened thereby. For instance, "The music he wrote during the Eynsford period"—from whence much of the bibulous, roystering, whoring Warlock legend emanates—"shows Peter Warlock very much in the ascendant, but there are at the same time a few works in which Philip Heseltine still emerges... These others... few though they be, are among the best things Philip Heseltine ever wrote—that is, among the best songs of modern times." Among them must be included the carols What cheer? Good cheer!, The First Mercy, Bethlehem Down, and I saw a fair maiden, all dating from 1927, the heart of the Eynsford period. Composed in November, I saw a fair maiden revives that vein of awed joy that the Nativity and the Virgin—spun upon an anonymous early 15th century poem—never failed to summon, prompting Ian Copley, in The Music of Peter Warlock: A Critical Survey (London: Dobson, 1979), to remark, "... not since Balulalow had he written anything for mixed voices so tender in its harmony, or so caressing in the gentle rise and fall of its melodic lines." Though the same refrain serves for all seven stanzas, subtle variations in the ancillary material tease the ear, holding one spellbound, and making this one of Warlock's most welcome carols.

© Adrian Corleonis, Rovi