The website for Dr Martin Shaw OBE FRCM (1875 –1958)

"The cuckoo then, on every tree, mocks married men..."

When Daisies Pied

 

first page of sheet music fading out into a circle. Instructions, 'light and quick'.

 

27: When Daisies Pied

Recording Artists: Iain Burnside & Sophie Bevan

This song from Shakespeare comes from Love’s Labour’s Lost. The spring-time lyrics play and tease on the word ‘cuckoo’ from which the word ‘cuckold’ derives, from the cuckoo’s habit of laying its egg in another bird’s nest.

Shaw dedicated this song To Gustav Holst, his old friend and fellow student at the Royal College of Music. On the receiving the dedication Holst wrote to Shaw saying:

‘...Thank you for your kind thought. This is the first time anybody has ever dedicated a song to me and therefore I feel the honour all the more...’

 

AUTHOR PUBLISHER DATE SHEET MUSIC
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) Curwen 1921 in print; one of Seven Songs by Martin Shaw, published by Stainer and Bell UK, and Galaxy Music Corp. USA