With his ensemble, The Broadside Band, Jeremy Barlow worked extensively and profitably on the music used by Johann Christoph Pepusch in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728): it is the only ballad opera that is still talked about today, thanks also to Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 remake, Die Dreigroschenoper, which however features original music composed by Kurt Weill. The Beggar’s Opera is quite different: Pepusch adapted Gay’s texts to tunes that were already well known at the time, borrowing from popular ballads, opera arias, religious hymns and folk songs.
Barlow and his band recorded a complete edition of Gay and Pepusch’s work, as well as an anthology of its most famous arias (nine pieces in all), included not only the version from The Beggar’s Opera, but also the original composition and some of its variants and parodies.
The last track in that anthology, the one I’m submitting to you here, is dedicated to Greensleeves. It includes, in order:

1. a lute extemporisation on passamezzo antico ground, performed by George Weigand

2. Greensleeves, earliest version of melody (from William Ballet’s Lute Book, c1590-1603) with earliest surviving words (A Handful of Pleasant Delights, 1584), sung by Paul Elliott accompanied on lute by Weigand [1:13]

   Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
   To cast me off discourteously.
   And I have loved you so long,
   Delighting in your company.

    Greensleeves was all my joy,
    Greensleeves was my delight,
    Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
    And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

   I have been ready at your hand,
   To grant whatever you wouldst crave,
   I have both waged life and land,
   Your love and goodwill for to have.

   Well I will pray to God on high
   That thou my constancy mayst see,
   And that yet once before I die,
   Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.

   Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu,
   God I pray to prosper thee,
   For I am still thy lover true,
   Come once again and love me.

3. Greensleeves, the most widespread version at the beginning of the seventeenth century, according to William Cobbold (1560 - 1639) and other authors, with improvisations performed by Weigand on baroque guitar and by Rosemary Thorndycraft on bass viol [4:07]

4. The Beggar’s Opera version (we already know it) sung by Elliott a solo [5:27]

5. a medley of three Irish jigs performed by Barlow on flute and Alastair McLachlan on violin [6:03]:
   – A Basket of Oysters (from Moore’s Irish Melodies, 1834)
   – A Basket of Oysters or Paddythe Weaver (Aird’s selection, 1788)
   – Greensleeves (collected Limerick 1852).