❧Introduction

At Whitsun 1610 a minstrel from Nailsea, John Stretting or Streating, was booked to play at Clevedon, five miles away, the next settlement of any size across the north Somerset levels. Clevedon's festivities must have been continuing through the week, for he left home on the Tuesday and was not expected back until the next day or the day after. Unfortunately for his wife Grace, he had forgotten his ‘box of strings’, and, returning with another man late on the Tuesday night to retrieve it, found a half undressed interloper in the house. The wife was sent packing to her father and money changed hands to appease the offended husband.

No doubt he was reluctant to include songs about cuckolds in his repertoire thereafter, for the affair got abroad. But we cannot be sure that he sang in any case. In fact we know precious little about him. Did he play the harp, lute, or fiddle? Where would he have got his strings from? How much would the Clevedon parishioners have paid him, and what exactly would he have contributed to the Whitsun ale? Was he part of a band, or alone? Was he booked, or did he just turn up as a busker? If the former – for there is evidence of high demand for and planned acquisition of musicians’ services – how far ahead would he have been secured, by whom, and by what method of communication? Could he read? Did he keep an engagement diary? Was he a trained musician, and did that mean that he was literate in music notation? What else did he do, or was this his full-time occupation? Did he keep his box of strings in his instrument case? If not, it seems less likely that he had genuinely forgotten such a crucial item of luggage and more possible that, already suspicious, he did it on purpose and made sure he had a witness to hand.

It is not just time that has obscured our knowledge of Stretting's livelihood and performance practice; as already indicated in chapter 3, we might ask many of the same questions about a twentieth-century band musician without expecting to find easy answers.