"Villikins and his Dinah" (Laws M31A/B, Roud 271) is a stage song which emerged in England in 1853 as a burlesque version of a traditional ballad called "William and Dinah". Its great popularity led to the tune being later adopted for many other songs, of which the best known today is "Sweet Betsy from Pike".
Background
"Villikins and his Dinah" is based on "William and Dinah", a folk ballad extant from at least the early 19th century which was still being sung and collected in the early 20th. The theme of the ballad is the traditional one of lovers parted by parental interference who then commit suicide and are buried in one grave.
"Villikins and his Dinah" was a parody of this. It became a major hit in 1853 when sung by actor Frederick Robson at London's Olympic Theatre in a revived one-act farce, The Wandering Minstrel. The comic version follows the traditional ballad closely, but exaggerates its naivety and subverts its pathos by telling the lovers' story in urban slang.
Burlesques of serious works were in great vogue on the London stage at the time and the tragi-comic song became a sensation. The song was published in London by music sellers Campbell, Ransford and Co. on 11 November 1853, and quickly followed by other editions with variants of words or music. Other theatres cashed in on the song's huge success by staging productions based on it - a farce, Villikins and his Dinah opened at the Surrey theatre in February 1854 and a travestie by E.L.Blanchard and Sterling Coyne ran for two and a half months at the Haymarket. Its popularity grew when it was adopted by the Anglo-American entertainer Sam Cowell, who took it into a broader range of venues. From the theatres it made its way to music-halls and saloon bars, and by 1855 it was among the most popular songs of the day, played repeatedly on barrel organs in the streets. By then the song had already spread to Australia and North America.
Melody
Musically, variations of the "Villikins and his Dinah" tune can be identified by the characteristics of their first few measures. They begin with an introductory tonic, which rises into an outline of the tonic's major triad and ends by repeating the fifth.
Although the tune of "Villikins" has been said to have given rise to more borrowings, imitations and re-uses than almost any other in Anglo-American folk music, its origins are unclear. It may be the traditional melody to which "William and Dinah" was usually sung, or a derivation of it, or it may have been specially composed for Robson's stage performance in 1853. In America, it was sometimes attributed to 'John Parry', presumably either John Parry or his son John Orlando Parry. An early edition of "Villikins and his Dinah" published in Scotland in May 1854 gives the air it should be sung to as, "They Died As They Lived".
In 1853, Robson entered a contract with a music publisher to whom he assigned sole rights to the lyrics and music; however, although the company threatened legal action against anyone infringing their copyright, both the tune and words were rapidly circulating in numerous editions.
Lyrics
The lyrics are said to have been written by playwright E. L. Blanchard. Comparison with "William and Dinah" shows they are largely adapted from the traditional, but the song was performed by Robson with a series of comments and asides.
Although "Villikins and his Dinah" kept many of the original lyrics of "William and Dinah", it parodied its conventional phrasing and generally exploited its naivety for comic effect. It also put the words into Cockney dialect, a lower-class London form of speech. In Cockney at the time the letter 'w' was pronounced as a 'v': the name 'William' therefore would become 'Villiam', and for added bathos the diminutive 'Villikins' ('Willikins') is used. The new lyrics emphasised other characteristics of uneducated speech such as double negatives, mispronunciations and malapropisms.
Other changes to the traditional lyrics included increasing the heroine's age from fourteen to sixteen, dropping the reference to her father as a 'liquor' merchant, and replacing the abusive phrase 'boldest strumpet' with 'boldest daughter'. An added final 'moral' verse inverts the sympathies of the original by warning girls not to defy their fathers, and young men to be cautious when falling in love. { | width="80%" |- valign="top" ||"William and Dinah" (c.1819?)
It's of a liquor Merchant in London did dwell
He had but one child, a most beautiful girl. Her name it was Dinah, scarce fourteen years old She had a large portion in silver and gold