Shakespeare is strictly historical in making a pedlar, and two country lasses, capable of 'bearing a part' in a composition of this sort.
The company of 'men of hair,' calling themselves 'Saltiers,' may derive their name from the dance, 'Saltarello.' Gallimaufry is 'Galimathias,' a muddle, or hotch potch. (See Merry Wives 21, 115).
The threemansong men are more particularly described in Winter's Tale 42, 41.
Clown. She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the shearers; three-man song-men all, and very good ones, but they are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.
These musical harvesters square closely with the account given in the Introduction, of music amongst the lower classes. Here were 24 good glee singers, with the single defect that their tenors were very weak, 'most of them means [altos] and basses.' The Puritan was most accommodating, and his singing the words of psalms to the tune of the hornpipe would tend to shew that the Old Adam was not all put away as yet. His compromise with his conscience reminds one of the old stories (all too true) of church singers in the 15th and 16th centuries, who would sing the by no means respectable words of popular
