An Elizabethan tune, Packington’s Pound was so popular that by the end of the seventeenth century more than a hundred ballads had been printed calling for the tune. It continued in popularity until at least the middle of the eighteenth century and instrumental versions abound. This recording attempts a performance such as would have been heard on a street corner in the seventeenth century. No ballad survives to tell us who or what Packington was, but there are three people with whom the tune may have associations: Sir John Pakington (a favourite of Queen Elizabeth); his great uncle, Sir Thomas Pakington (who was instrumental in walling up the fourth side of the Inner Temple Gardens); and Thomas Paginton, a court musician who died in 1586—‘Paginton’s Round’ is called for on some ballads.

from notes by Douglas Wootton © 1981