The Reformed rake, together with Here's the bower

This broadside is something of a puzzle. With the main title focused on a little-known song called “The Reformed Rake,” the sales potential might be limited but for the addition of Thomas Moore’s popular “The Bower.”

“The Reformed Rake” may be a Massachusetts product, as its only appearance elsewhere is in The Nightingale; or, Rural Songster published in Dedham, Massachusetts (1800), with the additional word “Original.” Two other songs noted as “never before published” appear on adjacent pages. A tune entitled “The Reformed Rake” was written into George Otis’s tune collection begun in Worcester in 1793 and fits the lyrics (23).

“The Bower” is the second of Thomas Moore’s songs to become widely popular over many decades (see The Legacy). It also appears on Tid the Grey Mare. A fairly simple sentimental love song, it was soon parodied and made into a “homecoming” protest song for the exiles of Ireland, the first line being “Will you come to the bower o’er the free boundless ocean.” This new text has been confused with Moore’s original, and even credited to him (Moore, Come). The last line of another protest song, “The Texan’s Song of Liberty,” composed by William Barton shortly after the fall of the Alamo in 1836, quotes the first line in a sentiment that may refer to this song, not Moore’s love song: “While our bugles rang forth, ‘Will you come to the bower?’” (Texian Songs). Moore’s own song was published in a number of editions in America and the text appeared in twenty-five songsters between 1811 and 1820 (Wolfe, Secular Music #6049-60; R. Keller, Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources; Roud).