An unusual and delightfully bawdy offering from the irrepressible Lucie Skeaping and her collaborators The City Waites.

Today we think of a jig as simply a dance, but in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England the word was used to describe a short musical farce featuring songs, dancing and slapstick comedy. By 1590 Jigs were thoroughly established in the London theatres as the standard ending or Afterpiece to more serious theatrical fare; they could be satirical, sentimental, libellous, riotous and often downright obscene, offering a shameless and frequently subversive antidote to the plays which preceded them. The characters are cuckolded husbands, adulterous wives, milkmaids, whores, city wide-boys, muggers and thieves, the plots often taken from folk tales but updated for city audiences with slapstick and comic twists of fate.

These jigs all appear here in their premiere recordings. In committing these works to disc for the first time, Lucie Skeaping has given us a unique and tantalising glimpse of theatrical history. Artfully presented and recorded, they contain all the quick-fire banter, robust language and delight in linguistic play that marked the age, all set to some of the most delightful popular tunes England has ever produced.

An entertaining cameo from Catherine Bott is among the many uproarious performances.