"The Gelding of the Devil", also called "The Prettiest Jest That E'r Was Known" or "The Card Players" is a Broadside Ballad from the 17 or early 18 Century. In its heyday of the first half of the seventeenth century, a Broadside Ballad was a single large sheet of paper printed on one side (hence "broad-side") with multiple eye-catching illustrations, a popular tune title, and an alluring poem—the latter mostly in black-letter, or what we today call "gothic," type. About 8,000 English Broadside Ballads of the entire seventeenth-century survive. The subject of the ballad is vulgarities, crass humor, trickery, deceit, sex, sexuality, gender. The Nomen Est Omen Medieval and Renaissance Ensemble's Gelding contains no words but only music. Here we have a part of the tune from the concert performed on Equinox Stage Theatre, Ploiesti (Romania), 30 May, 2011.
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