"Butta la sella!" translated in a concert program as "Saddle the horses!"; but later "Tutti a cavallo!" is "To horse, one and all!" I am curious:
After a bit of web searching:
Google's translation gives "the saddleback throws". Throw the saddle? "Butta" is "it throws", throw the saddles onto the horses? throw yourselves into the saddles? I've wondered about "boots" since I was a kid: shouldn't you already have your boots on?
The entire phrase "butta la sella" only appears on Google in the context of this particular (suggestively martial) madrigal; "Boots and Saddles" apparently doesn't ever mean, "put your boots on and saddle the horses", but "mount your horses", and may have been particularly a U.S. term.
Not debunked, but unlikely. Still, I wish I had a recording of that song; the melody was suggestive.
So wrote clew in Music. , Word. | TrackBackWAS'NT BOOTS AND SADDLES A SONG FOR THE 7TH CALVARY.....GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER,....
"Boots and Saddles" is a British cavalry call that dates to at least 1778 and probably the 1760's that was inherited by the American cavalry in the War of Independence. It is a call to tack up horses and prepare to ride. It is mentioned as a trumpet call in Captain Robert Hinde's "The Discipline of the Light Horse" published in 1778 and in at least one US manual of the 1790's.
The madrigal I was listening to dates to the 1630s or earlier, so the British call could have come from the Italian... there's probably someone with an argument that it's been in use since the Roman Legions used it.
All of this is still based on my fleeting supposition about a melodic phrase; but on the other hand it's totally characteristic for madrigals to quote other songs or sounds to comment on the main story.