Richard Pennycuick wrote:

>Bill Hong replied to Bert Bailey's:
>
>>>(BTW: pron. Pur-SELL or PUR-sul?)
>>
>>I've only heard it with the accent on the first syllable.
>
>For years I pronounced it with the last syllable stressed.  Persil is
>a local brand of laundry detergent and it seemed somehow disrespectful,
>albeit tenuously, to equate dirty socks with Come ye sons of art.

I always thought Persil (surely not a local but a global brand - Procter
& Gamble or some such) was the composer of the Christmas carol 'While
shepherds washed their socks by night'.  (Another domestic cleaning product
is Ajax, a scouring powder.  Shakespeare enjoyed punning on Ajax, since in
his day one of the words for a privy was a jakes.)

When Purcell died in November 1695 a newspaper article referred to:

   "Mr Henry Pursel, one of the most celebrated Masters of the Science
   of Musick in the kingdom and scarce inferiour to any in Europe, dying
   on Thursday last ..." (N.B.  not "dyeing" as in laundry)

Not conclusive, but with its single 'l' seeming to suggest that the first
syllable was stressed at the time.

As far as metrical references to Purcell are concerned, I came across the
following in Edmund Blunden's 'For St Cecilia':

   "Stand with us, Merbecke, and be Byrd close by;
   "Dowland and Purcell, lift the theme on high"

Again not definitive, but good enough for me.

Alan Moss