Country Dance Tunes, vol. II (LHS)

“Cecil Sharp was born in London in 1859.  He spent much of his life collecting folk songs and dances both in England and America.  Many volumes of his arrangements were published and most of his papers are now held in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House, the London headquarters of the English Folk Song and Dance Society.”

— J. Altshuler

Notes on the contents:

“Rose Is White And Rose Is Red appears in the 1^st edition of John Playford’s English Dancing Master, in 1650.

Up Tails All was also in the first Playford edition.  Giles Farnaby’s harpsichord variations on the tune are in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

Footy Agyen The Wa’ became a popular Northumbrian bagpipe tune.  It was a favorite of a piper named John Peacock and is known as Peacock’s Fancy.

Jamaica: a ballad called Joy After Sorrow, Being the Sea-man’s Return from Jamaica was sung to this tune.

The tune Sharp used for Hunting The Squirrel was collected by him from the playing of a fiddler in Herefordshire.

Lady Banbury’s Hornpipe is in triple meter in the 1658 Playford, but in later editions is notated in duple time.

Greenwich Park is in London.  The song Come Sweet Lass, set to the tune by Jeremiah Clarke, speaks of dancing on the green.  John Gay used the music in The Beggar’s Opera in 1728.

Hunt The Squirrel was first published by Playford in his 14^th edition of 1709.  It is referred to as a march in Petrie’s Collection of Irish Music.

The Queen’s Birthday, Playford 1703, was also in several other dance collections of the period.

The tune used for the ballad The Maid Peeped Out At The Window is in Playford’s 1^st edition.  This song, which may date from the 1500s, tells the story of a girl outwitting a friar.

Four Pence Half-Penny Farthing, in Playford’s 7^th edition of 1688, also appears in The Compleat Country Dancing Master printed for J. Walsh, servant in Ordinary to his Majesty, at the Harp and Haut-boy in Katherine Street in the Strand, and J. Hare, at the Viol and Flute in Cornhill, 1718.

None So Pretty, a tune used for a morris dance in the Field Town tradition, is also played for country dancing.

The dance My Lady’s Courant was in Playford’s 4^th edition.  Sharp has set it to the music of Waltham (Walton) Abbey in the 17^th edition of 1721.

Newcastle is in Playford’s 1^st edition.

Crosbey Square, in Playford’s 11^th edition of 1701, is a place in London.”

— J. Altshuler