This is my contribution to the crowd-sourced English Tunebook being assembled by Dr Alice Little on behalf of the University of Oxford and the English Folk Dance and Song Society. You can read about the project at https://torch.ox.ac.uk/event/the-worlds-first-crowdsourced-online-english-tunebook. And if you fancy making a contribution, just post a video recording of yourself playing your chosen tune on social media, and tag it #EnglishTunebook.

I’ve chosen a tune which, to the best of my knowledge, has only ever been collected from one traditional English musician. But that musician was William Kimber, Headington Quarry morris dancer and anglo-concertina player who, through his involvement with Cecil Sharp and the EFD(S)S had a major impact on the twentieth century folk revival.

I first heard his concertina-playing on the Topic LP The Art of William Kimber and was immediately charmed by his distinctive, crisp playing. To my mind, any Kimber tune is by definition a strong candidate for inclusion in an English Tunebook.

Let’s take 3 minutes to listen to Kimber playing ‘Double Lead Through’. This is a 10 inch 78 rpm record of Billy Kimber – Solo Concertina (His Master’s Voice UK, B.9519), recorded October 1946, released Jan 1947.

‘Double Lead Through’ has always struck me – especially when played by Kimber himself – as a quintessentially English tune. And it’s been a common session tune as long as I remember – although that popularity may owe less to Kimber, and more to the version by John Kirkpatrick and Ashley Hutchings on The Compleat Dancing Master (first released, like The Art of William Kimber, in 1974).

And yet the tune is neither particularly old, nor English in origin. It began life as a song, ‘Légende de la Mère Angot’, from Act I of the comic opera La fille de Madame Angot, written by French composer Charles Lecoq, and first performed – coincidentally – in the year of William Kimber’s birth.

Folkopedia tells us that

The opera was first produced in Brussels at the Théâtre des Fantaisies-Parisiennes on the 4 December 1872. The piece caused a sensation in Britain where it ran for a consecutive five-hundred nights and then appeared in London in various forms as well as being extensively toured. 

This song is sung by Amarante, one of the “Dames de la Halle” (i.e. a market woman of Les Halles in Paris), and begins

Marchande de Marée, Pour cent mille raisons elle était adorée, A la halle aux poissons, Jours de fête et dimanche, Quand on l’asticotait, Les deux poings sur la hanche, Elle se disputait.

You can download the entire score of the opera from https://imslp.org/wiki/La_fille_de_Madame_Angot_(Lecocq,_Charles) and, if curiosity overcomes your lack of enthusiasm for late nineteenth century French comic opera, you can hear the whole three Acts on Spotify. Here’s the piece we’re particularly interested in

Lecoq’s three Act opera became a one Act ballet Mam’zelle Angot and, again, this song features early on. The tune – as popular tunes tend to do – also took on a life of its own. Here it is, for example, as a polka ‘La Fille de Madame Angot Grande Polka’.

And here it is, played on a music box: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polyphon-Angot_Polka(Charles_Lecocq).ogv

Now the tune’s French origins do not, of course, diminish the Englishness of ‘Double Lead Through’. The more I learn about traditional song and dance tunes, the more I realise that musical nationalism is a nonsense (like most other forms of nationalism, then). English musicians – like their counterparts all over the world, no doubt – have always recognised a good tune when they hear one, and are not too bothered where it comes from. Folk tunes have certainly circulated freely within the British Isles. So the repertoire of 18th, 19th and 20th century English dance musicians are full of tunes which appear to be Irish (‘The Irish Washerwoman’, ‘Paddy Carrey’, ‘Morgan Rattler’, ‘Paddy Carrey’, ‘Paddy Wack’, ‘Murphy Delaney’) while tunes of Scottish origin such as ‘Flowers of Edinburgh’ and ‘The Rose Tree’ have an established place in the English tradition.

And then there are countless tunes which began life on the 18th or 19th century stage (all of those ‘Morgiana’ tunes, for starters, ‘Fishar’s Hornpipe’, and possibly even ‘Speed the Plough’); or even in works by proper classical composers – the best example of this being the tune universally known these days as ‘Michael Turner’s Waltz’ which is, in fact, a Trio by Mozart.

What makes a tune English, or Irish, or Scottish, is not so much where a tune comes from, but where and how and by whom it is (or was) played.

I don’t know where Billy Kimber had ‘Double Lead Through’ from, but it’s not remotely surprising that a dance-like tune from a popular French operetta should find its way into the English countryside. Kimber – or whoever he learned it from – might easily have heard it played by a brass band, or a fairground organ. The fact that he called it ‘Double Lead Through’ suggests strongly that the tune had become associated locally with a particular dance.

Once, when Kimber was teaching his people at Quarry, he said, ‘I’ll give you a treat and play you a Country Dance tune’. It was then that ‘Over the Hills to Glory’ or perhaps ‘Double Lead Through’ became added to the repertory. Kimber claimed to have 34 Morris and country dance tunes. He maintained strongly that the country dances
should always be danced to their own tunes, for each dance had its particular tune, the same as the Morris.

from William Kimber: a portrait by T. W. Chaundy
Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society , Dec., 1959, Vol. 8, No. 4, p209

I’m not sure what we’re supposed to make of “It was then that ‘Over the Hills to Glory’ or perhaps ‘Double Lead Through’ became added to the repertory”. Does Chaundy just mean “the repertoire that EFDSS and Morris Ring members knew about”? And then, especially in view of the fact that Kimber apparently believed tune and dance to be inseparable, what are we to make of the fact that the tune Cecil Sharp noted from Kimber as ‘Double Lead Through’ in 1908 was a completely different melody? (it’s a version of ‘King of the Cannibal Isle’). The first record I can find of this ‘Double Lead Though’ tune being noted from Kimber is August 1943, by Robert Kenworthy Schofield. It was subsequently printed in English Dance and Song, vol X, no. 3 (February 1946). Unlike the Journal, back copies of English Dance and Song aren’t available digitally, but you’ll find a scan of Kenworthy Schofield’s notation at http://www.contrafusion.co.uk/Dances/EFDS4602-DoubleLeadThrough.html.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion for the English Tunebook project. It’s actually the first time I’ve video’d myself playing, and to be honest, I find it rather a faff compared to audio recording, but a video is what was asked for, so here you go.

Played on C/G anglo-concertina