A tune from Alfred Montmarquette, 1871-1944. Born in New York, he moved to Montreal in the 1920s, and it was there that – finally – he made his name as an accordéoniste.
I didn’t originally learn this from Montmarquette, but from Keith Chandler, who knows more obscure tunes than anyone else I can think of. This one isn’t actually obscure any more, although people tend to mix up the first couple of bars with the start of ‘The Hogmanay Jig’.
Alfred Montmarquette featured on the Smithsonian LP Masters of French-Canadian Music, Vol. 2 – you can hear a snippet of the tune if you visit the Smithsonian site. There’s a fair bit of his playing online but not, as far as I can see, a full version of this march.
One more tune which I was reminded of when browsing through the EFDSS Community Dance Manuals. And another one where I wasn’t really sure where I’d learned it, or whether I’d remembered it correctly ( I hadn’t, but in this recording I attempted to play more or less what was written in the CDM). According to the Traditional Turn Archive, it was first printed in Dublin, in John Lee’s collection of country dances for the present year 1791. It’s used for an Irish set dance, but I think I’d need to play it considerably more slowly for a set dancer.
This is another tune which I seem to have known for along time, without knowing where I’d got it from. And it’s another one printed in one of the EFDSS Community Dance Manuals. Although no source for the tune is provided there, the consensus seems to be that it came from Yorkshire melodeon-player George Tremain. It’s one of a number of tunes recorded by Peter Kennedy on 2 April 1953, at George Tremain’s house, 19 Wharton Street, North Skelton. I notice that in Peter Kennedy’s published recordings of British & Irish traditional music and related material: an annotated discography Reg Hall asks “did he learn this from the EFDSS?”. Clearly, I can’t answer that. But if George Tremain had learned it from an EFDSS band or musician, then it raises the question – where did the EFDSS get it from?
In 2019 the EFDSS published a revised edition of the Community Dance Manual and commissioned new recordings of tunes for a selection of dances from the book. Oxford NAGS was one of the bands chosen to record some tracks. The brief was that you had to play the tune given in the book for your chosen dances, but you could pair it with any other tune of your choice. ‘The Steamboat’ was one of the tunes we recorded for the EFDSS double CD, paired with Herefordshire fiddler John Locke’s version of ‘Boyne Water’ (which Mat Green and I play in a set with my own tune ‘Stottycake Polka’, and Martha Rhoden’s Tuppeny Dish use for their dance ‘Last night with Archie’).
I found myself flicking through the tunes in the Community Dance Manuals yesterday and, in volume 6 I came across the tune that Cecil Sharp collected for the Goathland Square Eight. Now I must have played for that dance hundreds of times at barn dances and ceilidhs, but I didn’t know there was a tune associated with it. Sharp collected it from Nesswell Pennock, a fiddle-player from Goathland, North Yorkshire.
As soon as I started playing the tune, I realised that both strains were very similar to other tunes with which I’m familiar. The B music in particular crops up in slightly different versions in all sorts of tunes, which I think are part of the same family as ‘The Buffoon’ and ‘John Come Kiss Me Now’. On their CD Disguisings the excellent duo Dapper’s Delight play several different variations on this theme.
One unique feature of Mr Pennock’s tune is that C# in the penultimate bar. Sharp noted that this unexpected note was “quite clear” but also “obviously a technical fault”. Personally I see no reason to think that note was a “fault” or the lack of any technical expertise on the musician’s part. But, that being said, it sounds quite horrible to my ears, so I’ve substituted a C natural in its place.
Later, in CDM volume 5, I found the ‘Shepton Hornpipe’ (usually known as the ‘Shepton Mallet Hornpipe’). Again, this was collected by Sharp – in fact it’s one of several untitled hornpipes he got from 88 year old James Higgins in 1907.
And it’s got that B music again – not exactly the same as in the Goathland tune, but very clearly a close relation.
Not, as you might have supposed, named in honour of the 13th century French philosopher, but after the eponymous hero of a French comic opera, in which the Dauphin of France disguises himself as “Jean de Paris”. I learn from the Traditional Tune Archive that in 1814 two rival versions of this opera were being presented on the London stage. This tune comes from the version put on at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and was written by Henry R. Bishop, Director of music at the theatre. This “Pastoral Dance” became popular and ended up being used for North West morris.
It’s one of those tunes which I’ve known for a long time without ever really knowing where I first heard it. The first time I positively remember hearing it was at a BBC Radio Oxford folk programme live broadcast from East Oxford Community Centre, probably 1982, which among other things featured the fairly recently formed Rogue Morris (yes folks, morris dancing on the radio – it’s a sure fire success!). Also taking part was the dance band Brown and Bitter which, if memory serves, consisted of Dave Townsend, Dave Parry, Nigel Grice and Chris Manners (actually, I think perhaps memory doesn’t serve, as I’m pretty sure Chris Manners had left Oxford in the summer of 1981). Anyway, the band played this tune, and it was after that that I learned it; but I suspect I’d already heard it used by some North West side or other.
I’ve recorded it here on the 46-key Jeffries Bb/F anglo I bought at the Whitby Festival in the summer. Given that Bb and F are not hugely popular session keys, I shall probably mostly be using this for song accompaniments – mostly in Eb I suspect – but it plays well on a dance tune like this.
I wrote this two years ago to celebrate the wedding of my son Tom, and his bride, Jess. They were married at an informal ceremony in an idyllic woodland setting on the edge of a village not far from Milton Keynes. The whole weekend was wonderful, providing many happy memories for everyone who was there.
So, a belated happy wedding anniversary to Tom and Jess (very belated when you consider that I actually recorded this tune exactly one year ago – just too late for their first anniversary!)
An iconic tune, known (in a rather simplistic, hackneyed form at least) to thousands. Here’s my interpretation of the tune as played by Bill Kimber, and as played these days for the Headington Quarry handkerchief dance.
It was originally collected from Kimber by Cecil Sharp in 1906
Country Gardens, as noted by Cecil Sharp at the Esperance Club, 26th May 1906. Copyright EFDSS.
and included by Sharp in the first edition of The Morris Book (1907).
It was, famously, arranged by Percy Grainger – somewhat to Kimber’s annoyance, it would seem
Now who is this Grainger and what right as he to do this
Kimber himself recorded the tune for EMI in 1948, and that version was included on the 1970s Topic LP The Art of William Kimber and the EFDSS CD Absolutely Classic.
This Sunday, 23rd June 2024, is the centenary of the death of Cecil Sharp. Now whatever you may think of Sharp (and for all his flaws, he really wasn’t as bad as some have tried to paint him) it really can’t be denied that he made the most extraordinary contribution to the documenting of English musical traditions. If you play English traditional tunes, or sing English traditional songs, it’s pretty much inconceivable that your repertoire doesn’t include something originally collected by Sharp. You’ll find plenty of tunes collected by Sharp on this blog; and a great many songs collected by Sharp on my A Folk Song A Week site.
Sharp’s first proper encounter with folk traditions was on Boxing Day 1899, when he saw Headington Quarry Morris Dancers perform outside his mother-in-law’s house in Headington. The next day, he noted down five dance tunes from the side’s musician, the anglo-concertina player William Kimber. These were the first folk tunes that Sharp collected; and when, a few years later, he started researching the morris, and promoting its revival, Bill Kimber proved to be an important source, and a staunch and loyal ally.
Thus it is entirely fitting that the Sharp centenary will be celebrated on Sunday in Headington Quarry. At lunchtime there will be morris dancing at the Mason’s Arms, with the side’s guests, Mr Hemmings from Abingdon, and Taunton Deane from Somerset. Then, in the afternoon, there will be an event in the Village Hall, featuring talks from Sharp’s biographer David Sutcliffe, morris historians Mike Heaney and Keith Chandler, and singer, musician, researcher, and all round good bloke, Brian Peters. We’ll be celebrating not only Cecil Sharp, but Bill Kimber too. So, as we make our way from the Mason’s to the Village Hall, we’ll be pausing at Kimber’s grave in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, and laying a wreath in his memory.
One of the dances which the Quarry side danced at Sandfield Cottage on that fateful day in 1899, was ‘Bean Setting’. According to Bob Grant’s article ‘When Punch Met Merry’ – published in the Folk Music Journal, Vol. 7, No. 5 (1999), so accessible to all EFDSS members – Bill Kimber thought that ‘Bean Setting’ was the first dance they did that Boxing Day, while Sharp remembered it being ‘Laudanum Bunches’. Either way, these days ‘Bean Setting’ – which veteran Quarry musician John Graham always claimed was the oldest morris dance – is always the first dance of the set. So come along to the Mason’s Arms for midday this Sunday, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to see it.
Bean Setting
Played on C/G anglo-concertina
Cecil Sharp. Copyright English Folk Dance and Song Society.
William Kimber, from The Morris Book I by Sharp and MacIlwaine, via Wikipedia.
There was a time when I thought that morris tunes were somehow unique, and only existed as morris tunes. Of course this is nonsense – the tunes that morris musicians used came from many different sources: country dance tunes, song tunes, and basically whatever else they knew that would fit (or be made to fit) the dance.
‘The Rose’ is a case in point. It turns up in the early 19th century tunebook of William Mittell, from New Romney in Kent, and the Traditional Tune Archive tells us that it was included in a number of printed publications such as Thompson’s Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1778.
I could have sworn I’d previously posted the Mittell version here. It seems not, so I’ll have to remedy that in the next few weeks. It works well as a 16-bar jig; but, of course, it can’t compare with the grandeur it assumes when played with slows for a Fieldtown morris dance.
From 300 national melodies of the British Isles. Vol. 3 – 100. Irish airs, arranged for the piano forte by Cork musician, editor and collector William Forde (1797–1850). ‘The Legacy’ is tune number 80, and you’ll find it in this scan of the original publication on the ITMA website.
How, or why, or when the tune came to my attention I have absolutely no idea.
Squeezed Out 