Category: Major key tunes

Here’s the tune from Monday 23rd’s session; The Buffoon, a Morris tune from Adderbury.  We’re playing it as a session tune because that’s how I know it, rather than at dance speed!  It’s a great tune to play around with as there’s lots of scope for variation.

Here are the dots, with two lots of suggested variations – the idea, as with Kate Dalyrmple, is to have simpler and more complex versions and then to mix them up in different ways.

Our first tune of the term!  Kate Dalrymple is a fabulous tune from Scotland, Mary D has found the following information on it: Kate Dalrymple is a traditional Scottish reel dating back to the late 1700s, also known as The Highland Laddie, The New Highland Laddie and Jingling Johnnie.  There are accompanying words in Scots written by William Watt telling the tale of the eponymous spinster, with an amazing recording of The Corries to be found at http://scotsongs.blogspot.com/2009/04/kate-dalrymple-words-william-watt-1792.html.  This tune is used by the BBC as the theme music for the BBC Radio Scotland dance music programme “Take the Floor”.

The assertion that our Kate was a socialite painted by Gainsborough should be taken with a pinch of salt, as no such person was ever painted by the artist though he did paint a Grace Dalrymple Elliot twice.

Here is the video, with the variations covered in Monday’s session:

Here are dots:  the idea is to learn the standard, simple and double versions, and then to mix up the phrases to create variety within the tune.  We also played with extending the descending scale in the B part, to mirror the similar shape in the A section.  I’ve put the two guitar patterns under the standard and simple versions of the tune for convenience, and a PDF can be found here.  If played for dancing then it should be played AAB, but we played it as AABB as the B part is so fantastic!

This is Maggie in the Woods, a fabulous polka from Ireland, but again one’s that’s put its boots on and travelled the world!  It will go in a set with Battered Hake and then Tralee Gaol.

Here are the videos of the tune

…and the harmony for the B part here:

Here are the dots:

There is a PDF available here.

This is Mount Hills, from the Playford collection.

Here’s the video of the tune played slowly:

And then the tune played at speed, in the higher and lower registers:

Here are the dots, with the chords from memory so apologies if they aren’t what we had on the day, I will change them if necessary!  The PDF is available here.

This is a fantastic tune by banjo player Colin Cotter.

Here are the dots for the tune:

Click for the tune in PDF form, and here is a version with the A part harmony and B part variation.

Lastly, here’s a video with a suggested chord rhythm.

Here’s a fab tune from the Playford collection.  Mary D has done some research and says: “Jack o’ Lent was a tradition in England in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries involving the abuse and burning of a straw effigy during the season of Lent, ending with its burning on Palm Sunday. The effigy, made of straw or stuffed clothes, was abused and stoned on Ash Wednesday while being dragged about the parish.”

Here are the dots in PDF form.

Here are the chord sequences, with an added bonus 4th version, by way of an apology for the late post!

Here are the videos for Monday’s Morris Medley, The Lollipop Man first:

… and Shepherd’s Hey here:

And the dots for each are below, with a PDF file here.  We did a basic harmony for the beginning of Shepherd’s Hey, but other than that concentrated on emphasising the rhythm in particular bars (Bars 2, 4, 6 and 8 in Lollipop Man and bars 5 and 6 in Shepherd’s Hey).

As promised/threatened, here is a link to the recording of Lollipop Man from The Mother of All Morris album (not from the Morris On series as I misremembered), it’s NSFW: