Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master: The Triumph

Subject: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master: "The Triumph"
From: BoHaG
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 09:38 PM

Can anyone supply the words used for the Playford tune "The Triumph" on the Kirkpatrick/Hutchings album "The Compleat Dancing Master"?

This tune appears elsewhere under several different names: "Follow Your Lover", Step and Fetch Her", Shave the Donkey", "Up the Sides and Down the Middle", "Sally Luker" and "Pretty Little Dear" but I am unable to find lyrics to anything other than the Morris Dance version of Shave the Monkey and which are quite different.

The tune structure is unusual being 3 parts X 4 bars each ie AABBCC gives a 24 bar tune. On my vinyl album the words only follow the first 2 parts ie AABB AABB but most of the words are unintelligible.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: Sorcha
Date: 05 Sep 03 - 11:46 PM

I don't have it, but I have a friend who might. Will see him tomorrow. Try to remember to ask.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 04:00 AM

I have never heard that version but many of the tunes used by Playford were also subject to multiple reuse for songs. I would guess a broadsheet source.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: masato sakurai
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 04:08 AM

No words are given in the entry at The Fiddler's Companion:

TRIUMPH, THE. AKA - "Follow Your/My Lover(s)." English, Scottish; Country Dance Tune (2/4 or cut time) or Hornpipe (2/2 time). G Major (Karpeles, Kennedy, Raven, Sharp, Trim): A Major (Athole, Hunter, Kerr, Skye). Standard. AB (Raven): ABC (Kennedy): AABC (Hunter, Karpeles, Kerr, Sharp): AABBC (Athole, Skye): AABBCC (Trim). The English novelist Thomas Hardy (Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge) grew up in a musical family and was an accomplished dance fiddler and accordion player from early youth. He was influenced by his father (himself a locally famous dance fiddler), an uncle and a cello-playing grandfather, all of whom played for a church band in addition to more secular amusements. Hardy mentions both the dance and tune "The Triumph," the same one still known in modern time, in Under the Greenwood Tree (1872):
***
At five minutes to twelve the soft tuning was again heard in the
back quarters; and when at length the clock had whizzed forth
the last stroke, Dick appeared ready primed, and the instruments
were bolkly hankled; old William readily taking the bass-viol
from off its accustomed nail, and touching the strings as irreligiously
as could be desired. The country-dance called 'The Triumph, or
Follow My Lover', was the figure with which they opened. The
tranter took for his partner Mrs. Penny, and Mrs. Dewy was chosed
by Mr. Penny, who made so much of his limited height by a judicious
carriage of his head, straightening of the back, and important flashes
of his spectacle-glasses, that he seemed almost as tall as the tranter.
***
Allison Thompson (Dancing Through Time, 1998) describe the dance as one in which "the man leads, not his own partner, but his neighbor's partner down the length of the set, while her own partner follows jealously behind them. All three dancers then turn, and the lucky lady processes back to her place, while the two rival gentlemen hold hands in a triumphal arch over her head. The three-some figure of the dance mirrors the love triangle perfectly" (pg. 186).
***
The author of English Folk-Song and Dance found "Triumph" among the country dance melodies in the repertoire of fiddler William Tilbury (who lived at Pitch Place, midway between Churt and Thursley in Surrey), who used, in his young days, to play the fiddle at village dances. He had learned his repertoire from an uncle, Fiddler Hammond, who had been the village musician before him, and who died around 1870. The conclusion was that this and a number of dances of this type survived in English tradition (at least in southwest Surrey) well into the second half of the 19th century. The dance The Triumph was also a very popular country dance in Scotland, and a part of most country dancing masters' repertories in the 19th century.
***
Hunter (Fiddle Music of Scotland), 1988; No. 319. Karpeles (A Selection of 100 English Country Dance Airs), 1951; pg. 5. Kennedy (Fiddlers Tune Book), Vol. 1, 1951; No. 25, pg. 13. Kerr (Merry Melodies), Vol. 1; No. 1, pg. 21. MacDonald (The Skye Collection), 1887; pg. 167. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; pg. 169. Sharp (Country Dance Tunes), 1994; pg. 8. Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; pg. 142. Trim (Thomas Hardy), 1990; No. 2. Antilles (Island) AN-7003, Kirkpatrick and Hutchings - "The Compleat Dancing Master" (1973).
T:Triumph, The
L:1/8
M:C|
R:Country Dance
B:The Athole Collection
K:A
a|eccA dBBG|Aaag gffa|eccA dBBG|A2c2A2:|
|:z|B2e2c2e2|B2e2c2e2|BBBd ccce|c2B2A2:|
z|c2 cd e2c2|B2 Bc d2B2|cBcd eagf|edcB A2 AB|
c2 cd fedc|B2 Bc edcB|c2 cd eagf|edcB Aagf||

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: masato sakurai
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 04:16 AM

It's not a Playford tune; see The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: GUEST,Les in Chorlton, Manchester
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 04:23 AM

Is that something like:

I'll have a dance with the Dusty Miller
Gordie with his blue coat on
(phrase repeated)

then
Down the middle, down the middle
And lots of other stuff........

Sorry I have lost the needle to my record player. It's a great little tune isn't it?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: BoHaG
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 07:12 AM

Yes, the words ".... I'll have a dance with the dusty miller ... " or something similar are the ones I'm looking for.

As the words appear to be nonsense, I wonder if they have been made up relatively recently (as the ones used in Shave in Donkey, which I believe were generated by Bampton morris men), perhaps even by Kirkpatrick/Hutchings when they made the Compleat Dancing Master album. The sleeve notes make no mention of the song nor even acknowledge that anyone is singing anything.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: open mike
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 07:40 AM

are theese lyrics or dance move instructions?
if so i wonder what the move shave the donkey
is like? Ihave heard of digging form clams and
other moves which are indicated by phrases which
donot particularly describe the move.
righ hand star, for instance, is a figure which
is described literally by the caller's call.
any opne know of any other moves which the caller
designates by a name other than the exact moves?
(am i making any sense here?)
i recall a call that goes "ducking for oysters"
or something like that....you ahve to know what
is meant by it because it is not obvious in the
wording...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master
From: delphinium
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 09:13 AM

Lyrics used on the Compleat Dancing Master are something like:

I'll have a dance with a dusty miller
Jolly with his new coat on
I'll have a dance with a dusty miller
Jolly with his new coat on

Down the middle, down the middle
Play your fiddle, pretty little dear
Up the middle, hey diddle diddle
[undeciphered bit], pretty little dear

If you're young and wish to marry
Who'll you choose to be your wife
If you marry John Brown's sister
She will plague you all your life

Don't you tease her, try to please her
For she is my pretty little dear
Don't you tease her, try to please her
For she is my pretty little dear

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master: The Triumph
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:14 PM

The two volumes I've seen of Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing Master, 1718 and 1719, contained no lyrics whatever.

As can be seen the index of country dances tunes prior to 1730, at www.erols.com/olsonw, there is no tune called simply "The Triumph" in any volume of the Dancing Master. In other dance music collections prior to 1730 one can find, Ladys' Triumph, Love's Triumph, and Neptune's Triumph

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master: The Triumph
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 12:48 PM

There is a detailed study by Christopher B. Walker of the history of the dance in The Folk Music Journal (EFDSS, London, vol.8 no.1 2001): 'The Triumph' in England, Scotland and America. He concentrates on the dance rather than its music (more than one tune has been used for the "Triumph" figures), but examples are quoted and the piece contains a lot of useful information besides. Cecil Sharp got a snatch of verse sung to Step and Fetch Her from Henry Sturch (Armscote, Warwickshire, 1909), which is referred to but not quoted.

Sharp also noted music and one verse of a Dusty Miller variant, beginning "I'll go dance with the dusty miller", from Joseph Alcock, Sibford Gower, Oxfordshire, in 1922; whether there is any connection with The Triumph I don't know, nor whether it has ever been published.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Compleat Dancing Master: The Triumph
From: GUEST,Me
Date: 06 Sep 03 - 01:52 PM

I don't have "The Triumph" to compare. Although undoubtably not Irish,
"The Dusty Miller" was included in my Irish music collections, c 1725 -1864. Those and other copies, a total of 12, are indexed in the Irish tune index at www.erols.com/olsonw