Guest at 31 Aug 20 - 12:15pm is certainly right that we should keep playing the music and much joy we all get from it, I am sure; but if I like a tune I also like to find out all I can about it.

Here's the entry about the tune Arethusa (Princess Royal) written by Frank Kidson in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Arethusa, The (or the Princess Royal)

The song appeared in the opera The Lock and Key, acted 1796, words by Prince Hoare, the music composed and selected by William Shield. It chronicles, in almost accurate detail, an engagement of the English frigate, The Arethusa, with a larger French vessel, La Belle Poule, in the English Channel on June 17, 1778.
The fine air has long been and is yet persistently referred to as the composition of William Shield, who never claimed to do more than add the bass.

Irish writers have also stated that the air is by Carolan, and named The Princess Royal, in honour of the daughter of Macdermott Roe, a descendant of one of the Irish kings. Nothing but tradition favours this view, which Bunting, apparently, first puts into print in 1840, except that in O'Farrell's Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes, vol. iv. c. 1810, there is a version of the melody named Air by Carolan.

The present writer was the first to point out that the air was commonly known in the early part of the 18th century as a country dance tune named The Princess Royal, the new way, and that about 1730-35, it appeared in several London publications. The Princess Royal, after whom the tune was named, was evidently Anne, daughter of George II, who married the Prince of Orange in 1734. This conclusion is further confirmed by finding in the dance collections, in which the tune occurs, printed about 1730-35, other airs named after the family of George II, as Prince William, and Princess Caroline, the first being the hero of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland and the other the Princess Elizabeth Caroline, his younger sister. This combination is strong evidence that the title 'The Princess Royal' really applies to a living personality then prominently before the public rather than to an obscure descendant of a long extinct race of kings.

Under the name Princess Royall the new way, the air, agreeing, almost note for note, with the Arethusa version, is found in an edition of Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing Master, c. 1730, with a tune named Princess Caroline, on the preceding leaf (a copy of this book is in possession of the present writer), and under the title New Princess Royal in Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, vol. i. c. 1730-35 (in the Leeds Public Library). Wright's copy is reprinted from the same plates in a later edition, published by John Johnson. In Wright's dances is the air named Prince William. As The Princess Royal the air also appears in Daniel Wright's Compleat Tutor for Ye Flute, circa 1735 (in possession of the writer). Also, traditional versions of the air have been found used for tunes to Morris dances still retaining the name The Princess Royal.

The subject has been somewhat fully dealt with here for the reason that so many misstatements have been made regarding an English air of great strength and beauty which possesses the best characteristics of our national melody. For some details regarding the air see an article by the present writer, 'New Lights Upon Old Tunes', Musical Times, Oct 1894.

LFF