The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #14441   Message #124095
Posted By: Bruce O.
15-Oct-99 - 12:08 AM
Thread Name: Songs to Star of the County Down?
Subject: RE: Songs to Star of the County Down?
There is an old thread on this. The oldest copy of the tune is "Gilderoy" in Alex. Stuart's 'Musick for Allan Ramsay's Collection of Scots Songs [Tea Table Miscellany]', c 1726, and there's an ABC of it as B159 in the broadside ballad tunes on my website. It's over a 150 earlier the "The Star of the County Down". Several other names for it are in a group at the end of the Irish tune index on my website, and more songs using the tune are given under "Lazarus" in Bronson's 'The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads'. The recent 'Sources of Irish Traditional Music', 1998 has no copies other than Scots ones of "Gilderoy" and that in Shield's opera 'Marian', through their cut-off date of 1855. It seems to be first found elsewhere as "We are poor frozen out gardeners" in Wm. Chappell's 'Popular Music of the Olden Time' as a song and tune Chappell heard about 1818. www.erols.com/olsonw