The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #8359   Message #269187
Posted By: GUEST,Bruce O.
01-Aug-00 - 12:33 AM
Thread Name: Tune Add: Mick McGuire/Napoleon Crossing the Rhine
Subject: RE: Mick McGuire Crossing the Rhine (tune ???)
There are a lot of variants in the tune family of Bonaparte's Retreat = Bonaparte/Napoleon crossing the Rhine/ Alps. Tune family below from the Irish tune index on my website. An ABC of the earliest variant, "Gilderoy", is B159 among the broadside ballad tunes there. See also the thread below on Young Edwin in the Lowlands".] S. P. Bayard in 'Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife', #169 (7 versions of Gilderoy) remarks that he concentrates on instrumental versions of the tune, because if he started on vocal variants he might never finish. His #277, Bonapartes's Retreat= Bonaparte/ Napoleon Crossing the Rhine/ Alps (8 versions), and his #451, Paddy works on the Railway, are other versions. These are only his traditional ones and he cites many other printings. These are included in Andrew Kuntz 'Fiddler's Companion' index on the Ceolas website [Click from Mudcat's Link, then click on Tunes, then click on Printed Sources, then on Fiddler's Companion. Search for 'Gilderoy' and 'Rhine' or Napoleon']

Tune Family 3: Gilderoy, Green Shores of America, Maria Martin, Lazarus, Come all you worthy Christians, Star of the County Down, Unquiet Grave, King Herod and the Cock, The Tree in the Wood, Bonaparte's Retreat = Bonaparte/Napoleon crossing the Rhine/Alps, The Babe of Bethlehem. [See Lazarus, #56, in Bronson's 'The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads' for many other titles, and locations where the tunes may be found.]