Tune Req: Name That Tune!

Subject: Tune Req: Name That Civil War Tune!
From: Lighter
Date: 19 Aug 25 - 08:58 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE2f4l6gupo&list=OLAK5uy_nGqje8tfiPjuYURBWc2a4slF37V67V0Ss&index=25


The first unnamed tune in this fife-and-drum medley is "Jefferson and Liberty." The third is "The Yankee Volunteer" (i.e., "The Lincolnshire Poacher").

But what is number two? Sounds familiar, but I haven't been able to place it - after a year of trying!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 19 Aug 25 - 10:31 PM

Lighter, could you tell us the start and end times on the video clip of the mystery tune, please? Just so we know exactly which tune you mean.

Thanks

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 05:03 AM

The first tune is what I would call "The Gobby O". I can't place the second.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 05:46 AM

I only hear two tunes!!...Am I missing something??

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 07:07 AM

The second part of number 2 sound like the Oyster Girl.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 08:51 AM

Jack, "Jefferson and Liberty." is/was the U.S. name for "The Gobby O" (a name which has never been convincingly explained, AFAIK.)

Helen, the mystery tune begins at 0:41 and ends at 1:22.

Manitas, I hear the resemblance in the final bars, but otherwise I think it's a different tune.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 03:13 PM

Thanks Lighter. I don't know the other two tunes so it is difficult to isolate the mystery tune. I'll try listening to it again.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 07:48 PM

Just trying to narrow down the search. Is it a song? And I'm only guessing, but are the other two tunes or songs from the American Civil War era?

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Lighter
Date: 20 Aug 25 - 08:45 PM

All three are advertised as from the Civil War era. The two I can identify are a generation or more older. "The Yankee Volunteer" was a Civil War song written to the tune of "The Lincolnshire Poacher." "Jefferson and Liberty" was a song from around 1805 and the melody eventually kept its new name.

Fife-and-drum music was pretty conservative back then, so it's quite possible that the unidentified tune was also old at the time.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 21 Aug 25 - 01:06 AM

Ok. You're all probably going to think I've lost my faculties but the mystery song vaguely reminds me of an Irish tune on one of my many CD's which has a title relating to an Irish man's name but I can't remember what it is.

It is, however, the same tune as For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. Searching for that tune leads me to an old French song Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre (translation: Marlborough is Going Off to War).

I've looked through my Irish music tracks but I'm having trouble remembering which one is the right one.

It's mostly the second part of the mystery tune which reminds me of the song.

Sorry if this is a red herring.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 21 Aug 25 - 06:53 AM

Ok, I am still unsure but I can hear similarities in the tune called Mal Brook which is on a CD called Patrick O'Neill's Manuscripts performed by Irish harpist Kathleen Loughnane. I also have her book of arrangements of the music. Her version of the tune Mal Brook is beautiful IMHO.

"This recording presents Kathleen Loughnane's arrangements of a selection of tunes contained in the manuscripts of Patrick O Neill (1765-1832), giving an insight into the eclectic range of music popular in south Tipperary/Kilkenny in the late 18th and early 19th Century. The tunes were collected by Patrick O'Neill and represent his rich efforts to preserve what could still be saved from the gradual erosion of an Irish way of being.

"'It takes a special gift to get hold of dots written with a quill pen by fingers long gone to dust and resurrect them into full singing glory' - Alex Monaghan Irish Music Magazine (2009)"


I looked up the tune on Traditional Tune Archive and found these pages:

Marlbrouk

Traditional Tune Archive - La Malbrook

Traditional Tune Archive - Notes on La Malbrook

Book: Samuel, Ann & Peter Thompson - Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 5 (1788, p. 37)Notes: "Dances 1785"Transcription: AK/Fiddler's Companion

The full notes on that page are:

MALBROOK. AKA – "Malbrouk," "Malbrouck." AKA and see "Marlbrough," "Marlbrouk," "Molly Brooks," "We won't go home till morning." French (originally), English; Jig and March (6/8 time). C Major: A Mixolydian (McLachlan). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (McLachlan): AABA. "Malbrook" is the tune for the well-known songs "We won't go home till morning" or "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." The title has been said (by Fuld, for one) to honor John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, a famous military figure and intriguer during the reigns of three monarchs; James II, Willaim III and Queen Anne, though this has been disputed. The tune was first printed by Valleyre between 1762 and 1778, according to Fuld (1966), in a collection of French street songs, Chansons, Vaudevilles et Ariettes Choisis par Duchemin where it appears as "La Mort de M. de Marlb'roug." It was a favorite of Marie Antoinette, according to Kidson (1915) who learned it about 1781 from a peasant woman called in to nurse her first child; by 1783 it had become fashionable and a number of printings of "Marlbourouck," "Malbrouk," "Adir de Marlbourouck" and other variants occurred. Fuld also notes the melody "Calino Casturame," which appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, is quite similar. Several writers have speculated on earlier origins for the tune. A famous legend has it that it was learned during the crusades in Jerusalem and was brought back to France by a soldier; Fuld traces this unsubstantiated story to Chateaubriand. Other speculations posit an 18th century hunting song, an ancient Arabic or Spanish song, and an old song called the "Duke de Guise." Anne Gilchrist ["Old Fiddlers' Tune Books of the Georgian Period", JEFDSS, vol. 4, No. 1, Dec. 1940, p. 21] researched the tune and published and article on it in 1927. She says: "…despite both French and English later popular legend, this old French and Flemish folk-song had no more connection with the Duke of Marlborough than with the Duke of Wellington. I have traced its arrival in England, at least as early as c. 1750 under its Flemish name of "Malbrouck" (at an earlier period its hero was "Mambrou") but the absurd identification of Malbrouck with Marlborough was not born for over sixty years after John Churchill had died in his English bed of old age and the senility following upon a stroke. It is true that he went to the war, like Malbrouck, but he returned alive to his scheming Sarah, instead of any little page dressed tout en noir returning to announce his death to his distressed lady."

It was a popular English country dance tune that appears in a number of printed dance collections and instrumental tutors, the earliest being Longman, Lukey and Broderip's Bride's Favourite Collection of 200 Select Country Dances, Cotillons (London, 1776). It continued to be included in collections through the second decade of the 19th century. Gilchrist (1940) notes: "I have here printed the 18th-century version (the name is sometimes corrupted to "Mall Brook" or "Moll Brooks," etc.) as found with negligible variation in several of these fiddlers' books, to demonstrate how the plaintive little folk-tune, with its falling cadences and lack of any climax, has been transformed in England, where it became very popular by its adaptation to jovial use as "For he's a jolly good fellow" and "We won't go home till morning"--the rising bellow on "fe-el-low" or "mo-or-ning" being an entirely British embellishment, as an outlet for enthusiasm, or sign of Bacchanalian high spirits. (Has the likeness of the tune to the "Queen's Jig (The)" of the Dancing Master ever been noticed?)." "Malbrook" was entered in the mid-19th century music manuscript of William Winter, a shoemaker and violin player who lived in West Bagborough in Somerset, southwest England.

The melody appears in a few music manuscript copybooks in America during the War of Independence (and post-) era, as for example in those of Captain George Bush (see below), John Hoff (a Pennsylvania flute manuscript, 1797–1799), John Curtiss (a Connecticut commonplace book c. 1800), and Henry Livingston, Jr., to name a few. Livingston purchased the estate of Locust Grove, Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1771 at the age of 23. In 1775 he was a Major in the 3rd New York Regiment, which participated in Montgomery's invasion of Canada in a failed attempt to wrest Montreal from British control. An important land-owner in the Hudson Valley, and a member of the powerful Livingston family, Henry was also a surveyor and real estate speculator, an illustrator and map-maker, and a Justice of the Peace for Dutchess County. He was also a poet and musician, and presumably a dancer, as he was elected a Manager for the New York Assembly's dancing season of 1774–1775, along with his 3rd cousin, John Jay, later U.S. Chief Justice of Governor of New York.



Additional notes
Source for notated version : - the music manuscript of Captain George Bush (1753?–1797), a fiddler and officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution [Keller]; A Selection of Cotillions' (Boston, 1808, p. 8) [Morrison].

Printed sources : - Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3), 1788; No. 661, p. 179. Longman, Lukey, & Broderip (Bride's Favourite Collection of 200 Select Country Dances, Cotillons), 1776; Part IV, p. 92 (appears as "La Malbro"). Howe (Complete Preceptor for the Accordeon), 1843; p. 30. Keller (Fiddle Tunes from the American Revolution), 1992; p. 22. Manson (Hamilton's Universal Tune-Book, vol. 1), 1854; p. 97. McLachlan (The Piper's Assistant), 1854; No. 9, p. 6. Morrison (Twenty-Four Early American Country Dances, Cotillions & Reels, for the Year 1976), 1976; p. 51. Thompson (Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 5), 1788; p. 37. Geoff Woolfe (William Winter’s Quantocks Tune Book), 2007; No. 262, p. 98 (ms. originally dated 1850).

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Lighter
Date: 21 Aug 25 - 02:49 PM

Thank you for going to so much trouble, Helen. I appreciate it.

"Malbrouck" didn't quite do it for me, so I emailed the 119th NYSV band and got a reply within an hour.

The name of the tune is "Baltimore." You can see sheet music at this site:

https://vvfdc.org/study.php?id=Baltimore

Thanks again!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 21 Aug 25 - 03:15 PM

Well, at least I motivated you to go to the source! LOL

Congrats on finding the answer to the mystery.

BTW, it wasn't the "Freezer" Jolly Good part of the tune which reminded me, it was the other part.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 21 Aug 25 - 03:28 PM

Baltimore jig - on The Session

In the notes one alternative title for the tune is French March, so maybe I wasn't totally out of the ballpark and in a note further down someone commented that:

"It was used for numerous songs, including children’s play-party songs such as 'Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow' and the Bronx collected 'Monday I Asked My Neighbor to Play'."

Subject: RE: Obit: '#1 Peasant' Conrad Bladey (?1952 - 2025)
From: Lighter
Date: 22 Aug 25 - 01:23 PM

It seems not be a very common tune.

Traditional Tune Index dates it back to 18th century Scotland under the odd name of "Casina" or "Cassino."

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 22 Aug 25 - 03:56 PM

Cassino is a city in Italy. I know that because I saw something on TV about how the NSW, Australian town of Casino was given that name. There may be an event in the history of the city which relates to the tune. Another mystery.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 23 Aug 25 - 05:08 AM

There’s a pipe tune called “The Heights of Cassino” by Donald MacRae, but this relates to the battles of Monte Cassino during WW2, so a bit later than the 18th century tune! Also mentioned in the Hamish Henderson song, “D-Day Dodgers”.
Going back much further than either tune, there was a Benedictine monastery from the 6th century on the site, but this and the town of Monte Cassino were pretty much destroyed by bombing during the above WW2 battles. There’s a very graphic account of it all on Wikipedia.
Sorry for thread drift and it doesn’t get you any further with “Baltimore”, but interesting, nonetheless!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Name That Tune!
From: Helen
Date: 23 Aug 25 - 06:08 PM

Thanks Tattie,

I read (well skimmed through) the Wiki article.

There is one 1815 war event mentioned:

"On May 15–17, 1815, the town was the set of the final cruel battle of the Neapolitan War between an Austrian force commanded by Laval Nugent von Westmeath and the King of Naples, Joachim Murat. The so-called 'Battle of San Germano' ended with the Austrian victory."