Chords Req: Step It Out, Mary

Subject: RE: Chords Req: Step It Out, Mary
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Oct 10 - 04:44 AM

There's an easy and effective way to do this as a set of guitar chugs so long as you don't want to do it in C#m, Dm or Ebm.

Capo 8th fret (for Cm).

Now you have basically three shapes in the chug.

Shape 1 - fret the bottom E string at Eb, and the A Ab using your second finger bent backwards so the middle joint of your finger mutes the D string, and play the EADand G strings.

Shape 2 - play the ADand G strings open

Shape 3 - play your normal Em shape (so it's Cm at the 8th fret). Mostly you'll want to keep this to the bottom 4 strings.

Now basically use those three shapes to play the tune

1:Step it 2:out 3:Mary my 2:fine 3:dau 2:ter
1:Step it 2:out 3:Mary if 2:you 3:can
1:Step it 2:out 3:Mary my 2:fine 3:dau 2:ter
1:Show 2:your 3:legs to the 2:coun 1:try 3:man (playing the full Eminor shape on "man").

I emphasise the word rhythm on the "Mary my" bit playing what I think is a triplet through the "Mary " bit damping off the middle stroke slightly. It gives it that Irish sort of "diddly" feel a bit.

Subject: RE: Chords Req: Step It Out, Mary
From: GUEST,davyshannon
Date: 16 Oct 10 - 11:50 PM

Dm)In the village of (C)Kilgory, there's a (Dm)maiden young and (C) fair
Her (Dm)eyes they shone like C)diamonds, she had (Dm)long and (Am)golden (Dm)hair

Then a countryman came riding, up to her father's gates

Mounted on a milk-white stallion, he came at the stroke of eight

Chorus:

Step it out, Mary, my fine daughter

Step it out, Mary, if you can

Step it out, Mary, my fine daughter

Show your legs to the wealthy man

I have come to wed your daughter, Mary of the golden hair

I have gold and I have silver I have land beyond compare

I will buy her silks and satin and a gold ring from her hand

I will buy for her a mansion, she'll have servants to command

Chorus

Kind sir I love a soldier, I have pledged to him my hand

I don't want your gold or silver, I don't want you house or land

Mary's father spoke up sharply, You will do as you are told

You will marry him on Sunday and you'll wear his ring of gold

Chorus

Near the village of Kilgory there's a deep stream running by

They found Mary there at midnight, she had drowned with her soldier boy

In the village there is music, you can hear her father say

Step it out Mary, my fine daughter, Sunday is your wedding day.

Chorus twice.

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: pavane
Date: 23 Jun 01 - 03:11 PM

I hadn't found it here, but I searched for 'step it out Mary'. It was only when I searched using Google that I widened it by dropping the name! Just shows you

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Jun 01 - 02:17 PM

Hmmm. Since Pavane got his tune from Erich Rickheit, I'll betcha it came from Erich's Yet Another Digital Tradition site, which is a mirror of our Digital Tradition database that converts our tunes to various formats. I get a kick out of that, when people post stuff that other sites have harvested from our own database. No problem - but I think it's kinda funny.
I added links to the lyrics and tune to the top of this thread. Of course, I realize that the original request was for chords.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Jun 01 - 01:49 PM

Copied from another thread, which will be deleted. I wonder why two requests for this song in such a short time.
-Joe Offer-

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Subject: Step It Out, Mary
From: GUEST,Chantria
Date: 23-Jun-01 - 12:41 PM

I already know the words for Step It Out, Mary, but I need the chords and can't find them anywhere. Can anyone here help me?

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: pavane
Date: 23 Jun 01 - 12:47 PM

refresh, because I haven't yet found out how to put a clickie on a thread!.

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: raredance
Date: 23 Jun 01 - 09:53 AM

The tune is also in the DT under Robin Williams and Jerome Clark's cowboy version of the lyrics, "Step It Out Nancy"

rich r

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: chordstrangler
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 05:38 PM

A few years ago I was asked by the local Sean McCarthy Memorial committee in Finuge, Listowel, to collate a book on Sean's writings. I did so and the book is called "Rhymes and Reasons".

Its a small booklet with about 30 songs or so in it. It publishes the lyrics and the reasons - in the man's own words- as to his music came about.

I'm sure it must be available from the Sean McCarthy Memorial Committee, Finuge, Listowel, Co, Kerry. It is a non-profit making venture, any few shillings raised being spent on keeping his memory alive.

Slan...Mickey.

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 04:44 PM

Out of print. Damn! I had a copy and lent it someone along with an old library book called 'Shepherd of the Downs' with songs from Sufolk (Or was it Sussex?). Can't remember who I lent them to though...:-(

Do I come here often?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Noreen
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 04:16 PM

Click for a photograph of the author... and a link to a clip of the song sung by Peggy Sweeney with the local Listowel accent.

Noreen

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Noreen
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 04:02 PM

Thanks, Dave. Below is copied from Cantaria as I can't find the original site where I read it.

Step It Out Mary words and tune by Sean McCarthy around 1955

The following notes come from Sean McCarthy's songbook, pub 1976 and now out of print. (I found a copy at the Irish Traditional Music Archives in Dublin.)

Step It Out Mary is based on a childrens skipping-song:

Step it out Mary, my fine daughter / Step it out Mary, if you can / Step it out Mary, my fine daughter / Cock your legs for the country man.

The children in the swaying circle took their game very seriously. All along the Kanturk streets, farmers and shopkeepers traded and argued, but the children paid no heed to them, they were too intent in their skipping game. The rules of the skipping game were fairly simple. Each skipper took it in turn to use the skipping rope, while the others changed the above ditty. When it came to the last line, the skipper stopped with the left leg cocked as high as he or she could manage and stayed still until the next skipper took his or her place. If the skipper failed to keep their left leg cocked or it if touched the ground, then with many jeers and catcalls they were banished from the game. It is only a slightly mad, or a childish Kerryman who would have watched the children atall. I watched them for a whole hour.

Kanturk in the County of Cork is a town of numerous pubs, friendly people and plenty of craic. I started my search that night, but could find no man or woman who had ever heard extra verses to the childrens' skipping song. Indeed my own Kerry, home of strange songs and poems, failed to supply any more than the four lines. In desperation then, in a London building site, when again times were hard on folksingers, I composed the story of the soldier and Mary, and added it to the Kanturk childrens' skipping ditty.

I did it while I was hiding from the foreman under a concrete stairway, and I used the inside of a cement bag for note paper. I took it home to my modest flat, stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it. Eighteen months later, when fortune was again smiling in my direction, I found myself, along with two others, running a folk singing club in the Clapham area of London.

The folk club was called "The Crubeen" and I suppose if you are a folk buff, you will remember that it started a lot of the present day trend. If you were a folk singer, then the Crubeen was the place to sing. Most of your present day singers, Irish, English and American, dropped in there to try out their material. A young Dublin ex-army rifleman named Danny Doyle wandered in there one night, I sung Step It Out Mary and later gave him the words, no longer written on the cement bag, but neatly typed on shop paper.

The rest is folk History

Subject: Lyr Add: STEP IT OUT, NANCY
From: pavane
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 03:27 PM

These are the chords given by my program HARMONY, from the abc file above

X:1
T:STEP IT OUT, NANCY
Q:140
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:GMaj clef=treble
|:z z "G"G/2G/2 A|"Em"B e "Em"e e|"G"d B "G"B/2B/2 B|"Em"B e "Em"e d|*
"Bm"B2 "G"G/2G/2 A|"Em"B e "Em"e e|"G"d B "G"B B|"G"B B/2B/2 "D"A F|*
"Em"E2 z z|

Just the chords:
G|Em Em|G G|Em Em|Bm G|Em Em|G G|G D| Em|

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: pavane
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 06:59 AM

John Chambers site (see above) also has the following, which looks as if it may be useful - point it to an abc file and it will play as a MIDI file on your PC. But I haven't had a chance to try it.

Quote from the site:
suppose you have an ABC file on your own machine which is running a web server, and you'd like to convert it to MIDI. Here is a URL that you could type into your browser's URL entry widget that will do the job:

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/cgi/abc/TuneGet?F=MIDI&X=0&U=http://localhost/some/dir/foo.abc

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 06:57 AM

That is more or less the tune I know.

Jon

Subject: Tune Add: STEP IT OUT, NANCY
From: pavane
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 06:35 AM

Does this look like the tune? Unfortunately I cannot play it here to find out! And does anyone know swtoabc?

% Generated more or less automatically by swtoabc by Erich Rickheit KSC

X:1
T:Step It Out, Nancy
M:4/4
L:1/4
K:G
G/2G/2 A| B e e e| d B B/2B/2 B| B e e d| B2 G/2G/2 A| B e e e| d B B B| B B/2B/2 A F| E2|

I found this at John Chambers' abc search engine

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: pavane
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 05:35 AM

Anyone got the tune in abc format?

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Jun 01 - 04:45 AM

Sean McCarthy wrote it. I found out purely by chance when we spent a wonderful couple of weeks in his home village of Finuge, near Listowel, Ireland. They were holding a memorial weekend for him while we were there.

Look here for more details

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From:
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 11:00 PM

Noreen, what were these details? or where was it found?

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Noreen
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 08:04 PM

Golly, Bernard, I thought it was only me who stuck to two chords...! (Works on the concertina.)

I found info on the net about the composer of this song, details which should be added to the DT.

Noreen

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Gary T
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 07:52 PM

I've been using Am and E. I'll try these variations and see how they sound.

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 07:40 PM

To be akward, I use Am and G except for Bernards underlined "can" where I use and E.

Jon

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: vectis
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 07:33 PM

I do it in Am and G. Much the same thing really.

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Llanfair
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 07:21 PM

That's how I do it, too.
Cheers, Bron.

Subject: RE: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: Bernard
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 03:52 PM

All I do is alternate between Am and Em7...

Keep it simple!

Step it out Mary my fine daughter
Step it out Mary if you can
Step it out Mary my fine daughter
Show your legs to the country man
(etc)...

Subject: Chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'
From: GUEST,Mark
Date: 21 Jun 01 - 03:28 PM

Anyone have the chords for 'Step It Out, Mary'? Have the words, have heard the tune, can't figure the chords.

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Click for lyrics
Click for tune

(Tune is in the file for "Step It Out, Nancy" -Joe Offer-)