> I've got lots of stuff as ABC and MP3. But I cannot tell from > looking which part of Britain they're from.
A cheap source that will clue you in is Kerr's Merry Melodies, the basic resource used by most Scottish dance musicians for 120 years. It does contain English tunes, but they'd all been so thoroughly naturalized by Kerr's time that none of them is out of place in any Scottish dance set. The Irish tunes usually are identified as such, since they were used for different dances (by and large the jigs still are, but the reels have dropped into oblivion this side of the Irish Sea). There are also a few American tunes, mostly set aside for specific dances. > Mairi's Wedding: is that Scottish? Yes. It's based (I'm told) on an older Gaelic song, "Mhairi nighean a Donnachaidh", but I don't know it. Mairi still alive, I think; the song was written for a specific wedding in the 1930s. There is a specific dance for it, but you could use it for any reel. It's a nice tune but the words (which I think were first written in English, don't blame the Gaels for it) are crap. > What about Petronella? English, but universally played in Scotland for 200 years. It's named after a "petronel", which is a kind of seriously big and nasty chest- braced pistol used in 18th century armies. There is a set dance to it (with appropriate loud bangs as everyone stamps at once) which has survived pretty much unchanged in the American contradance repertoire. You could use it as a general-purpose reel, but when the specific dance for it is so individual and possibly known to your audience, it might be better not to. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
