Our Cat Has Kitted three-two

Unadulterated from ‘The Joseph Kershaw Manuscript’ ~

http://www.petecooper.com/
http://www.petecooper.com/eftnotes.htm

51: "Our Cat Has Kitted"
Triple Hornpipe in D. This version of the Cheshire Rounds, (John Offord’s ‘2nd’ setting) is from the 1820s manuscript of Saddleworth fiddler Joseph Kershaw. ~

http://www.petecooper.com/eftnotes2.htm

"The Joseph Kershaw Manuscript: The Music of a 19th Century Saddleworth Fiddle Player"
Edited by Jamie Knowles
In With A Chance Publishing, 1993

Joseph Kershaw

Little is known about nineteenth-century fiddle player Joseph Kershaw’s life, except that he lived in Slackcote, Saddleworth, then a remote district in the Pennines, east of Manchester. But from around 1820 Kershaw kept a fiddle music notebook (now in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House, London), containing some seventy-seven tunes. Of particular interest is Kershaw’s inclusion of a pair of 3/2 hornpipes, ‘Berwick Jockey’ and ‘Chip and Rant’, fine examples of a dance form previously thought to have been extinct by that time, as well as cut-time hornpipes like the one in the present collection, now known as ‘Kershaw’s Hornpipe’.
~ Pete Cooper

Cheshire Rounds/The Old Lancashire Hornpipe
http://thebattleofthefield.tripod.com/id8.html

http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/index.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/OP_OZ.htm

OUR CAT HAS KITTED. English, Old Hornpipe (3/2 time). D Major. Standard. AABB. The melody, according to Jamie Knowles, is a version of the English classic “Cheshire Rounds,” and is contained in the Joseph Kershaw manuscript. Kershaw was a fiddler who lived in Slackcote, Saddleworth, North West England, in the 19th century, and his manuscript dates from around 1820 onwards. The Joseph Kershaw Manuscript, 1993; No. 2. Topic Records TSCD 536, Waterson/Carthy – “Broken Ground” (1999).

# Posted on June 26th 2003 by Juizgax
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/1817

We play this in a set - Rusty Gulley
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/1208
Dusty Miller
a 3/2 version of this one http://www.thesession.org/tunes/28
(I’d better put it here - maybe in the comments unless you think it should have it’s own entry)
and Our Cat has Kitted.

Chris

? ~ this transcript is 3/2 ~ ? By the way Chris, it’s your fault I dug this up and added it here, another lovely tune. Thanks! :-)

Here is the way this seems to mostly appear Online, but doesn’t make sense to me, not the note groupings or the bar count…

X: ~
T: Our Cat Has Kitted
M: 3/2
L: 1/8
R: treble / triple hornpipe
K: Dmaj
|: gfed fabe edcA | gfed faAd dAFD :|
|: GBFA E2 Ee edcA | GBFA E2 Dd dAFD :|

The little I know of ‘Cheshire Rounds’ they tend to be built on 4 measure phrases that repeat, as the transcription I’ve given illutrates.

I have read somewhere that there is a 4-part version of this tune, but I have not yet found the notes for that. I will add them when and if I do find them. I think they are in Michael Raven’s collection "1000 English Country Dance Tunes", and my copy is in the care of a friend, so I couldn’t chase it up, and they can’t remember where they last saw it. I did try… I’ll try again. Maybe someone else has his collection and can check for it…

:-)

Does that mean you’ve forgiven me? :-/

(‘illutrates’? ~ ‘illustrates’)

No, of course not. I just like 3/2s ;-)

Me too, and I’ve only just realized I used to know a few from my early music romps of old… ;-)

It definitely has an old English or Scottish sound to it. Ive been wanting to learn a good 3/2 but Im not one to learn tunes just for the sake of learning tunes. But this one might have enough soul in the MIDI to cause me to learn it. Something about it reminded me of a tune I first learned from a family member.

Jaybird http://thesession.org/tunes/7435