The Byron strathspey

C: Andrew Rankine

Information from http://my.strathspey.org/dd/person/1533/ states that Andrew Rankine was a “Publisher of dance descriptions” and a “Composer of tunes”, and lived from 1930-1985.

There’s a bit of confusion over the key, I’ve put the version that I play in Amaj here but I have no idea if it was originally in G or not.

The John Chambers version is in G:
X: 1
T: The Byron Strathspey
C: Andrew Rankine
R: strathspey
B: Deeside 2
Z: 1997 by John Chambers <jc:trillian.mit.edu>
M: C
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
D>G |: B2 B2 A>B c<A | G4- G2 G>F | E>^D E>F G>A G<E | D4- D2D>G |
| B2 B2 A>B c<A | G2g2 e>f g<e | d>e d>B A>B c>A | G4- G2 :|
|: g>f | e>^d e>f g>f g>e | d4- d2 B2 | A^G A>B c>B c<d | B4- B2 B>A |
| G>F G>F G>A G<E | D>^C D>G B>d c>B | A>^G A>B c>A F<A | G4- G2 :|

And found in A also: http://www.folktunefinder.com/tune/19242/

My version here in A is pretty similar, as the source was playing it for a dance a few weeks ago and remembering it from the dots - which most likely came from this version!

There’s a Gmin version by Sylvia Miskoe as well, found here: http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/Scotland/strathspey/ByronStr_Gm/0000 which goes like this:

X: 1
T: The Minor Byron Strathspey (17b) x2
C: Andrew Rankine
O: minor version by Sylvia Miskoe
R: strathspey
B: Deeside 2
Z: 2009 by John Chambers <jc:trillian.mit.edu>
M: C
L: 1/8
K: Gm
D>G |: B2 B2 A>B c<A | G4- G2 G>F | E>D E>F G>A G<E | D4- D2D>G |
| B2 B2 A>B c<A | G2g2 e>f g<e | d>e d>B A>B c>A | G4- G2 :|
|: g>f | e>d e>f g>f g>e | d4- d2 B2 | A^G A>B c>B c<d | B4- B2 B>A |
| G>F G>F G>A G<E | D>^C D>G B>d c>B | A>^G A>B c>A ^F<A | G4- G2 :|

(I’ve edited it slightly from the original, again sourced from the dance I played at, which had a mistake in the third measure of the A part. Here’s the incorrect version http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/scottish-guitar-tab/the_byron_strathspey.htm which has a D# in the third measure which doesn’t make sense)

As with a few of my previous submissions, it’s a dance, by John Drewry, described:
http://my.strathspey.org/dd/dance/894/ and http://www.scottish-country-dancing-dictionary.com/dance-crib/byron-strathspey.html

To clarify “There’s a bit of confusion over the key”

**I** am confused over the original key 🙂

Andrew Rankine was the composer of the well known ‘Donald Ian Rankine’.

http://boxandfiddle.com/andrew_rankine.htm

Cheers Weejie!!

Nice to see another Rankine tune added. Awhile back we had a whole week with some of us adding tunes of his. This is quite a sweet one, almost more of a barndance than a strathspey, but definitely that certain ‘modern’ sweetness that is Andrew Rankine…

Thanks for adding this Smash…

By ‘modern’ it would have been better to clarify that as ‘of his time’… 😎