Paddy Carey (jig) on The Session

Ten comments

Paddy Carey

This is the second 48 bar tune that I have in a set of three starting with a three part version of Morgan Rattler and ending with Bucks of Westmeath. Will post ‘Bucks’ tomorrow.

Paddy Carey

I would say that’s a slide and one where I can see a lot of relationsship to polka rythm…

Slide? Polka?

Can’t agree with you I’m afraid. I’m so used to playing at as a jig that it really feels wrong in polka phrasing although it is an easy tune to do that with. Does not feel like any slide that I play. I have not come across any reference to Single Jig on the session so far and feel that it could probably fit into that catagory more so than a double jig. Anyway I feel it makes for a good tune to dance to.

Late arrival on this one, however… ~ this does not have the clear long phrasing of a 12/8 slide, definine the 12/8 measures. Instead this presents us with short pulses, having that chunkier 6/8 feel of that species of single jig…

Paddy Carey

Here is a version in C from William WInter’s Quantocks Tune Book of 1850, a compilation of about 400 tunes. This version differs in some respects from the version already posted.

T:Paddy Carey
M:6/8
L:1/8
R:jig
K:Cmaj
G | G2c cBc | e2c cBc | A2d d2e | f2d BAG |
G2c cBc | e2c c2c | BAG GAB | c2e dc2 |
c2e f2a | g2a gec | c2e f2a | gec d3 |
c2e f2a | g2a gec | cBc edc | BAB c2 ||
G | cGe cGe | c3 c2c | BAG GAB | c2d e2G |
cGe cGe | c3 c2c | BAG GAB | c3 c2 ||

This is exactly as given in Winter. Note that he used no repeat signs in this tune. I have checked my ABC transcription using ABCMus playback.

I suspect that there may be an error in Winter’s bar 8, which may possibly be in the original manuscript or is perhaps due to a slip of the pen in a later transcription. I think that bar 8 should read: | c2e d2c |, which plays more easily and sounds more sensible.

Geoff Woolfe, the editor of the modern publication of Winter’s manuscript, notes that the tune is in the Joshua Gibbons manuscript of 1823-1826.

Here are some extracts from Geoff Woolfe’s Introduction to his edition of Winter’s manuscript:

William Winter worked as a shoemaker in the Brendon Hills and Quantocks area of Somerset. He was born in 1774 in Lydeard St Lawrence, a village to the north east of Wiveliscombe. As a young married man he played in the church band. He later moved to the village of West Bagborough, about 10 miles north west of Taunton, and it was while he was living there that he complied his tune book. He was a fiddle player and it is possible he also played the flute. He died in 1861.

The music itself suggests that he almost certainly played for dancing for the community and for the ‘elite’ of local society, for festive occasions, and to accompany singers at social events or small private concerts. William Winter’s manuscript reflects the wide variety of popular music played in the early nineteenth century.

The manuscript is signed and dated at one end "September 20th 1848". At the other end it is dated March 1st 1850.
It is possible that by 1848 his old music had become fragile and he started to rewrite his repertoire in a new book, taking the opportunity to include new material from the 1840s.

In 1960 Geoff Rye, a librarian and prominent member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, found the manuscript [the existence of which was hitherto unknown] in a bookshop in London, and bought it. He had it rebound and placed it in the Margaret Grant memorial library at Halsway Manor Traditonal Music and Dance Centre at Crowcombe, Somerset. It has since been edited by Geoff Woolfe of Bristol and was published by Halsway Manor in 2007 together with a CD of some of the tunes played by Robert Harbron and friends.

The life of William Winter and his music will stand alongside that of other English country dance musicians, like John Clare, Thomas Hardy and Michael Turner.