Swindon waltz

I don’t make a habit of submitting slow airs to this website, but this one is easy to transcribe into a 3/4 time sig, and it’s a lovely tune. It was composed by Archie Dagg, who also wrote Elsey’s Waltz https://thesession.org/tunes/6552 and the Foxglove Hornpipe https://thesession.org/tunes/7188. This tune is named after the place A.D. retired to after a lifetime’s work as a shepherd.

Swindon? What did he want to go and live there for? After herding sheep in the hills of Northumberland?

Sorry - being a Northerner, perhaps you don’t realise how absurd that sounds to a Southerner. Presumably it’s another Swindon, not the one you pass on the way from London to Bristol. It must be a nice place, judging by the tune.

My apologies to anyone from Swindon, Wilts. But if you were going to retire to that part of the country, you’d hardly choose *Swindon*, now, would you?

LOL. I don’t think it’s that Swindon. I always assumed it was the tiny place on the edge of the Northumberland National Park.

Swindon Wilts isn’t that bad!

I hope so.

Admittedly, the only time I was in Swindon (Wilts) was when I was 9 years old, on the way back from a holiday in Cornwall. The car broke down late at night, and we had to hang around at a garage half the night, and ended up hiring a car. So all I’ve ever seen of it is motorways, recovery vehicles, slip-roads and garages. There’s probably a bit more to it than that. Sorry, Swindon.

Swindon has featured in The Guardian recently as “the most average town in the UK” by whatever indicators were deemed relevant. Curious what some people get paid to do. I’ve never stopped there.

Swindon is a big farm near Scots Gap, Northumberland. The Angels of the North played an excellent wedding ceilidgh inthe barn there a few summers back.

Noel
Angels of the North

Swindon (Northumberland) is here:

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/oldmap.srf?x=397500&y=599500&z=120&sv=swindon&st=3&tl=Map+of+Swindon,+Northumberland+&searchp=oldsearch.srf&mapp=oldmap.srf

@Creadur - when you made your unscheduled stop in the Swindon (Wiltshire), you were fortunate that you managed to avoid that town’s infamous “Magic Roundabout” :

http://www.swindonweb.com/uploaded_files/1167/images/lifemagi1.jpg

Hmm - maybe someone should write a tune and dedicate it to that infamous traffic control system …

… but come to think of it - there already is one … 😉

Mix O’Lydian - FYI Infamous Swindon band XTC wrote English Roundabout in response to said traffic blot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLJTpsvRNg0

play video

Now how do I play that on banjo?