Annotation:To Danton Me

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X:3 T:To Danton me M:C L:1/8 R:Air Q:"Slow" S:McGibbon – Scots Tunes, book II, p. 51 (c. 1746) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:Gdor A>c | d2 G>A G2 (cB) | (A>c)(G>A) F2 (f>g) | (ag)(fd) (fd)T(cA) | d2 G>A G2 :| |: A>G | F2 (f>g) f3g | (ag)(fd) c3f | d2 (g>a) Tg3a | (ba)(gf) d2 f>g | a2 (ba) g2 (ag) | f>gfd (cd)(f>g) | (ag)(fd) (fd)T(cA) | d2 (G>A) G2 :|

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TO DANTON ME. AKA - "To Daunton Me." AKA and see "Blood Red Rose (The)," "Moran's Return," "This Wife of Mine, "What will I do with this thing of mine." Scottish, Country Dance Tune (4/4 time) or Highland Schottische. F Major (McGibbon): G Major (Aird): D Mixolydian (Howe, Kerr, O’Farrell); E Minor (Oswald). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (Kerr): AABB (Howe, McGibbon, O’Farrell): AABBCCDD (Aird). John Glen (Early Scots Melodies, 1900) finds the tune in the Atkinson manuscript of 1694, albeit under the title “This Wife of Mine.” Bruce Olson cites Logan’s The Pedlar’s Pack (1869), wherein is the note that a broadside ballad of c. 1700 called “Be Valiant Still” was to be sung to the tune of “To daunton me," just one of a number of sets of words applied to the tune over time. Northumbrian musician Henry Atkinson entered the tune as "This Wife of Mine" in his 1694 music manuscript collection, perhaps also the name of a song. "To danton me" was used by Mitchell as the vehicle for a song in his opera The Highland Fair or Union of the Clans, performed at Drury Lane in London in 1731.

Instrumental versions of the melody were similarly popular. The tune was printed in composer oboe and flute player Francis Barsanti's (1690-1775) Collection of Old Scots Tunes (1742). It was also published in cellist-composer James Oswald’s (1710-1769) Curious Collection of Scots Tunes for Violin, Bass Viol or German Flute (1740), dedicated to the Duke of Perth, and later in his Caledonian Pocket Companion (book 1, 1743) with new variations. It also appears in William McGibbon’s Second Collection of Scots Tunes (1746), and in Bremner’s 1762 reprint of McGibbon’s collection.

The word ‘daunton’ (and its variant, ‘danton’) is an archaic formulation meaning ‘dismay’ or ‘discourage’, which appears occasionally in older British folk manuscripts. One instance of it in folksong is in the ballad “Thomas Rhymer” (Child 37, version C), in the verse (here Thomas has encountered the Fairie Queen):

'Betide me weal, betide me woe,
That weird shall never daunton me;'
Syne he has kissed her rosy lips,
All underneath the Eildon Tree.

Antiquarian William Stenhouse found a version of the song in A Collection of Loyal Songs, Poems, &c, printed in 1750.

To daunton me, to daunton me,
Ken ye the things that would dannton me?
O eighty-eight and eighty-nine,
And a' the dreary years sin' syne,
With cess, and press, and Presbytrie,
Guid faith these had like to hae dauntoned me!

In 1788 Robert Burns (1759-1796) wrote a song by the title “To Daunton Me,” printed in Thompson’s Scots Musical Museum (1797) that employs the old air. It begins:

The blude-red rose at Yule may blaw,
The simmer lilies bloom in snaw,
The frost may freeze the deepest sea;
But an auld man shall never daunton me.

To daunton me, to daunton me,
And auld man shall never daunton me.

Poet James Hogg also printed a song called “To daunton me” (to the tune of “To daunton me”) in his Jacobite Relics (II, p. 89), but used the melody for a total of three Jacobite songs in the collection. Legman maintains that Stephen Foster’s song “I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” (written in honor of his wife, Jane McDowell Foster) is a reworking of “To Daunton Me,” although Fuld sees no similarity between the two. It is also thought that this piece eventually influenced a later song, "Andrew and his Cutty Gun (2)," also printed by James Oswald. A tune called "Danten Me" it appears in the c. 1782 music manuscript copybook of Seabrook, New Hampshire, musician Jeremiah Brown. As late as the 1880's a version of the tune (perhaps set as a reel--the tempo is unclear) was printed by Boston music publisher Elias Howe as "What will I do with this thing of mine." Francis O'Neill used a variant of Burns' first line for the title of his setting of the air, "Blood Red Rose (The)," printed in Music of Ireland (1903).

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