Annotation:An the Kirk Wad Let Me Be

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AN THE KIRK WAD LET ME BE. AKA and see "If the Kirk Would Let Me Be", "Kirk wad let me be." Scottish, Air (9/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). The air appears in full in the Guthrie MS. of the late seventeenth century. Guthrie, a covenanting minister who was beheaded in 1661, was probably no friend to dance music, and Alburger (1983) speculates that some wag sewed the music MS. pages into one of his books of sermons. The air was a vehicle for an air in Allan Ramsay's ballad opera The Gentle Shepherd, sung by Patie (Song 16) that begins:

Duty and part of reason
Plead strong on the parent's side,
Which love superior calls treason;
The strongest must be obey'd:
For now tho' I'm one of the gentry,
My constancy falsehood repels;
For change on my heart has no entry,
Still there my dear Peggy excels.

The melody also appears in the Gillespie Manuscript of Perth (1768, p. 99).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: William McGibbon (Scots Tunes Book 1), c. 1762; pp. 18-19. Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion Book 3), 1760; p. 14.

Recorded sources:

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