Annotation:Pretty Nun (The)

Back to Pretty Nun (The)

---

PRETTY NUN, THE. English, Country Dance Tune and Jig (6/4 and 6/8 time). A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Raven): AA'BB (Young). The melody was the vehicle for a country dance ("Longways for as many as will") in London publisher John Walsh's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1719, republished in editions of 1735 and 1749), and in John Young's Third Volume of the Dancing Master, 2nd edition of c. 1726.

The Weekly Journal, or Saturday's Post (No. 274) of January 25, 1724, mentions an encounter with a 'pretty nun' in an piece on attending a masked ball:

In walking up and down the Room, I was often put in mind of Æsop’s Capt, which being transformed into a beautiful young Woman, yet still retained something of her former Nature; so several of our Masks forgetting their Characters, broke out into something that discovered them. I was very intent upon a Presbyterian Parson and a pretty nun, who were dancing a Minuet, when the Musick happening to play out of Time, the Nun, of a sudden, rapt out an Oath, and damn'd them with a very good Grace, Mr. Tesimony, not to be behind Hand with her, cursed for Company: I was very desirous of knowing the Order of Religious, which this pretty Nun profess'd, therefore when this Dance was over, I took an Occasion of talking with her, an found her very free of Conversation; in fine, she gave me to understand that she was of the Sisterhood, an belonged to a certain Convent, of which Mother N______[Nature?], is Lady Abbess. She let me known that Mr. Tesimony and she were old Acquaintance, the he was a Captain of Dragoons, and formerly a Member of the Hell Fire Club.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 19.

Recorded sources:

---