Annotation:Garter (The)

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GARTER, THE. AKA and see "James the Second's March," "Jenny Come Tie My Cravat," "King James March," English, Country Dance Tune (4/4 time). C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The country dance directions and melody first appear in John Playford's Dancing Master, in the second supplement to the seventh edition of 1688 [1]. "The Garter" was retained in the long-running Dancing Master series through the eighteenth and last edition of 1728, then published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns. In the last two editions (1721 and 1728) Young also gave the alternate title "King James March." Young reversed the title in his Second Volume of the Dancing Master in the third and fourth editions, also published in the years 1721 and 1728.

King James VII of Scotland and James II of England [[2]] reigned from 1685-1689. The 'Garter' title may also refer to The Most Noble Order of the Garter, the oldest documented order of chivalry in the United Kingdom, dating to the middle fourteenth century. King James held his first chapter of the Order of the Garter on May, 6th, 1685, when Henry duke of Norfolk, earl marshal of England and constable of Windsor castle, was elected and invested.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Barlow (The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master), 1985; No. 294, p. 72.

Recorded sources:

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