Annotation:Pease Strae

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PEASE STRAE/STRAW. AKA and see "Bathget Boys," "Clean Peas Straw/Clean Pease Strae," "Pea Straw" (U.S.). Scottish, English, American; Reel or Country Dance Tune. England, Northumberland. D Mixolydian or D Major (Johnson). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Surenne): AAB (Athole, Johnson, Skye): AABB' (Barnes, Seattle/Vickers). Peas straw/pease strae was a material used to stuff bedding. A popular dance tune in the British Isles and America throughout the 18th century and into the 19th. The reel was printed by London publisher John Johnson in his Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 3 (1744), and it is contained twice in the [James] Gillespie Manuscript of Perth (1768). Robert Bremner printed it as "Clean Peas Straw" in his Collection of Scots Reels or Country Dances (1757, p. 65). An English version was printed c. 1740 in the imprint MWA, 200 Country Dances (p. 79), and the title appears in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian song and dance tunes ("The Northern Minstrel's Budget"), which he published c. 1800.

Instructions for a country dance to the melody can be found in the Scottish Holmain Manuscript, c. 1710-50, where it is alternately titled "Bathget Boys." David Johnson (1988) also prints directions to a country dance called Pease Strae with the melody. Flett and Flett (1964) record that the same Scottish dance went by different names according to which tune was played to accompany it in a particular locale; thus the dance also was called "Duke of Perth" and "Brown's Reel" in East Fife, Perthshire and Angus, and "Keep the Country Bonny Lassie" in the upper parts of Ettrick. The title Pease Strae for the series of dance steps was used in the area around Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, Arran and Galloway, and was taught by all the local dancing masters. Northumbrian collector John Stokoe noted in the Bell Manuscript that the tune was used in Northumberland for the Cushion Dance, to a dance similar to "Joan Sanderson," popular in the 16th century. Supporting this is the tunes entry in Northumbrian musician William Lister's music manuscript as "The Cuzin Dance."

The reel was listed in a period record as one of the tunes danced to at a 1752 "turtle frolic" at Goats Island, near Newport, Rhode Island (a turtle frolic was a special event which occurred when a West Indies turtles, towed astern from the Caribbean, arrived in port). Later, the piece appeared in print in America in A Collection of Contra Dances, printed in Walpole, New Hampshire, in 1799.

Source for notated version: The 1770 music manuscript collection of Northumbrian musician William Vickers [1] [Seattle].

Printed sources: Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2), 2005; p. 75. Charlton Memorial Tune Book, 1956; p. 21. Gow (Complete Repository, Part 3), 1806; p. 36. Johnson (Twenty-Eight Country Dances as Done at the New Boston Fair), vol. 8, 1988; p. 7. Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 1), c. 1880’s; p. 10 (appears as "Clean Pea Strae"). MacDonald (The Skye Collection), 1887; p. 72. Mooney, p. 25. Morrison (Twenty-Four Early American Country Dances, Cotillions & Reels, for the Year 1976), 1976; p. 35. Seattle (Great Northern/William Vickers), 1987, Part 2; No. 203. Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; p. 86. Surenne (Dance Music of Scotland), 1852; p. 117.

Recorded sources: North Star NS0038, "The Village Green: Dance Music of Old Sturbridge Village."

See also listings at:
Jane Keefer’s Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources []

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