Annotation:Drunken Wives of Fochabers (The)

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DRUNKEN WIVES OF FOCHABERS, THE. Scottish, Strathspey. Scottish, Highlands. G Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. A companion piece to "Drunken Wives of Carlisle," written in the latter 18th century, this time commenting on a northeast Scottish Highland town's women. Fochabers lies near the River Spey in the county of Moray, not far from Elgin, and is most famous to fiddlers as the home of Scots fiddler-composer William Marshall. The following Scottish folk rhyme mentions the title (from Walter Gregor's Folk-lore of the North-East of Scotland, 1881, Chapter 18, "Place Rhymes":

Aw sing a sang, aw ming a mang,
A cyarlin an a kid;
The drunken wives of Fochabers
Is a' rinnin wid.

The tune appears as a country dance in the Drummond Castle Manuscript, in the possession of the Earl of Ancaster at Drummond Castle; it is inscribed "A Collection of Country Dances written for the use of his Grace the Duke of Perth by Dav. Young, 1734." It was also entered into the music manuscript collection of fiddler John Fife, compiled probably in Perthshire (and perhaps at sea, as battles in the Caribbean and Mediterranean are mentioned) from 1780 to c. 1804.

Source for notated version: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 6), 1803; p. 4. Carlin (The Gow Collection), 1986; No. 36. Gow (The First Collection of Niel Gow's Reels), 1784 (revised 1801); p. 9. Johnson (A Further Collection of Dances, Marches, Minuetts and Duetts of the Latter 18th Century), 1998; p. 3. Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; p. 199.

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