Annotation:Drunken Wives of Fochabers (The)

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DRUNKEN WIVES OF FOCHABERS, THE. Scottish, Strathspey. Scottish, Highlands. G Dorian (Campbell): A Minor (Aird). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (Aird): AABCCDE. 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 [1] 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. It was a planned village, begun in 1776 by Alexander Gordon [2] (1743-1827), 4th Duke of Gordon (who was strathspey composer biography:William Marshall's employer and patron). 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 (set as a reel in the fife-friendly key of B minor) into the music copybook (No. 824) [3] of John Buttery (1784-1854), a fifer with the 37th Regiment, British army, who served from 1797-1814 and who late in life emigrated to Canada. Buttery's manuscript collection has also been identified as belonging to John Fife , with a suggested date of 1780. Fife was a family name, like Buttery, identified with the manuscript. County Cork cleric and uilleann piper Canon biography:James Goodman entered it in his own large mid-19th century music manuscript collection (vol. iii, p. 166) under the title “Drunken Wives of Lochaber [sic]" in a section of Scottish tunes.

Source for notated version: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 6), 1803; p. 4. Joshua Campbell (A Collection of New Reels & Highland Strathspeys), Glasgow, 1789; p. 22. 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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