Annotation:Campbells are Coming (1) (The)

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X:1 T:Campbells are comeing [1], The M:6/8 L:1/8 Q:"Brisk" B:Oswald – Caledonian Pocket Companion Book 3 (1760, p. 12) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G Bde dBG|BAA TA2G|Bde dBG|dBB TB2A| Bde dBG|ABA g2b|(a/g/f/e/)g dBG|dBB TB2A:| |:g>ag gab|ded dBG|g>ag gab|gee Te2d| gef gfe|dBd {ga}b2a|(g/f/e/f/)g dBG|dBB TB2A:| |:G(B/c/d) B(e/f/g)|aAA A2B|G(B/c/d) B(e/f/g)|dBB TB2A| G(B/c/d) B(e/f/g)|cAA aff|{f}g2e dBG|dBB TB2A:| |:g3 d(g/a/b)|ded dBG|g3 d(g/a/b)|gee Te2d| g(e/f/g/e/) g(e/f/g/e/)|d(B/c/d/B/) {ga}b2a|gee dGG|dBB T!fermata!B2A:|]

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CAMPBELLS ARE COMING [1], THE. AKA and see "Bha mi aig bhanais air bhail inbhir-aora," "Burnt Old Man (1)," "Campbell's Frolic," "Hob or Nob," "Hob a Nob," "I Was at a Wedding in Inverara Town," "Inverary Wedding," "O Tommy Come Tickle Me" (Pa.), "Old Man (1) (The)," "Seanduine (An)." Scottish (originally), American; Jig, March and Air (6/8 time). USA; Arkansas, New York, southwestern Pa. G Major (most versions): G Mixolydian (Bremner): F Major (Emmerson). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Ford): AB (Emmerson): AAB (Milne): AA'B (Gow, Mitchell): ABB (Harding): AABB (Bremner, S. Johnson, Kennedy, Kerr, Sweet). The melody is punctuated like a Scotch Measure in jig time--tunes like this are classified by Oswald and others as "Scotch Jigs." Turn of the 20th century Irish musicologist Grattan-Flood, typically and without much evidence, claims the tune is Irish. Another claim is that the tune was composed for a song on or about the period of Mary Queen of Scots' imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle. "The Campbells are Coming" was known as a Whig tune and as such was played by the vanguard of the loyalist Scottish troops, many Clan Campbell, as they marched in opposition to the ill-fated Jacobite rebels of 1715 led by the Earl of Mar (nicknamed 'Bobbing John') [Winstock, 1970]. The Robert Wodrow Correspondence records that in 1716 each of three companies of Argyle's Highlanders entered Perth and Dundee led by a piper playing, respectively, "The Campbells are Coming," "Wilt Thou Play Me Fair Highland Laddie," and "Stay and take the breiks with thee." James J. Fuld in The Book of World Famous Music (1966) notes the tune was mentioned in a letter (probably the one by the aforementioned Wodrow) dated 1716, although it was not printed until 1745 when it appeared in a Scottish collection (presumably that of James Oswald, in whose collection the music appears with the title "Campbells are Coming"). Despite mention of the existence of a melody by that name early in the 18th century, Glen (1891) finds the first printed version of the melody not to have been until Robert Bremner's 1757 collection Scots Reels, although it does appears in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion of around the same time. Depending on whose dating is heeded, Oswald's publication either predates or postdates Bremner' volume. Another printing of the melody with the "Campbell" title appears somewhat later in the [James] Gillespie Manuscript from Perth (1768). Further to the south, in Britain, the title was included in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian songs and tunes, which he published c. 1800.

The melody is to be found as a country dance called "Hob or Nob" in collections published earlier than Bremner's. It can be found, for example, in Walsh's Caledonian County Dances (4th book) of c. 1745, in Johnson's Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances (1748), David Rutherford's 24 Dances for 1750, and other contemporary dance books. In the 19th century, however, the air became indelibly associated with military marching under the "Campbell's are Coming" title, that the country dance origins now seem quite obscure. Glasgow piper, pipe teacher and pipe-maker William Gunn included a version in his 1848 collection as a march called "Bha mi aig bhanais air bhail inbhir-aora/Inverary Town,"

"The Campbells are Coming" was transplanted to American country dance tradition and appears in repertories of dance fiddlers in New York and Pennsylvania (Harry Daddario, Union County, Pa.). Musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph recorded the tune for the Library of Congress from Ozarks Mountains fiddlers in the early 1940's. Samuel Bayard (1981) also collected the tune from Pennsylvania fiddlers. He notes that the cadences of the 'A' parts are different in modern versions from those in the 18th and 19th century where the tune ended on the major third. He sees the American versions, which end on the tonic, as a "rebellion" against the 'circular' or 'endless' tunes from the British Isles. The cognates of the tune family that "The Campbells are Coming" belongs to include "Baldooser (The)," "Burnt Old Man (1)," and "Field of Hay," but more importantly Bayard speculates that the popular dance tunes "Miss McLeod's Reel (1)" and "White Cockade (1) (The)" also derive from the same source. See also tunes which use the same melodic material: "Bobbing for Eels," "Butchers of Bristol (1) (The)," "Groom," "Jackson's Bottle of Brandy," "Pay the Reckoning." Other writers have also noted the connection with "Miss McLeod's Reel (1);" Breathnach (1977) and O'Neill (in his introduction to The Dance Music of Ireland) both point out that "The Campbells are Coming" is the same air as "Miss McLeod" only played in jig time. The Pennsylvania version, altered in the 'B' part, takes its alternate title from the ditty sung to it:

O Tommy come tickle me, I'll tell you where;
Just under my navel there's a big bunch of hair. (Bayard).