Annotation:Downfall of the Gin

Tune properties and standard notation

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DOWNFALL OF THE GIN. English, Old Hornpipe (3/2 time). E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. An excerpt from this hornpipe by the English composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) appears in John Offord's article "Lancashire and Cheshire Hornpipes" (English Dance and Song, Summer 1990, 52{2}). The melody appears in Walsh's Third Book of the Most Celebrated Jiggs, Lancashire Hornpipes, Scotch and Highland Lilts, Northern Frisks, Morris and Cheshire Rounds (c. 1730), and Johnson's Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol 3 (London, 1744, p. 10). Supposedly Purcell had the tune from John Walsh, who was also his publisher, and incorporated it into his "Abdelazer" rondeau (1695).

Gin was first imported to England from the Netherlands in the early 18th century, and quickly was established as the chosen intoxicant of the masses. Made from cheap corn and fermented juniper berries, gin was partly to blame for the increasing epidemic of crime in London, along with a lowered life-expectancy. Gin mills, places where gin was distilled and sold, frequently advertised "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two-pence, clean straw provided." Unfortunately, beer, wine and sherry, considered a more healthful alternative (at least by Hogarth, who drew the antithesis to his Gin Lane depicting healthy beer drinkers in a clean, safe neighborhood, save for the ramshackle shops of the undertaker and the pawn broker, driven to poverty by the prosperity of the sudsy populace).

Gin became an epidemic. "(It) was said to be the drink of the more sedentary trades," says David Hughson in his History of London (1806), "...essentially a disease of poverty, so cheap, so warming and brought such forgetfulness of cold and misery. At one time eight million gallons of gin passed the throats of English drinkers, with Londoners themselves consuming fourteen gallons each. As with all drug epidemics, crime, neglect and abuse flourished. Christopher Hibbert wrote in his book The Roots of Evil, "Pity was a strange and valuable emotion...Unwanted babies were left out in the streets to die or were thrown into dung heaps or open drains; the torture of animals was a popular sport. Cat-dropping, bear-baiting and bull-baiting were as universally enjoyed as throwing at cocks."

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Tune properties and standard notation