MR. SHARPE'S DELIGHT. AKA – “Mr. Sharpe of Hoddom’s Delight.” Scottish, Jig. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Composed by Charles Sharpe (1750-1813). Sharpe was the son of William Kirkpatrick of Ailsland, a younger brother of Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, 3rd Baronet of Closeburn. On inheriting Hoddom Castle, Dumfriesshire, in the Borders, Charles changed his name to Sharpe, the name of his uncle’s line, from whom he inherited the estate. He set to work on the castle, repairing and improving it, and adding several rooms. Sharpe had a reputation as an excellent violinist, and also composed music and verse. He was a friend and correspondent of Robert Burns. Robert Chambers, in his edited edition of The Life and Works of Robert Burns (1857), has this to say of Sharpe:
…his son, Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, printed a few years ago an air to the song “The Ewe-milking’s Bonnie, which the Laird of Hoddam was believed to have produced upon the stock andhorn when only eight years of age; and it certainly is a pleasing example of melody of the Scottishcharacter, and perfectly original. Burns, having heard an air of Mr. Sharpe’s composition, adoptedthe whimsical idea of addressing him under a fictitious signature, in the character of a vagrant fiddler:--
Charles Sharpe of Hoddom
To Charles Sharpe, Esq., of Hoddam Enclosing a ballad. It is true, sir, you are a gentleman of rank and fortune, and I am a poor devil—you are a feather in thecap of Society, and I am a very hobnail in his shoes; yet I have the honour to belong to the same familywith you, and on that score I now address you. You will perhaps suspect that I am going to claim affinitywith the ancient and honourable house of Kirkpatrick. No, no, sir: I cannot indeed be properly said tobelong to any house, or even any province or kingdom; as my mother, who for many years was spouseto a marching-regiment, gave me into this bad world, aboard the packet-boat, somewhere betweenDonaghadee and Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, sir, the family of the Muses. I am a fiddlerand a poet: and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin, and have a standard taste in the belles-lettres. Theother day, a brother-catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I was pleased with thetune, I was in raptures with the title you have given it; and, taking up the idea, I have spun it into the threestanzas enclosed. Will you allow me, sir, to present you them, as the dearest offering that a misbegottenson of Poverty and Rhyme has to give! I have a longing to take you by the hand, and unburden my heartby saying: ‘Sir, I honour you as a man who supports the dignity of human nature, amid an age whenfrivolity and avarice have, between them, debased us below the brutes that perish! But, alas! Sir, to meyou are unapproachable. It is true the Muses baptised me in Castalian streams; but the thoughtless gipsiesforgot to give me a name. As the sex have served many a good fellow, the Nine have given me a greatdeal of pleasure; but, bewitching jades! They have beggared me. Would they but spare me a little of theircast-linen! Were it only to put it in my power to say that I have a shirt on my back! But the idle wenches,like Solomon’s lilies, ‘they toil not, neither do they spin;’ so I must e’en continue to tic my remnant of acravat, like the hangman’s rope, round my naked throat, and coax my galligaskins to keep together theirmany-coloured fragments. As to the affair of the shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in my ballad-trade from town to town, and on your stony-hearted turnpikes too, are what not even the hide of Job’sbehemoth could bear. The coat on my back is no more: I shall not speak evil of the dead. I would be equallyunhandsome and ungrateful to find fault with my old surtout, which so kindly supplies and conceals thewant of that coat.
See also “Monaghan Jig (The)”, a fourth part of which is attributed to Sharpe by Nathaniel Gow in his 'Fifth Collection (1809). See also "Hoddam Castle", probably by Richard Fitzmaurice, probably dedicated to Sharpe.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Carlin (The Gow Collection), 1986; No. 359 (with 2 variations). Gow (The First Collection of Niel Gow’s Reels), 1784 (revised 1801); p. 22 (appears as “Mr.Sharpe of Hoddam’s Delight”).
