Annotation:Madam Parisott's Hornpipe

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MADAM PARISOTT'S HORNPIPE. AKA and see "Parisott's," "Whiskey Barrel." English, American; Hornpipe. The hornpipe was printed by London dancing master Thomas Wilson in his 1816 collection A Companion to the Ball Room as "Parisot's Hornpipe," and, in America, in the 1817 collection of New York flute player and music seller Edward Riley as "Madam Parisott's Hornpipe." The slightly skewed title "Madam Parisol's Hornpipe" is the heading for the tune in Utica, New York, publisher William Williams' A New and Complete Preceptor for the Fife (1819). The melody appears under the title "Whiskey Barrel" in George P. Knauff's Virginia Reels, volume I (Baltimore, 1839).

Madame Parisot was a famous stage dancer of around the turn of the 19th century. In the first chapter of William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, he writes:

For she could not only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and dance like Hillisberg or Parisot, and embroider beautifully, and spell as well as a Dixonary itself, but she had such a kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of everybody who came near her...

Source for notated version: Riley (Flute Melodies, vol. 2), 1817; p. 73.

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