Annotation:Nancy (2)

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NANCY [2]. AKA and see "Sir Edward Noel's Delight," "All You That Love Good Fellows," "London 'Prentice (2) (The)." English, Country Dance Tune (4/4 time). C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABC. Chappell (1859) thought this air to have been the precursor to the famous march "British Genediers." The air appears in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Dorothy Welde's Lute Book (as "Sir Edward Noel's Delight"), Bellerophon (Amsterdam, 1622), and, in altered form, Friesche Lust-Hof (1634) and D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy. "London 'Prentice (The)," by which the tune is known in Pills to Purge Melancholy, is "evidently a production of the reign of Elizabeth (I)," states Chappell. Several songs were written to the air, though none has been found called "Nancy," but two odd and rather macabre ballads were noted by the musicologist: "Pride's Fall, or a warning for all English women by the example of a strange monster born late in Germany, by a merchant's proud wife of Geneva,

...and a "True relation of Susan Higges, dwelling in Risborow, a towne in Buckinghamshire, and how she lived twenty years by robbing on the high wayes, yet unsuspected of all that knew her; till at last coming to Musseldon, and there robbing and murdering a woman, which woman knew her, and standing by her while she gave three groanes, she spat three drops of blood in her face, which never could be washt out, by which she was knowne, and executed for the aforesaid murder, at the assises in Lent at Brickhill.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times, vol. 1), 1859; p. 262.

Recorded sources:

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