Annotation:Nancy's Fancy

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NANCY'S FANCY. English, Reel (2/4 time) or Country Dance Tune (2/2 time). G Major (Kennedy & Raven): C Major (Karpeles, Sharp). Standard tuning (fiddle). ABC (Karpeles, Sharp): AABC (Kennedy & Raven). The first part of this tune appears as the second part of the Pennsylvania-collected "Cheat River (The)" (Bayard, 1981; No. 370, p. 361). Thomas Hardy, English novelist, fiddler and accordion player, mentions the tune in his novel The Return of the Native (Book Second, chapter 5).

Source for notated version: Collected in Devonshire in 1907 by Cecil Sharp from William Ford, a sixty-two-year-old blacksmith living at Upton Pyne, near Exeter. Ford was a concertina player and dancer for most of his life. Priscilla Wyatt-Edgell said of him: "No one, I should think, cold be more difficult to collect from. He played as if he was inventing the tune as he went along and he never could explain anything as it all come more or less naturally to him."

Printed sources: Karpeles & Schofield, 1951; p. 3. Kennedy (Fiddlers Tune Book, vol. 2), 1954; p. 27. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 146. Sharp (Country Dance Tunes), 1909; p. 7.

Recorded sources:

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