Annotation:Poll of Wapping Hornpipe

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POLL OF WAPPING HORNPIPE. English, Hornpipe. England, Yorkshrire. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. "Poll of Wapping" was a very popular song by Charles Dibdin written for his three-act comic opera Thirty Thousand; or Who's the richest? (1804). It was printed in numerous late 18th and 19th century songsters such as The Universal Songster, or museum of mirth, Clark's Orphean Warbler, The Vocal Library, The Vocal Wreath and others. The first two stanzas go:

Your London girls, with all their airs,
Must strike to Poll of Wapping Stairs;
No tighter lass is going,
From Iron Gate to Limehouse Hole
You'll never meet a kinder soul:
Not while the Thames is flowing.
And sing Pull away, &c.

Her father, he's a hearty dog,
Poll makes his flip, and serves his grog,
And never stints his measure;
She minds full well the house affairs,
She seldom drinks, and never swears;
And isn't that a pleasure?
And sing Pull away, &c.

Source for notated version: an MS collection by fiddler Lawrence Leadley, 1827-1897 (Helperby, Yorkshire) [Merryweather & Seattle].

Printed sources: Merryweather & Seattle (The Fiddler of Helperby), 1994; No. 11, p. 30.

Recorded sources:

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