Annotation:Rustic Reel (1)

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RUSTIC REEL [1]. AKA and see "City Guards," "First Western Change," "Jinny O Jinny My Toes are Sore," "Libby Prison Quickstep," "Monongahela March," "O Dear Mother My Toes are Sore (2),” "Virginia Reel (3)." English, American; Jig or March (6/8 time). D Major (most versions): C Major (Howe). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (Hardings, Howe, Raven): AABB (Cole, Sweet). In spite of the word ‘reel’ in the title (which usually denotes a fast duple-time tune), the music is in 6/8 or jig time. The reverse is sometimes true as well; tunes with ‘jig’ in the title turn out to be reels (c.f. “Chorus Jig”). “Rustic Reel” is actually the name of the dance and not the tune; in fact, any suitably brisk twenty-four bar tune (duple or triple time) will suffice as the vehicle for the dance. However, it is not uncommon for tunes to be so associated with the name of the dance that they, too, take on the name. The dance requires lines of three to perform the figures, thus each dancer needs two partners and faces a set of three dancers. Some sources note that it is particularly well suited for the last dance of the evening.

The American painter William Sydney Mount, a native of Stony Brook, Long Island, was a fiddler who often played for and attended dances. In a letter dated January 30th, 1839, to his brother Robert, also a musician as well as a dancing master who had left Long Island to ply his craft in Tarbolton, Tarbolton County, Georgia, William Sydney described an affair he attended in New York city:

I was at one of Mr. Parker’s assembly (i.e. dance) at Tammany Hall Last week about two hours, and danced a few times. I saw no new figures except a Reel called the Rustic Reel, and as it is a fashionable dance in N.Y. I will endeavour to describe it (there follows a description of the figures with music noted on the bottom of the page).

In Mount's description of the figures the dancers are clearly in couples, and not in threes.

In America, the tune was printed as "Rustic Reel" in early Boston-based Elias Howe (1820-1895) volumes such as The First Part of the Musician's Companion (1842) and Complete Preceptor for the Accordion (1843), published by Oliver Ditson. Another later version was in the repertoire list of Norway, Maine, fiddler Mellie Dunham (the elderly Dunham was Henry Ford's champion fiddler in the late 1920's). The Howe publication Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883), and its 20th century iteration, Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes (1940) gives directions for a dance to "Rustic Reel."

Additional notes

Source for notated version: -

Printed sources : - Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 33. Harding's All-Round Collection, 1905; No. 184, p. 58 (listed as "Virginia Reel"). Howe (Complete Preceptor for the Accordeon), 1843; p. 9. Kerr (Merry Melodies, vol. 1), c. 1880; No. 16, p. 29. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 122. Ryan’s Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 60. Sweet (Fifer’s Delight), 1965/1981; p. 30.

Recorded sources: -

See also listing at:
Read more about the Rustic Reel dance at the Capering and Kickery site [1]