Annotation:Draw Cupid Draw

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DRAW, CUPID, DRAW. AKA - "Draw Cupid." English, Air and Country Dance Tune (cut time). F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB, Composed by dancing master Richard Motley c. 1710, of whom, unfortunately, little is known. "Draw Cupid" was a popular song (beginning "Draw Cupid, draw, and make fair Sylvia know...") and air, appearing in all editions of John Young's Dancing Master, beginning in vol. 2 (1710) and continuing in subsequent volumes through the end of the series, in 1728. The melody also appears in John Walsh's Second Book of the Compleat Dancing Master (editions of 1719, 1735 and 1749), Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 6 (1719-1720), and on various song sheets. D'Urfey gives that it is "A Song. Set by Mr. Motley." The melody was incorporated into the ballad operas The Merry Cobbler, or the Second Part of the Devil to Pay (1735), by Charles Coffey, and Silvia, or the Country Burial (1731) by George Lillo. Welsh versions of the air became embeded in harping repertoire and were collected and published by Edward Jones in his Relicks (1794) as "Serch Hudol" (The Allurements of Love), and in Cambro-British Melodies (1820).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2), 2005; p. 34.

Recorded sources:

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