Annotation:Mount Your Baggage (2)
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MOUNT YOUR BAGGAGE [2]. AKA and see "Cady Laddie," "Cady Laddy," "Mount and Go," "Soldier's Lady (The)." Scottish, Reel. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB (Aird): AABBCCDDEEFFGGHH (Gow, Johnson). An army song turned country dance, the air of which was also published in Flores Musicae and by Gow in his Second Collection of Strathspey Reels. John Glen finds the earliest version of this melody in print in Robert Bremner's 1768 2nd collection (p. 109), although a tune called "Mount Your Baggage" appears in Oswald's A Collection of Scots Tunes with variations, c 1756. An even earlier version in 3/2 time appears under the title "Cady Laddy" in J. Walsh's Caledoneon Country Dances, vol. 2, c. 1734, Johnson's Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 3 (London, 1744, p. 41), and Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing Master, volume the Sixth (London, 1754, p. 73). The same 3/2 melody ("Cady Laddy") was penned by London musician Thomas Hammersley in his music manuscript copybook of 1790. "Mount Your Baggage" can be found as No. 233 in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, and is one of the "missing tunes" from William Vickers' 1770 Northumbrian dance tune manuscript. In America, it was published in A. Reinagle's Selection of the Most Favorite Scots Tunes (Philadelphia, 1787). Stenhouse remarked that the Gows' "Dalry House" is a derivative melody. The melody has been used as a song vehicle: see, for example, "The Captain's Lady" (Johnson, Scots Musical Museum, No. 233), "The Gallant Grahams of Scotland," and "The Soldier's Lady" (undoubtedly a substitution for 'Captain's Lady') The first verse of "The Captain's Lady" contains the titles:
O mount and go,
Mount and make you ready,
O mount and go,
And be the Captain's Lady.
When the drums do beat,
And the cannons rattle,
Thou shall sit in state,
And see thy love in battle.
When the drums do beat,
And the cannons rattle.
Thou shalt sit in state,
And see thy love in battle.
Source for notated version: Trotter MS., 1780, p. 30 [Johnson].
Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs), vol. II, 1785; No. 74, p. 27. Gow (Second Collection of Niel Gow's Reels), 1788; pp. 16-17 (3rd edition). Johnson (Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century), 1984; No. 41.
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