Annotation:Lewis’s Reel

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LEWIS'S REEL. AKA and see "Belles of Lewiston," "Blue Eyed Lassie (1)," "Early Rising." American, Reel (2/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune was composed by Providence, Rhode Island, violinist, dance fiddler and music teacher George Saunders, who wrote an influential tutor for the violin in the mid-19th century. The tune appeared some 36 years later under the title "Belles of Lewiston" in Ryans Mammoth Collection (1883), either a miss-hearing of Saunders' title, or a deliberate obscuring of it. Francis O'Neill printed the tune in his Music of Ireland (1904) as "Early Rising."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Saunders (New and Complete Instructor for the Violin), Boston, 1847; No. 6, p. 81.

Recorded sources:

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