Annotation:Spring Garden (1) (The)
X:1 T:Spring Garden [1], The M:2/4 L:1/16 R:Hornpipe B:O'Neill's Music of Ireland. 1850 Melodies, 1903, p. 312, no. 1681 Z:François-Emmanuel de Wasseige K:G (3ABc|dfdf ecAF|GFGB AFDC|B,DGF E2(cB)|(3ABG (3FGE D2(3ABc| dfdf ecAF|GFGB AFDC|B,DGF EcAF|G2G2 G2:| |:(cB)|AGAB cBcd|edef g2(3def|gfed cBAG|Add^c d2(3ABc| dfdf ecAF|GFGB AFDC|B,DGF EcAF|G2G2 G2:|
SPRING GARDEN('S HORNPIPE) [1], THE (Gort an tobair). AKA and see "Old Time Clog." Irish, English; Hornpipe. England, Yorkshire. G Major (O'Neill): B Flat Major (Merryweather & Seattle). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Paul de Grae believes O'Neill's version of the tune is a reworking of 19th century Boston music publisher Elias Howe's "Norton's Best Hornpipe," later printed in Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883) as "Norton's Favorite" and "Remembrance of Dublin," and, slightly altered, as "Amazon Hornpipe"[1]. De Grae also notes: "[O'Neill's] 'Spellan's Fiddle' and 'Star Hornpipe (The)' also appear to derived from this and another Howe/Ryan tune, and are also sourced from James O'Neill"[2].
However, all these tunes appear to be musical derivatives of the similarly-titled "Spring Gardens Hornpipe," an English hornpipe of the first half of the 19th century that can be found in several musicians' manuscript collections. O'Neill's "Spring Garden" is interesting survival of a title, given the number of variants in the Howe publications that do not carry the title. Perhaps O'Neill's collaborator and source for the tune, James O'Neill, had the tune from another source that carried the Spring Garden title.
