Annotation:Leith Wynd
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LEITH WYND [1]. Scottish, English; Reel. England, Northumberland. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDDEEFF. Leith Wynd was a steep narrow Edinburgh street which led to the city's port of Leith, from the top of the Canongate to Leith Street (starting at the crossroads just below the Netherbow and progressing under the Regent Bridge that joins Waterloo Place to Calton hill). By the 19th century way was bordered by tenements, and had descended into decay. This passage is from a letter printed in The Scotsman in 1850:
From a precipitous, narrow, and filthy close, you look up to the heights of huge mansions, honeycombed into the receptacles of a hundred inhabitants; and at a height which it makes the head giddy to look up to or to look down from, you see two or three heads of children projecting, or the filthy and squalid figures of their mothers, or of the other female inmates.
You ascend through dirt and darkness, stair after stair, every stair leading you in succession to a floor in which every miserable room contains a household, and where, by opening doors and barring up doors, and from the absence of sufficient light even in the day time, you hardly know when you turn yourself whether you are coming or going out of or going farther into the labyrinth. Into these places, parties in recent times have been dragged, forcibly stripped of their clothes, and flung out again; and innumerable crimes have been committed of which the world remains in ignorance.
The tune was set ("in a strong sea-shanty flavour," as David Johnson remarks) by William McGibbon (c. 1695-1756) and appears in his Scots Tunes; it is close to an earlier setting appearing in Adam Craig's A Collection of the Choicest Scots Tunes (1730, p. 16), but McGibbon improved the variations. The title also appears in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian song and dance tunes ("The Northern Minstrel's Budget"), which he published c. 1800, and in Allan Ramsay's ballad opera Gentle Shepherd of 1725. The melody was included by London musician Thomas Hammersley in his c. 1790 music manuscript collection.
A different tune called "Lyth Wynd" (AKA - "I'll Hap Ye in My Petticoat", "I'll Hap Ye in My Plaidie," "Munlochy Bridge") was printed by David Rutherford in his Compleat Collection of 200 country Dances, vol. 2 (London, 1760), also printed in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, vol. 3 (1790).
Source for notated version: McGibbon's Scots Tunes, 1742, vol. 1, p. 11 [Johnson].
Printed sources: Johnson (Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century), 1984; No. 17, pp. 42-43. McGibbon (Scots Tunes, book III), 1762; pp. 82-83.
Recorded sources:
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