Annotation:Madame Cordé's Frolic

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MADAME CORDÉ'S FROLIC (Pranc Madame Cordé). English. The tune appears in Preston's Twenty-Four Country Dances (London, 1794). A Madame Corday, or Cordé, assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, a radical Jacobin during the French Revolution who advocated for and participated in the Reign of Terror in which countless Royalists and "antirevolutionaries" were executed. He was stabbed to death in his bathtub in 1793 by Corday, a Girondin, who herself was guillotined in July, 1793, for her crime.

Madame Corde was also the name of a racehorse born in 1793, sired by the famous Meteor, and perhaps named for the French assassin.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources:

Recorded sources: Flying Fish FF70610, Robin Huw Bowen - "Telyn Berseiniol fy Ngwlad/Welsh Music on the Welsh Triple Harp" (1996. Appears blended with "Valenciennes," also from Preston's collection).

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