Annotation:Horsey-Down Fields

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HORSEY-DOWN FIELDS. AKA - "Horsey Down." English, Country Dance Tune (6/4 time). C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The tune was published in all four editions of John Young's Second Volume of the Dancing Master (1710-1728), and in rival London publishers Walsh and Randall's The New Country Dancing Master, Second Book (1710). It also appears in Walsh and Hare's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1719), and in John Walsh's (the younger) The Compleat Country Dancing-Master, volume the Sixth (London, 1754).

The title may refer to Horsey-down, Southwark, London, anciently used as a pasture by the neighboring inhabitants for their horses and cattle. It was part of the possessions of the abbey of Bermondsey surrendered to King Henry VIII in 1537. It then went into private hands and let as a farm, and then came into the possession of the Governors of St. Olave's Grammar School. It may have been the site, for a time of the Soutward Fair [Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review, vol. 199, 1856, p. 66.].

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