Annotation:Haud the Lass Till I Come at Her

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HAUD THE LASS TILL I COME AT HER. AKA and see "Lads of Boot." AKA - "Had the Lass Till I Win at Her," "Hold the Bonny Lass," "Hod the Lass," "Hod the Lass While I Run at Her," "Ha'd the Lass Till I Win at Her." Scottish, English; Reel. A Mixolydian (Bremner, Kennedy, Kerr): A Dorian (Vickers). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The title translates as "Hold the lass while I get on her," ostensibly a direction given before attempting to mount a horse. The title has a double-meaning, however, and the sexual content would not have been lost on anyone in the mid-18th century, according to David Johnson. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest printing of the tune in Robert Bremner's 1757 collection, and it also appears in the Gillespie Manuscript of Perth, 1768. The melody appears in the music manuscript copybooks of the Brown family of Troutbeck, in the old county of Westmoreland (now Cumbria), north west England. The early 19th century manuscripts were the work of several people and were collected ultimately from the Browne family before being deposited in the Armitt Library (now the Armitt Collection in Ambleside Museum, Cumbria). The tune also appears in the music manuscript collection of Northumbrian musician William Vickers, about whom little is known.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 1), 1782; No. 39, p. 14. Bremner (A Collection of Scots Reels), 1757; p. 12. Kennedy (Traditional Dance Music of Britain and Ireland: Reels and Rants), 1997; No. 66, p. 18. Kerr (Merry Melodies), vol. 4, No. 53, p. 8. Wilson (Companion to the Ballroom), 1815; p. 74.

Recorded sources: Big Chain BC103, Cooper & Bolton - "The Savage Hornpipe" (2006).