Annotation:New Langolee (1)
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NEW LANGOLEE [1] (An Langoli Nuad). AKA and see "Dear Harp of My Country," "Paddy Bull's Expedition." English, Irish; Air (6/8 time, "with expression"). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. A curious item for collector Francis O'Neill Irish collection, as "Lango Lee" was originally a song published in London appearing about 1775. Kate Van Winkler Keller says the melody was the vehicle for the song "The Banks of the Dee" and the several parodies that followed the original. It had explicitly sexual lyrics, and 'langolee' is supposed to mean 'the stiff dick' in Irish. The air, employed as a country dance, was published in London in Thomas Skillern's Skillern's Compleat Collection of Two Hundred & Four Reels...Country Dances (1780), and in Charles and Samuel Thompson's Compleat Collection of Two Hundred Country Dances, vol. 4 (1780). The melody appears in several American musicians manuscripts, including the manuscript collections of Captain George Bush (1753?-1797), a fiddler and officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, Eben and William Iriving (Middletown, N.Y. and at sea, 1796), flute player Joseph Cabot (Cambridge, MA., 1784), and P. Van Schaack, Jr. (Kinderhook, N.Y., 1820).
Source for notated version: George Bush [Keller].
Printed sources: Keller (Fiddle Tunes from the American Revolution), 1992; p. 27. O'Neill (Music of Ireland: 1850 Melodies), 1903; No. 248, p. 43. Thompson (Compleat Collection of Two Hundred Country Dances, vol. 4), 1780; p. 26.
Recorded sources: