Annotation:Captain with His Whiskers (The)
Tune properties and standard notation
CAPTAIN WITH HIS WHISKERS, THE. AKA and see "The Month of May," "The Captain and His Whiskers." English, Morris Dance Tune (4/4 or 2/2 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB x7, A (Mallinson): AABA (Howe). A comic music hall song by Hayness Bayly that found its way into traditional dance accompaniment and military use. The morris version is from the village of Brackley, Northamptonshire, England. The following ditty was sung by the morris dancers during the performance of the dance:
Oh! I wish he'd do it now, Oh! I wish he'd do it now, Oh! the captain with his whiskers, Oh! I wish he'd do it now.
The above appears to come from a bawdy song to the same tune called "I Wish They'd Do it Now," which begins "I was born of Geordie parents, one day when I was young..." The tune and title were known in tradition in America: it was in the repertoire of fiddler and Confederate veteran Arnold A. Parrish (Willow Springs, Wake County, N.C.), as recorded by the old newspaper Raleigh News and Observer. Parrish was a contestant at fiddler's conventions held in Raleigh prior to World War I. The title also appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by folklorist/musicologist Vance Randolph, published in 1954.
Source for notated version: Cecil Sharpe, and Dr. Kenworthy Schofield from Blackwell & Giles, 1937 [Bacon].
Printed sources: Bacon (The Morris Ring), 1974; pp. 100 & 104. Howe (Diamond School for the Violin), 1861; p 78. Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 33. Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Dec. 1955. Mallinson (Mally's Cotswold Morris Book), 1988; No. 27, p. 19. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 81.
Recorded sources: