Annotation:In the days we went Gipsying

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IN THE DAYS WE WENT GIPSYING. AKA - "In the days we went a-gypsying." English, Song Air (2/4 time). C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. Stephen Campbell (in his PhD thesis "Reconsidering and Contextualizing the Vernacular Tradition: Popular Music and British Manuscript Compilations 1650-2000", 2012) records that the song can be found in collector Alfred Williams' Folk Songs of the Upper Thames: With an Essay on Folk-song Activity in the Upper Thames Neighborhood (1923), who states it was sung by 'traveling navvies and drovers.' The melody to the song can also be found in the second volume of Helperby, Yorkshire, musician Lawrence Leadley, c. 1840's (No. 23). Campbell finds the song to be a composed drawing-room ballad by Nathan James Sporle (1812-1853), with words by H. Edward Ransford, issued on single-sheets, including one published in New York in 1830 (arranged by Joseph Knight). Campbell cites this as an example of the permeability between genres, with song airs used for dancing and marching, and vice-versa, in the popular vernacular (he references also use of the melody by the North Staffordshire, Prince of Wales's Regiment as a regimental march). "A couplet from the song," writes Campbell, "is quoted by Charlotte Bronte in the first chapter of Jane Eyre.

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