Annotation:Whigs of Fife (1)

Back to Whigs of Fife (1)

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WHIGS OF FIFE. Scottish, Reel. F Major (most versions): G Major (Aird). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Surenne): AAB (Gow): AABB (Aird, Kerr, Martin): AABB' (Athole): AABBCCDD (Marshall). John Glen finds the tune earliest published in Neil Stewart's 1761 collection (p. 24). The tune was published on a sheet by fiddler-composer William Marshall, and is sometimes therefore attributed to him. Yet, as Kate Dunlay points out, it is unlikely he composed it for he would only have been aged 13 when the tune appeared in Stewart’s 1761 collection. It is more reasonable, suggests Dunlay, that Marshall composed the last two parts as variations. Marshall was a staunch Tory all his life and so perhaps had no love for the Whigs of the County of Fife, Scotland.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Aird (Selections of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs vol. II), 1785; No. 43, p. 16. Gow (Complete Repository, Part 1), 1799; p. 29. Kerr (Merry Melodies vol. 2), c. 1880’s; No. 182, p. 21. Marshall, Fiddlecase Edition, 1978; Kinrara Collection (1800), p. 26. Martin (Ceol na Fidhle, vol. 2), 1988; p. 28. Stewart-Robertson (The Athole Collection), 1884; p. 205. Surenne (Dance Music of Scotland), 1852; p. 126.

Recorded sources: Rounder 7059, Alex Francis MacKay with Gordon MacLean – “Gaelic in the Bow” (2005).

See also listings at:
Alan Snyder’s Cape Breton Fiddle Recording Index []

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