Annotation:Poor Robin's Maggot

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POOR ROBIN'S MAGGOT. AKA and see "Would You Have a Young Virgin (of Fifteen Years)." English, Air (6/8 time). B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. This air appears in all four editions of London publisher John Young's Second Volume of the Dancing Master (1710-1728), Thomas D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy (vol. 1, 1719), and many ballad operas, including John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728, where it appears under the title "If the heart of a man is deprest with cares"). However, in the Dancing Master "Poor Robin's Maggot" is the alternate title, while "Wou'd You have a Young Virgin" is the main title. The tune appears with the titles reversed in John Walsh's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (London, 1719), with "Poor Robin's Maggot" as the main title. The word ‘maggot’ in this context means a 'trifle', or a 'plaything'; from the Italian maggioletta.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times, vol. 2), 1859; p. 116.

Recorded sources:

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