Annotation:Earl of Crawford (The)

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EARL OF CRAWFORD, THE. Scottish, Reel. A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Martin, Neil): AAB (Hunter). The melody was composed by self-taught fiddler Peter Milne (1824-1908), one of J. Scott Skinner's teachers and fellow-performers, who played on theater circuit until his opium addiction (brought on by taking laudanum prescribed for rheumatism) reduced him to busking on the ferry-boats crossing the Firth. Neil (1991) relates that one Earl of Crawford was vanquished in a 1452 battle with the Earl of Huntly, for which the latter was rewarded by the King in recognition "for keeping the crown on our head." Crawford was supposed to have "wished to have seven years in hell to have the honourable victory that had fallen the the Earl of Huntly that day," however, it came at no mean cost to Huntly for two of his brothers had been slain on the field.

It seems more likely that composer Milne was honoring his contemporary Earl of Crawford, James Lindsay, who had put forward a claim to the title in 1843, which had been left dormant when a former Earl died childless in 1808. In 1848 the House of Lords allowed his petition, and proclaimed him the twenty-fourth Earl of Crawford. See also Milne's companion piece, the slow strathspey "Countess of Crawford (The)."

Source for notated version: Hector MacAndrew [Martin].

Printed sources: Hunter (Fiddle Music of Scotland), 1988; No. 227. Martin (Traditional Scottish Fiddling), 2002; p. 138. Milne (Middleton’s Selection of Strathspeys, Reels &c. for the Violin), 1870; p. 28. Moffat (Dance Music of the North), 1908; No. 21, p. 8. Neil (The Scots Fiddle), 1991; No. 69, p. 94.

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