Annotation:Sailors on Shore

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SAILORS ON SHORE. AKA and see "Eileen Curran (1)," "Lady Dalrymple," "Lady Hamilton Dalrymple," "Sailor's Return (1)," "Sailor Set on Shore," Sailors Set on Shore." Irish (originally), American; Reel. G Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The cognate reel "Paresis" is based on this tune. However, the melody began as a Scottish strathspey called "Lady Hamilton Dalrymple" AKA "Lady Dalrymple." As "Sailor Set Down on the Shore" it was a fiddle tune in the c. 1840’s music manuscript collection of fiddler and painter William Sidney Mount, of Long Island, whose brother Robert Nelson Mount worked as an itinerant dancing master.

Additional notes

Source for notated version: - New Hampshire Fiddlers' Union [Phillips]; the 1938 typewritten manuscript of New Hampshire fiddler John Taggart (1854-1943) entitled “Recollections of a Busy Life” (New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, N.H.). Taggart wrote in his ms. that the tunes “were all taught me during my boyhood days in Sharon (N.H.), by the various fiddlers in that vicinity” [Miller]. Miller points out that Sharon is in “the heart of the Monadnock Region of southwestern New Hampshire, where fiddlers and contra dances abound to this day” (pref. iv) [Miller].

Printed sources : - Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; p. 89. Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 80 (appears as “Sailors Set on Shore”). Miller (Fiddler’s Throne), 2004; No. 309, p. 182 (appears as “Sailors Set on Shore”). Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1), 1994; p. 208.

Recorded sources: - New Hampshire Fiddler’s Union, Miller & Peery – “The Music of John Taggart” (1989).

See also listings at:
Jane Keefer’s Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Sources [1]
Alan Ng’s Irishtune.info [2]