Annotation:Savage Hornpipe (The)
X: 1 T:Savage Hornpipe. JC.110 R:.Hornpipe S:John Clare,Poet,Helpston. (1793-1864) O:England A:Northamptonshire Z:vmp.P. Headford M:C| L:1/8 Q:2/4=90 K:Bb ((3FGA)|\ B2B2Bcde|fdfb fdBd|G2G2GABG|FDFB FDB,D|! EDEF GBAc|Bcde fga2|fdBd ecBA|B2B2B2:|! |:fe|dfBf dfBf|cfAf cfAf|BdGd BdGd|AcFc AcFD|! EDEF GBAc|Bcde fgab|fdBd ecBA|B2B2B2:|
SAVAGE HORNPIPE, THE. English, Hornpipe (4/4 time). G Major: B Flat Major (Clare, Leadley). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody appears in the mid-19th century music manuscript copybooks of Helperby, Yorkshire, fiddler Lawrence Leadley (1827-1897) as an untitled hornpipe (No. 32) in the key of B flat major. It also appears in the John Clare (1793-1864, Helpstone, Northants) manuscripts (also set in B flat). Peter Cooper suspects the title may possibly refer to the poet and playwright Richard Savage (c. 1697-1743), author of The Bastard (1728). Savage’s life was one of literary success coupled with personal problems that included debt, blackmail and murder, and he died in debtors prison, having been abandoned one by one by his friends. He was the subject of Samuel Johnson’s Life of Savage (1744), one of the most elaborate of the doctor’s Lives of the English Poets.