Annotation:Fyket (2) (The)

Back to Fyket (2) (The)

---

FYKET [2], THE. AKA and see "Duchess of Hamilton's Reel (1)." Scottish, English; Reel (cut time). England, Northumberland. A Mixolydian/Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Athole, Gow, Skye, Surenne): AAB (Davie): AABB (Vickers). Fyket is Scottish dialect for "fidget." "Very old" is the appended remark in MacDonald's Skye Collection (1887), and, as Pete Stewart explains the melody is of some antiquity, derived from a theme called "The Scottish Jig" (in 4/4 time) from the Leicester Bass Viol manuscript, c. 1640. "The basic material of the them was worked and reworked into many different tunes which grow in elaborateness through the 17th century," he writes, including "Put on Your Sark on Monday" and "The Fyket". The reel appears in Northumbrian musician William Vickers' original 1770 music manuscript collection as "The Figkit or (partly illegible, but looks like:) "Fy Got to the Pryr Besse" [Seattle]. In the 19th century it was entered into the music manuscript book of American musician M.E. Eames, frontispiece dated Aug. 22nd, 1859 (p. 8); nothing is known of the fiddler, save that he may have been from Philadelphia (judging by some of the titles in his/her MS).

Source for notated version: William Vicker's 1770 Northumbrian music manuscript collection [Seattle].

Printed sources: Bremner (A Collection of Scots Reels and Country Dances), 1757; p. 6. Davie (Davie’s Caledonian Repository), Aberdeen, 1829-30; p. 26. Gow (Complete Repository, part 3), 1806; p. 25. Mooney (A Collection of the Choicest Scots Tunes for the Lowland or Border Bagpipes, vol. 2), 1983; p. 14. MacDonald (The Skye Collection), 1887; p. 13. John McLachlan (The Piper's Assistant), 1854 (two settings, a march and reel). Seattle/Vickers (Great Northern Tune Book, part 2), 1987; No. 217. Stewart-Robertson (Athole Collection), 1884; p. 38. Surenne (Dance Music of Scotland), 1852; p. 75.

Recorded sources: MAR 325, David Geenberg & Concerto Caledonia – "Spring Any Day Now" (2005).

---