Annotation:Kempshott Hunt

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KEMPSHOTT HUNT. AKA - "Kempshot Hunt." AKA and see "Oscar and Malvina." Scottish, English; Country Dance, Quickstep or Polka. A Mixolydian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC. While it appears to have originally been played as a country dance or quickstep march, it is often played nowadays as a polka. The tune was printed as "Oscar and Malvina, or Kempshot Hunt" in Preston's 1793 country dance collection and in the American country dance publication A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances (H. and E. Phinney, Ostego, N.Y., 1808). "Kempshot Hunt" also appears in G.E. Blake's Gentlemen's Amusement (Philadelphia, c. 1824).

"Kempshott Hunt" appears in the John Clare (1793–1864) music manuscript collection. Clare was a fiddler, poet, writer and collector of songs and tunes who lived in the East Midlands village of Helpstone, near Stamford. In 1820 he published a successful collection of poems, entitled Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery by John Clare, a Northamptonshire Peasant, followed soon thereafter by The Village Minstrel (1821). Unfortunately Clare deteriorated in his 40's, was committed to asylums, and spent the last 23 years of his life in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He died there in 1864.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 4), 1796; No. 168, p. 64. Carlin (The Gow Collection), 1986; No. 571. Gow (Third Collection of Niel Gow's Reels), 1792; p. 26 (3rd ed.). Preston (Twenty-Four Country Dances for the Year 1793). Schetky (A Collection of Scottish Music), 1800; p. 6 (published by Preston).

Recorded sources:

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