Annotation:Crotchet Lodge (1)
X:1 % T:Crotchet Lodge [1] M:C L:1/8 R:Reel S:John Rook music manuscript collection (Waverton, Cumbria, 1840, p. 233) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G G/A/|BGGB cAAc|BGFG A/G/F/E/ DG/A/|BGGB cAAc|dge^c d3:| B/c/|dBGg ecea|fdef g/f/g/a/ gB/c/|dBBB geea|fdef g2 fe| dBBB eccc|dBBB A/G/F/E/ DB/c/|dBBB e/g/f/a/ g/e/d/c/|BAGF G3||
CROTCHET LODGE [1]. English, Reel (whole time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The melody was included in the large 1840 music manuscript collection of multi-instrumentalist John Rook, of Waverton, near Wigton, Cumbria. Crotchet Lodge was a two-act farce staged at the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden in 1795, and was well-received. It was written by Thomas Hurlstone, little remembered today, but who wrote several comic plays for the London stage, flourishing in the first half of the 1790's. One of the meanings of 'crotchet' (given in the OED) is “A whimsical fancy; a perverse conceit; a peculiar notion on some point (usually considered unimportant) held by an individual in opposition to common opinion.” Similarly, George William Lemon‘s English Etymology (1783) defines it as “any wild humor, whim or extravagant fancy or any start of imagination, formed without reason, foundation or reality”, and Samuel Johnson's 1785 dictionary gives that 'crotchet' is “a perverse conceit; an odd fancy”. Hurlstone has the Ladies of Crotchet Lodge in a rage for music, and the other for painting.