Annotation:Mrs. Monroe’s (1)
Tune properties and standard notation
MRS. MONROE'S [1]. AKA and see “King (The),” “Best in the Bag,” “Happy Mistake (The),” “King of Jigs,” “Lady Shire’s Favourite,” “Miss Monroe’s Jig,” “Mrs. Spens Monroe.” Irish, Slide or Jig. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune appears in Kerr’s Merry Melodies, vol. 4, as the first two parts of a four-part tune called “The King.” Source for notated version: the 1938 typewritten manuscript of New Hampshire fiddler John Taggart (1954-1943), in the 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 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].
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; p. 79. Miller (Fiddler’s Throne), 2004; No. 80, p. 59. Ryan’s Mammoth Collection, 1883; p. 111. Songer (Portland Collection), 1997; p. 142. White’s Unique Collection, 1896; No. 39, p. 7.
Recorded sources: New Hampshire Fiddler’s Union – “The Music of John Taggart” (1989).