Template:Pagina principale/Vetrina

File:The Rock and a Pickle Tow.pdf
Regarding the title, a rock is a distaff, a device that holds the flax strick or the fiber for spinning. It is called a rock because the weight, or whorl, was frequently a shaped and pierced rock. A ‘wee pickle tow’ is a small piece of prepared short flax fibers combed from longer fibers called "line".
**A rock and a wee pickle tow**

**Played by**: *Max Carmichael*
**Source**: *Soundcloud*
**Image**: *A rock and a wee pickle tow round*

...thus it was a spinning song, the tune of which proved popular and served many purposes over the years.

Christine Martin (2002) notes that “rocking meets” were held in some parts of Scotland, in which all spinners gathered in one house in the village to spin.

It was used as a march tune under many different titles, and was one of the favorite songs of the early 19th century in Lowlands Scotland, according to Peter Mackenzie, "the genial reminiscer of Glasgow" (Emmerson, 1971).

John Glen, in his Early Scottish Melodies (p. 197), traces the tune to the 1663 edition of Playford’s Musicks Hand-Maid where it appears under the title “A Scotish March.”

Playford later printed the same tune as “Montrose's March” in this 1669 Musick’s Recreation. The title “A Rock and a Wi Pickle Tow” first appears with the melody in Oswald’s Curious Collection of Scots Tunes (1740), finds Glen.

A similar air exists in Shetland as "Bride's March (The)" as played by John Stickle of Unst. Under the title variant "Rock and Pickal o' Taw" it is one of the "missing tunes" from William Vickers' 1770 Northumbrian dance tune manuscript, and the title appears in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian song and dance tunes ("The Northern Minstrel's Budget"), which he published c. 1800.

Fifer John Buttery (1784-1854) entered it into his large turn of the 19th century copybook after he joined the 24th Regiment of Foot.

...more at: A rock and a wee pickle tow - full Score(s) and Annotations

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