Annotation:Bonnet Makers of Dundee (The)

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BONNET MAKERS OF DUNDEE, THE. AKA and see "Burnt Leg (The), "Corby and the Pyett (The)," "Sweet Molly (2)." Scottish, Reel or Strathspey. E Minor (Bremner). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Dundee was the first Scottish Burgh to have a Bonnetmaker Craft, probably modeled after similar, smaller bonnets worn by clergymen from the Continent. Blue bonnets were for the working classes, black for the middle class; all were made of woven wool. Unfortunately, no surviving example of a Dundee bonnet exists. See [1] for more on the bonnet trade.

Glen finds the earliest printing of the tune in Robert Bremner's 1757 collection. However, Paul Cranford says it appeared earlier in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion (1743-48) under the title "The Corby and the Pyett" (The Raven and the Magpie"). Aird (1785) and Kerr (1887) print it as "Sweet Molly." The melody appears in the music manuscripts of Long Island, New York, painter and fiddler William Sidney Mount [2] (1807-1868) on a page dated May 8th, 1845, along with the tunes "Cameronian Rant (The)" and "Mathewson's Hornpipe." It also was entered in the music manuscript copybook of American musician M.E. Eames, frontispiece dated Aug. 22nd, 1859 (p. 51).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Bremner (Scots Reels), c. 1757; p. 46.

Recorded sources:

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