Annotation:Did You Ever Hear of a Gallant Sailor?

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DID YOU EVER HEAR OF A GALLANT SAILOR. AKA - "Unconstant Fair." English, Air. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). The air appears under this title in John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1729, Air LXV) and in his later opera Achilles (1733).

But can I leave my pretty hussies,
Without one tear, or tender sigh?

However it had appeared earlier in Thomas D'Urfy's Wit and Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. III (1707) under the title "Unconstant Fair," which itself was a re-working of a yet older ballad called "Valiant Trooper" or "The Valiant Trooper and His pritty Peggy."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 69.

Recorded sources:




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