Annotation:Ferguson's Rant
X:1 T:Ferguson’s Rant M:C L:1/8 R:Reel B:James Aird – Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3 (Glasgow, 1788, No. 468, p. 181) N:”Humbly dedicated to the Volunteers and Defensive Bands of Great Britain and Ireland” Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G (d/c/)|TB2 (AG) (DG)(BG)|(FA)(dA) DGBG|TB2 AG (DG)(BG)|TB2A2A2 dc| BGDG cAFA|dBGB ecAf|gfed cBAd|TB2G2G3:| |:g/a/|bgdg Bdgd|gdBg BdgB|cedc BGdB|c2 BA A2 dc| BGDG cAFA|dBGB ecAf|gfed BdAd|B2G2G2:|]
FERGUSON'S RANT. Scottish (originally), English, Irish; Hornpipe. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune was first printed by Glasgow publisher James Aird in his Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3 (1788). The tune, almost identical to that printed by Aird, was entered into the c. 1850 music manuscript collection of Manchester, England, musician biography:John Roose. O'Neill picked up the tune for his O'Neill's Irish Music (1915), although the melody has no apparent Irish musical character. Anne Gilchrist[1] noted that, in her experience, the Rant was a name rather loosely applied of various lively dance-tunes, but properly seemed to her to have belonged to a quick 2/4 time melody. However, as this hornpipe suggests, it was applied to a variety of meters.
Perhaps O'Neill associated the title with a man named Ferguson whom he honored with a sketch in Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913). Great Piper Charles Ferguson, a blind musician "said to have been a native of Limerick," who played "in and out" of the large hotels in Dublin in the early 19th century, toured America and Canada in 1851 as an accompanist to the singer Catherin Hayes. Ferguson stayed on afterwards and settled in New York, where he acquired a handsome set of pipes made by Michael Egan. The Great-piper was said to have learned most of his music from a cleric named Dr. Tuohy (Bishop of Limerick, 1814-1828), who himself was a piper, and Ferguson's forte was airs and slow music. O'Neill records that an aging Ferguson eventually married a widow from Brooklyn, and dropped out of sight of the Irish music community soon afterwards.
- ↑ Gilchrist, Anne. "Old Fiddlers' Tune Books of the Georgian Period", JEFDSS, vol. 4, No. 1, Dec. 1940, p. 18.