Annotation:Horse and Away to Newmarket
X:1 T:Horse and Away to Newmarket M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Air S:John Bell (1783-1864) music manuscript collection (Northumberland, c. 1812) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G g|e>dc BAB|GAG B2g|edc BAG|AaA c2g| edc BAB|GAG BAG|c>de/f/ gdB|ABA c2:| |:e|G/G/G d B/B/B g|G/G/G d B2g|G/G/G d B/B/Bg|A/A/A a Tf2g| G/G/G d B/B/B g|B/B/B d TB2G|c>de/f/ gdB|ABA c2:|]
HORSE AND AWAY TO NEWMARKET. AKA and see "Newmarket Races," "Fenwick o' Bywell." English, Jig. England; Northumberland, Cumbria. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC. The melody appears in a number of musicians' manuscripts from the north of England, and is a core melody of the Northumbrian piping repertoire (under the alternate titles). It appears in William Vicker's c. 1770 Northumbrian ms., James Biggin's (Leeds) 1779 manuscript collection, John Peacock's Northumbrian piping collection (1800), Northumbrian musician John Bell's c. 1812 music manuscript, and Cumbrian musician John Rook's music manuscript collection of 1840. Stokoe (Northumbrian Minstrelsy, 1882) "gives the song line 'Fenwick o' Bywell's off to Newmarket', connecting the different titles of the tune" (Seattle). Matt Seattle also believes the tune is derived from the older "Johnny Cock Thy Beaver", and notes "the structure is displaced by two bars but much of the melodic material is shared."
"Horse bears some passing similarity to the Irish jig "Garryowen" in the first strain (first identified by 19th century researcher John Stokoe), but Matt Seattle and others decline to view the two as related. Stokoe, in notes to John Bell's manuscript version [1], says:
There was a ballad once popular in the north [i.e. of England] commemorating the exploits of a North Country Squire who had matched his mare "Duchess" against a Newmarket horse and who won the race by the sagacity or cunning of his trainer. The ballad began:
Fenwich o' Bywell's off to Newmarket,
And he'll be there or we get started.
