Annotation:Humors of Wapping (The)
HUMOURS OF WAPPING, THE. English, Hornpipe. B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody was originally published in R. Baldwin's periodical London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer (1756), followed by an appearance in John Johnson's Two Hundred Favourite Country Dances, vol. 8 (London, 1758). It was later published by Charles and Samuel Thompson in their Compleat Collection, vol. 3 (London, 1773). It was entered into the American music manuscript copybooks of fiddlers John and William Pitt Turner (Norwich, Conn., 1780) and Daniel Aborn (1790), and the English manuscript of Thomas Hammersley (London, 1790) and William Vickers (Northumberland, 1770). The melody can be heard played by the mechanism a clock made by Bucks County, Pensylvania, clockmaker Joseph Ellicott (c. 1770's). The title comes from a play called The Constant Quaker, or The Humours of Wapping, which was a "droll" at Bartholemew Fair; a droll being a stock stage entertainment in which humorous scenes or parts of plays were interposed with singing and dancing.
