Annotation:Quick Step (7)
X:1 T:Quick Step [7] M:C L:1/8 N:"Allegro" R:March C:"by Countess Bal____s" (Balcarres) B:John Watlen - The Celebrated Circus Tunes (Edinburgh, 1791, p. 26) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:F FGAB cAFA|dBGB|cAG<F|FGAB cAFA|BGEE F2F2:|| FffF EeeE|DddD CccC|DdEe FfGg|gfed c3c| dBBd dffd|cAAc cffc|dBBG cAAF|GFFE F2F2||
QUICK STEP [7]. AKA and see "Hornpipe (58)," "Quick Step (21) (A). Scottish, Quickstep (whole or 2/4 time). F Major (Watlen): G Major (Aird). Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB: AABB (Aird, vol. 6). The tune is attributed to the Countess Balcarres in John Watlen's Celebrated Circus Tunes (Edinburgh, 1791). The tune--and, in fact, every tune in Watlen's collection--was reprinted some five years later by Glasgow publisher James Aird, without credit to either source or composer. Elizabeth Dalrymple Lindsay (1759-1816) was the Countess of Balcarres in Fife, in June, who was a patroness of musicians in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, and an accomplished keyboard player. Two of her compositions, "Lady Eliza Lindsay" and "Lady Eliza Lindsay's Minuet", hornpipe and minuet, were named for her ten-year-old daughter, and also appear in Watlen's 1791 collection (she eventually had four sons and two daughters); she also composed "Earl of Balcarras March and Quickstep," "Vulcan's March" and "Vulcan’s Forge." Her sister-in-law was Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard (1750-) who wrote the words to the famous ballad "Auld Robin Gray (1)." Haigh Hall, Lancashire, is presently the seat of the Earl of Balcarres, having been inherited out of the Bradshaw/Bradshaigh family in 1780 when General Alexander Lindsay, the sixth Earl of Balcarres, married Elizabeth (his 1st cousin), only child of Charles Dalrymple, Esq., who himself had inherited the Haigh property from his wife. See also "Lady Balcarras."
Elizabeth's "Quick Step (7)" found its way into Book 3 of the large c. 1883 music manuscript collection of County Leitrim musician and piper Stephen Grier as an untitled hornpipe (for which see "Hornpipe (58)").
