Annotation:Red Lion Hornpipe (2)
RED LION HORNPIPE [2]. AKA – “Red Lyon.” English, ‘Old’ or Triple Hornpipe (3/2 time). D Major (ED&S): B Flat Major (Ashman, Geoghegan). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody appears in London publisher John Walsh’s third collection of Lancashire tunes (Lancashire Jiggs, Hornpipes, Joaks, etc.) published c. 1730. Walsh included the tune with country dance directions in others of his publications, including Third Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (editions of 1735 and 1749). It also was published in London by John Johnson in dancing master Daniel Wright's Wright's Compleat Collection of celebrated country Dances (1740).
Perhaps the title refers to one of several Red Lion inns in old England; an Elizabethan-era Red Lion was located in the Strand. The Gunpowder Plot conspirators of 1605 arranged to meet, under pretence of holding a hunting party, at a pack-horse inn called the Red Lion at Dunsmoor Heath, near the London Road near to Dunchurch.
The tune appears in several English musicians’ manuscript collections, including John Moore (referenced below), John Clare (Helpton, Northants, 1820), John Rook (Waverton, Cumbria, 1840), William Mittel (New Romney, Kent, 1799), and Thomas Hammersley (London, 1790). It is one of the "missing tunes" from William Vickers' 1770 Northumbrian dance tune manuscript, listed in the contents but not found in the ms.
