Annotation:Rocket (The)
ROCKET, THE. English, Country Dance Tune (whole time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody was first published in Charles and Samuel Thompson’s Compleat Collection, vol. 3 (London, 1773). It is one of numerous melodies from the Thompson collection that were entered into the 1788 music manuscript copybook of fiddlers John and William Pitt Thompson (Norwich, Conn.).
According to Wikipedia: "The name Rocket comes from the Italian rocchetta, meaning "bobbin" or "little spindle", given due to the similarity in shape to the bobbin or spool used to hold the thread to be fed to a spinning wheel. The Italian term was adopted into German in the mid 16th century, by Leonhard Fronsperger in a book on rocket artillery published in 1557, using the spelling rogete, and by Conrad Haas as rackette; adoption into English dates to ca. 1610. Johann Schmidlap, a German fireworks maker, is believed to have experimented with staging in 1590.