Annotation:Scots Hall
SCOTS HALL. AKA and see "Yeoman (The)." English, Jig (6/8 time). B Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. “Scots Hall” was published by Charles and Samuel Thompson in their Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances (London, 1757), and, a year later, by John Johnson in his Two Hundred Favorite Country Dances, vol. 8 (p. 74). The Fleischmann index links this tune with “Gold Ring (1) (The).” The melody appears in the music manuscript collections of Northumbrian musician William Vickers (1770) and Cumbrian musician John Rook (1840), and in the American manuscript of flute player Henry Beck (1786).
There was a manor called Scots Hall in Smeeth, Kent, home of the Scott family, descendents of Norman conquerors. Scots Hall was demolished in 1808, after a long period of decline in the family fortunes. There was an old Kentish proverb about the four largest estates in the region:
Scot's Hall shall have a fall;
Ostenhangre was built in angre (pride),
Somerfield will have to yielde;
And Mersham Hatch shall win the Match
"Scots Hall" is cognate with County Leitrim musician Stephen Grier's "Yeoman (The)" in the first strain. The second strains are similar but show more divergence.
