Annotation:Sir Watkin William Wynn
X:1 T:Sir Watkin William Wynn M:3/8 L:1/8 Q:"Slowish" R:Air B:Gow – Fourth Collection of Niel Gow’s Reels (1800) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G D|(GB).d|(BG).B|(A/B/)(c/A/)(B/G/)|AFD|TG/>A/B/>G/A/>F/|(GE)C| DGF|G2:||:D|.G(Bd)|(gd).B|(A/B/)(c/d/)(e/^d/)|(ec).A| (G/A/).B/.c/.d/.e/|(dB).G|AdT^c|d2 B/=c/|(dg).d|(BG).B| (A/B/)(c/A/)(B/G/)|(AF).D|TG/>A/B/>G/A/>F/|(GE).C|DGF|G2:|
SIR WATKIN WILLIAM WYNN. AKA and see “Ash Grove (The).” Welsh, Scottish; Air (3/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC. "A Welch (sic) air” {Gow}. The melody is widely familiar under the title “Ash Grove (The).” "Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn" was the name of at least three successive baronets in Wales, members of a powerful political family. Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 3rd Baronet (1692–1749) was a Welsh landowner, Tory politician and prominent Jacobite sympathizer. He died in a hunting accident. Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4th Baronet (1749-1789), was a patron of the arts and a supporter of painters and Concerts of Antient Music in London.
When the Gows Fourth Collection was published in 1800, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn [1] (1772-1840), 5th Baronet of Wynnstay (near Ruabon, Debingshire), was a north Welsh gentleman and land proprietor who raised a troop of cavalry that saw service in Ireland during the Rising of 1798. The troop, called the Ancient Britons fencible cavalry, “were at all times prominently conspicuous for the rigorous execution of any orders for devastation, destruction, or extermination. They were marked for it by the rebels, and in the course of the rebellion they were cut to pieces almost to a man” (Mitchel & Mac-Georghegan, History of Ireland: From the Treaty of Limerick to the Present, 1869). The regiment was disbanded in April, 1800. He was Member of Parliament twice and appointed Lord Lieutenant of Merionethshire from 1793-1830. In March, 1814, Sir Watkin went to France as Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant of a Provisional Battalion of Militia composed of men from the Denbigh, Derby, Hereford, Westmoreland and 2nd West York Militia. Unfortunately, when they disembarked they found that hostilities had already ceased and Napoleon defeated. Mortified, they reportedly consumed copious amounts of drink.
According to Wikipedia, "He grew to be a portly man of seventeen and half stone (238 pounds (108 kg)), which sometimes caused chairs to collapse under him, and Lady Holland, in her Journal (volume I, page 238), commented:
Sir Watkin is a Grenville in person and manner all over him; his tongue is immensely too big for his mouth and his utterance is so impeded by it that what he attempts to articulate is generally unintelligible.
