Annotation:St. Anne's Tune
X:1 T:St. Anne's Tune M:4/4 L:1/8 N:One of the tunes used for the Abbott's Bromley Horn Dance, played for N:the St. Anne's Jubilee. It was, at the time, considered to be the "Old Tune" N:for the ritual dance. Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G B2AF DG G2|B2 AG ed d2|B2 AB cdef|gdec Bc G2|
ST. ANNE'S TUNE. English, Dance Tune (4/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. "St. Anne's Tune" is one of the tunes used in the Abbots Bromley (Staffordshire) Horn Dance. "This four bar melody is the same tune that Edie Sammons recalled (see "Edie Sammon's Tune") but with a different rhythm. It was first published in 1924 in the 'Leaflet' of SS. Mary's and Anne's Guild, St. Mary's and St. Anne's being schools in Abbots Bromley" (Bullen). The tune was played at the behest of Marcia Ellis Rice, Headmistress of the School of St. Mary and St. Anne from 1900-1931, for the school Jubilee, held in 1924. The Horn Dancers had agreed to be a part of the celebratory pageant, but to the dismay of Ms. Rice and others, they claimed to have forgotten the older tunes once played, and were substituting "Yankee Doodle" as music for the dance. She recorded in 1939:
We can, however, produce four old tunes, and it is much to be hoped that the Horn dancers will be grateful for their rescue, will cherish them and return to them. Here is the story of the rescue. There is one tune which is well known to our readers, whether villagers or Old Girls. It was always played in the early years of this century; then as time went on it became noticeable that “Yankee Doodle” was too often substituted. In our ignorance we called it “ the old tune“ unaware of any older one. Consequently when the Horns, of their courtesy, “came out” for our Jubilee in 1924 we begged for the simple haunting tune we associated with the dance. The answer was that it was “forgotten“. Entreaty and some persistence, however, produced it from the memory of the players. And in time to this music the hobbyhorse snapped its jaws, the boy bate his triangle, and the horns were danced in our hall. This music was not allowed to be forgotten. It was at once written down and is printed in the 1924 number of “the leaflet of St. Mary's and St. Anne's Guild”. We were quite unaware, and so were the horn dancers, that Mr. Cecil Sharp had heard this tune when he visited Abbots Bromley in or about 1910, and that he had printed it in “Sword Dances of Northern Europe”, 1911 – 12 and commented upon it in his chapter on the horn dance. Comparison of the tune as written down by him and by us shows to be the same. So this tune is well identified.
However, another tune (and the one now played for the dance) had been sent to Sharp following his well-publicized visit to Abbot's Bromley in the early 20th century. A Mr. Buckley sent him a tune noted down from the fiddling of a wheelwright named Robinson in 1857 or 1858, when the latter was about age 60. Robinson said this had been the tune in his day that was played for the dance and was considered to be very old at that time. Sharp printed it in his Sword Dances of Northern England, Book II (1912, p. 1), however, no one alive in the region could independently verify it was the tune they remembered hearing played for the dance. Nevertheless, the haunting "Robinson's Tune" (AKA - "Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance") is now the melody most associated with the horn dance.
