Annotation:Irish Merry Making
X: 1 T:Irish Merry Making WES.005 M:9/8 L:1/8 R:Country Dance Q:3/8=120 B:T.Westrop's 120 Country Dances, 1860's Z:VMP-R.Greig 2010 K:D d2d ded cBA|d2d def gfe|d2d ded cBA|BcB Bcd (ec).A:|! |:fag fed cBA|fag fed cde|fag fed cBA|BcB Bcd ecA:|]
IRISH MERRY MAKING. AKA and see "Air in the Travellers," "Astrope Wells the New Way," "Billy O’Rourke," "Merry Making (2)," "Why did You Promise to Marry?" English, Irish; Slip Jig (9/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. See also the Welsh variant "Taflwn Yr Hosan." Regarding the alternate title "Air in the Travellers," the tune tile as entered into the 1817 music ms. collection of Patrick McGahon (Dungooley, County Louth), it may possibly have been associated with a three-act comic opera called The Travellers in Switzerland, written by Sir Henry Bate Dudley (1745-1824). Staged at the Theatre Royal, London, in 1794, it was a satire on the contemporary fashion of traveling to Switzerland.
