Two
May Tunes - A lockdown virtual collaboration between Vic Gammon (tenor
banjo) Steve Gray (mandolin and mix) and Cecilia Winterbottom (bass).
Here are Vic's notes about the tunes:
‘The 29th May’ was published by John Playford in The Dancing Master from the seventh edition in 1686 to the eighteenth edition in 1728, it was also in his Apollo’s Banquet of 1686 and in John Walsh’s dance collections in 1718, 1731 and 1754.
People
will recognise the tune as related to the Hymn ‘All Things Bright and
Beautiful’. This adaptation was made by the Victorian hymn composer W H
Monk (he of ‘Abide with Me’ and music editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern). The words are from Mrs Cecil Alexander's Hymns for Little Children (1848) - a highly conservative work that tried to teach children to behave themselves and put up with the world as it is:
The rich man in his castle / The poor man at his gate / God made them high or lowly / And ordered their estate.
She was the daughter of a land agent in Ireland and married a man who became Bishop of Derry, later Archbishop of Armagh. She also wrote the words of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ and other well-know pieces.
The original dance tune is obviously named after ‘Restoration Day’, (aka ‘Oak Apple Day’) the day Charles II (he of 12 illegitimate children and counting) was restored to the English throne in 1660. Sad - I think it would have been better if we had stayed a republic, but it was not to be. Nice tune though - I don’t think there is a tune called ‘The 30th of January’ - I should write it.
’The New May Moon’ I first came across in the manuscript book of the Welch family of Bosham in Sussex, which dates from around 1800, Anne Loughran and I included it as no 77 in A Sussex Tune Book (1982). In the Welch manuscript it is simply called ’The New Moon’ but the tune crops up in other English, Scottish and Irish sources as ‘The Young May Moon’ or ‘The New May Moon’. It has a number of other titles including ‘Johnny the Journeyman’ and ‘The Dandy-O’
The tune gets the May moon title from a song by Thomas Moore published in 1807, but Moore used an old tune. You can hear a performance of the song by, of all people, Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange at https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/anthony-burgess-sings-the-young-may-moon/ .
The tune became an unofficial march of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
and The Quick March of the 6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles.
Strange world isn’t it?
