Annotation:Cadgers of the Canongate
X:2 T:Codger's in the Cannongate M:C| L:1/8 B:Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1 (London, 1757) Z:Transcribed and edited by Fynn Titford-Mock, 2007 Z:abc's:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G GBGB de/f/ ge|dBgB A/A/A A2|GBGB de/f/ ge|dBgB G/G/G G2:| |:bagf gedc|GBgB A/A/A A2|b/a/f a/g/e g/f/d e/d/B|GBgB G/G/G G2:||
CADGERS OF THE CANONGATE. AKA and see "Dalkeith Fair." Scottish; Strathspey, Fling or Reel (whole time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB' (Carlin, Kerr): AAB (Bremner, Gow, Lowe, Neil, Skye). The Canongate is a famous street of some antiquity in Edinburgh which links the Castle and Holyrood Place. It gave its name to an area adjunct of Holyrood Abbey and long remained a separate entity from Edinburgh until the mid-19th century. The Canongate was founded in 1128 by David I under a grant to "the Augustinian canons of the Castle", and "crept up the Royal Mile ridge until halted at the Netherbow." The name means 'the way or street of the [clerical] canons' (and has noting to do with 'cannons', as the name is sometime misspelled). The '-gate' in the name of the Edinburgh street derives from an Old Norse word gata and Old English word geat; both originally meaning 'a way through'. The modern English word gate, meaning an opening in a fence or wall, derives from this, but the word 'gate' also was used by the Vikings to refer to 'a way through' a village, as in a road. This meaning of gate--a road--survives in some street names in the north or England, as in 'Coppergate'--'the street of the cup makers'.
Robin Williamson (1976) explains that a cadger was originally a word for a 'carrier', or one who whose job it was to ferry about customers in sedan chairs. He suggests the word may have derived from the tinker's cant word gadgie, meaning a man, and notes that in more recent times it has come to mean a beggar or someone who wheedles or sponges something. There was at one time a country dance of the same name, written down in 1752 for his students by one John McGill, who was a dancing master in Girvan (Alburger). Glen (1891) finds the tune first published in Robert Bremner's collection (1757, p. 51), and London publishers Charles and Samuel Thompson included it in their Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1, also published in 1757 (as "Codger's in the Canongate"). A century or so later it was printed by Joseph Lowe in his Lowe's Collection of Reels, Strathspeys and Jigs.
