Annotation:Careless Sally
X:1 T:Careless Sally M:C| L:1/8 R:Country Dance B:Samuel, Ann & Peter Thompson - Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 5 (London, 1788, p. 45) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G G/A/B/c/ dB cedG|AB cB/A/ GFGD|G/A/B/c/ dB cedG|AB cB/A/ GF G2:| |:gg gb/g/ ee e2|aa aa/g/fd d2|geea fddg|ecAd BG G2:|]
CARELESS SALLY. AKA and see "Bethel Quick Step." English, Country Dance Tune (4/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody first appeared in print in Samuel, Ann and Peter Thompson's Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances vol. 5 (London, 1788). It appears in the music manuscript collections of several amateur musicians on both sides of the Atlantic: Lawrence Leadley (Helperby, Yorkshire, mid-19th cent.), William Winter (1774-1861, Somerset, c. 1850), Campbell ms., Edward Murphy (Newport, R.I., 1790), John Treat (Durham?, late 18th cent.) and Luther Kingsley (Mansfield, Conn., 1795). Dance figures for "Careless Sally" also appear in period manuscript collections in New England and New York, and in the publications A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances (Phinney, Ostego, N.Y., 1808) and A Treatise on Dancing (Saltator, Boston, Mass., 1807). Under the title "Bethel Quick Step" the tune was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1820 in Alvan Robinson Jr.'s Massachusetts collection of martial musick: containing a plain, easy and concise introduction to the grounds of martial musick (p. 62).
Cecil Sharp noted a version of the tune as a generic "Hornpipe" from the playing of James Higgins, then resident at Shepton Mallet Workhouse--the tune is often called "Shepton Hornpipe/Shepton Mallet Hornpipe" today (c.f. playing of Somerset harmonica player Jim Small).
"Careless Sally" was also entered into the 1840 music manuscript collection of multi-instrumentalist John Rook of Waverly, near Wigton, Cumbria, and in the mid-19th century music manuscript of William Winter (1774-1861), a shoemaker and violin player who lived in West Bagborough in Somerset, southwest England. Phillip Heath-Coleman [1] also finds other versions of the hornpipe (most noticeable in the 2nd strain) as "Goathland Square Eight (The)" and Henry Stuch's "Cuckoo's Nest".
