Annotation:Over the Moor among the Heather (1)
X:1 T:In the Moor among the Heather [1] M:C| L:1/8 B:Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol.2 (1765) Z:Transcribed and edited by Fynn Titford-Mock, 2007 Z:abc's:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G DEGB GEGE|EAAB ABAG|GABd dega|begB ABAG:| |:dega fagd|eaab abag|bage dega|begB ABAG:|]
OVER THE MOOR AMONG THE HEATHER [1]. AKA - "An I had thee ‘mong the heather," "O'er the Muir Amang the Heather." AKA and see "Aldivalloch," "Aldavaloch," "My Laddie from Valenciennes," "Rising of the year 1715 (The)," "Tha tighinn fodham eiridh." Scottish; Air, Country Dance Tune, Reel or Strathspey: English, Reel. England, Northumberland. G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB (Gow, Lowe): AABB (Bremner, Honeyman, Kerr, O'Farrell, Petrie, Vickers): AABB' (Johnson). The antiquarian Stenhouse was of the opinion that "O'er the moor amang the heather" was but a modification of "Carle an' the King come," the air to a song in Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd (1725). The melody appears in the Bodleian Manuscript (in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), inscribed A Collection of the Newest Country Dances Performed in Scotland written at Edinburgh by D.A. Young, W.M., 1740, and also was included in Young's MacFarlane Manuscript Book II (c. 1741, p. 238) under the title "An I had thee ‘mong the heather." It also appears in Robert Bremner's 1757 collection and in the [James] Gillespie Manuscript of Perth (1768). Cazden et al, (1982) identify the melody as probably derived from the large "Boyne Water (1)" family of tunes, on the strength of the identifying motif in the second strain. Slow versions of the tune sometimes go by the name "Aldavaloch." The melody was current as a reel in the early 18th century, notes Johnson (1984), while the strathspey version he gives appears to have been fashioned c. 1760. For song versions and background notes see "Over the Moor among the Heather (2)."
Country dance versions of the melody and dance instructions were printed in London by the Thompsons in the Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 2 (1765), Longman and Broderip in their Compleat Collection of 200 Favorite Country Dances (1781) and by Straight and Skillern in Two Hundred and Four Favourite Country Dances, vol. 1 (1775). A different tune with the same title appears in John Hinton's periodical The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure of 1758.
Compare "Over the Moor among the Heather (1)" with the American old-time reel "Yellow Barber" AKA "Arthur Berry," which may have be derived from the older Scottish tune.
"O'er the Moor Among the Heather" was a great favorite of Cape Breton fiddler Bill Lamey's, notes Mark Wilson (2005).
