Annotation:Always My Heart that We Mun Sunder

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ALWAYS MY HEART THAT WE MUN SUNDER. AKA and see "Woe's my heart that we should sunder." Scottish, Air. C Mixolydian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. One of the tunes published in London publisher Henry Playford's 1700 collection of Scottish tunes, the earliest printed collection of Scottish fiddle music, consisting of 39 dances, airs and variation sets in unaccompanied arrangements. A 2nd edition was issued in 1701. Words to "Always My Heart that We Mun Sunder" were written by poet Allan Ramsay, and were sung by Peggy in The Gentle Shepherd. Another song to the tune, also with words by Ramsay, is called "Woe's My Heart the We Shou'd Sunder." John Glen [Early Scottish Melodies] and Stenhouse both agree the ancestral tune appears in the Skene Manuscript under the title "Alace this night yat we suld sinder," and Glen downplays the notion that the air "To dance about the Bailzeis Dubb" contributed to it; "merely two bar measures to the first, and two-and-a-half measures to the second strain, of the entire air." See note for "annotation:Woe's my heart that we should sunder" for more; it is the title that the tune was known by for most of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Playford (Original Scotch Tunes), 1700; p. 14 [1].

Recorded sources:

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