Annotation:Go and 'List for a Sailor
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GO AND 'LIST FOR A SAILOR. English, Air (cut time). E Minor (Barnes): G Dorian (Bacon). Standard tuning (fiddle). ABC (Barnes): AAAABBAACCAA (Mallinson): AAAABBAABBAA (Bacon). The tune is employed for morris dancing in the village of Sherborne, Gloucestershire, in England's Cotswolds, where it is the vehicle for a single jig – a 'solo' step-dance dance, although it is sometimes performed simultaneously by two dancers. The song to the air is "The Unfortunate Tailor," collected by Dr. George Gardiner in Hampshire from George Lovett of Winchester in 1906 and Alfred Oliver of Basingstoke in 1907 (Malcolm Douglas). The last lines of the song go:
So now, kind friends, I'll bid you adieu,
No more my woes shall trouble you;
I'll ramble the country through and through,
And go and 'list for a sailor.
The Sherborne morris version does not have a second strain; rather, it substitutes music for the "slows," coming back up to tempo with a reprise of the first strain music.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources:
Bacon (Handbook of Morris Dances), 1974; p. 288.
Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2), 2005; p. 51.
Mallinson (Mally's Cotswold Morris Book, vol. 2), 1988; No. 67, p. 32.
Recorded sources: Fledgling FLED 3037CD, "Morris On" (CD reissue). Island Records HELP 5, Ashley Hutchings, John Kirkpatrick et at – "Morris On" (1972).
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