Annotation:Four Bare Legs Together

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 FOUR BARE LEGS TOGETHER. English, Scottish; Slip Jig and Air. England, Northumberland. F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The melody appears in William Vickers' Northumbrian manuscript, c. 1770, Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany (no. 26), and in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. The suggestive title, finds Pete Coe, is a line from a song called "Maggie's Tocher" printed by Herd in his Ancient Scots Songs (c. 1769), although the line seems innocent enough: The bairns are coming on, And they'll cry, O their mither! We have nouther pat nor pan,  But four bare legs the gither.  Source for notated version:  Printed sources: Knowles (A Northern Lass), 1995; p. 24.  Recorded sources: Beautiful Jo BEJOCD-36, Dave Shepherd & Becky Price - "Ashburnham." Front Hall FHR-08, Alistair Anderson - "Traditional Tunes" (1976).

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