Annotation:Health to Betty (A)

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 HEALTH TO BETTY, A. English, Scotch; Country Dance ("Longways for as many as will."). G Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The tune was published by John Playford in his English Dancing Master (1651). Chappell (1859) asserts the Scots appropriated this tune for their "My Mither's Ay Glowrin O'er Me," which is the opening line of Allan Ramsay's song set to the tune. John Glen (Early Scottish Melodies, 1900) believes the provenance is just the other way round, and that the English captured the tune as a country dance, to which the words had become detached. Glen points out the tune is in the Scottish Blaikie Manuscript (c. 1695). Stenhouse, in his notes to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (Illustrations, 1853), says that Ramsay's words were adapted to an ancient tune, in triple time, called "A Health to Betty," which originally consisted of one strain (which is printed in Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius, 1725). D'Urfey wrote was song to the melody called "Female Quarrel (The)," according to Glen (1900), a lampoon upon Phillida and Chloris. It was printed in Pills to Purge Melancholy (1715).  Source for notated version:  Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times), 1859; p. 320. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 39.  Recorded sources:

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