Annotation:Old Age and Young
OLD AGE AND YOUNG (NEVER AGREES). AKA - "Auld Eage and Young Never Grees the Gither." AKA and see "Bulock's Hornpipe/Bullock's Hornpipe," "Shire of Air." Scottish, English; Triple Hornpipe (3/2 or 6/4 time). G Minor (Young). Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDD. Directions for the dance to this tune were written down in 1752 by John McGill, dancing master in Girvan, for his students. The melody, in 'Old Hornpipe' (Triple Hornpipe) time, appears in the Drummond Castle Manuscript (in the possession of the Earl of Ancaster at Drummond Castle), inscribed "A Collection of Country Dances written for the use of his Grace the Duke of Perth by Dav. Young, 1734." Young, an Edinburgh fiddler and writing master, also included it in his McFarlane Manuscript (c. 1741, No. 232), as well as his Bodleian Manuscript (1740), the latter under the title "Shire of Air." Jack Campin has written that "Old Age and Young" may be an adaptation of an English pipe tune from the 17th century called "Three Sharp Knives," and he suggests the English tune might have been a vehicle for some sort of ritual-combat dance. "Blacks Hornpipe" also has similarities, notes Jack. However, the tune is a variant of "Bulock's Hornpipe," a dance and 3/2 melody printed in the Third Volume of the Dancing Master, 2nd edition [1] (1728), published in London by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns.
The melody under the "Old Age and Young" title was also published in Robert Petrie's 3rd Collection of Strathspey Reels (c. 1800), and in collections by Daniel Dow (1746) and John Anderson (1790).
