Annotation:Blue Cap
X: 1 T:Blue Cap(For Me). (p)1651.PLFD.008 M:6/4 L:1/4 Q:3/4=100 S:Playford, Dancing Master,1st Ed.,1651. O:England H:1651. Z:Chris Partington. K:F F | BBfbbd | c2BG2d | BBfddg | c>fef2 :| |: f | ddBccG | F2d_e2g | ffdfga | bfdc2f | ddBccG |[M:9/4][L:1/4][Q:3/4=100] F2d_e3e2g |[M:6/4][Q:3/4=100] ffdfga | bfdc2 :|
BLUE CAP. AKA - "Blue Cap for Me." English, Country Dance Tune (6/4 time). A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. 'Blue Cap' refers to a person from Scotland, after the practice at one time for Scotsmen to wear hats or bonnets of that color (c.f. "Blue Bonnets over the Border"). Musicologist Anne Gilchrist quotes Morrison in his Itinerary (1598)[1]:
The husbandmen in Scotland, the servants, and almost all the country did wear coarse cloth made at home of grey of sky color and flat blew caps very broad.
The melody was published by John Playford in the very first edition of The English Dancing Master (1651) although it was quite old and was considered part of the traditional repertoire in Playford's day (Pulver, 1923). The tonality shifts between major and dorian mode; F (Major)/G (Dorian) being the tonic given by Playford. A copy of a song entitled "Blew Cap for Me" is in Antidote against Melancholy (1661, p. 29), the refrain of which is 'If ever I have a man, blew cap for me' [Robert Burns, Robert Riddell, Notes on Scottish Song].
A version of the melody is contained in the Skene manuscript, albeit the first part is set (inexplicably) in common time.
- ↑ Quoted in Anne G. Gilchrist, "Some Additional Notes on the Traditional History of Certain Ballad-Tunes in the Dancing Master", Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, vol. 3, No. 4, Dec., 1939, p. 274).