Annotation:Dash the Drawer

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DASH THE DRAWER. English, Country Dance Tune/Jig (6/4 or 6/8 time). A Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. This country dance jig was published in all four editions of London publisher John Young's Second Volume of the Dancing Master [1] (1710-1728). It also appears in rival publishers Walsh and Randall's The New Country Dancing Master, Second Book (1710), Hare's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1719), and John Walsh's (Jr.) The Compleat Country Dancing-Master, vol. the Sixth (1754).

The title may refer to a wine servant or tavern employee whose job it was to draw wine from a casket and bottle it for consumption (wine being stored in caskets and not bottled until a guest or customer ordered it). A tract dating to 1698 was entitled "In Vino Veritas, or a Conference betwixt Chip the Cooper and Dash the Drawer (Being both Boozy), Discovering some secrets in the Wine-Brewing Trade. Useful for all sorts of people to save their money and preserve their health" [see Chambers Journal, 1801, p. 381]. In it the two, under influence of the contents of their master's cellar, give forth on the mysteries of their craft. It explains, for example, why the English prefer the fortified wines of Portugal to the unfortified wines of France: “They have the body, that is strength, and that now a days pleases, for our People love to have their Heads and Stomachs hot, as soon and as cheap as they can.”

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