Annotation:Drunken Barnaby

Find traditional instrumental music


Back to Drunken Barnaby


X: 1 T:Drunken Barnaby. JaW.080 M:6/8 L:1/8 Q:3/8=120 B:James Winder Ms, Lancashire, 1835-41 O: A:England, Wyresdale Lancashire N:"Oh Barnaby thow hast been drinking I can tell by thy face and thy N:Winking" Z:vmp.Chris Partington, Aug 2004 K:G [B3g3] efg|cfe d2c::cde ede|cfe d2c:| |:g2(agfe)|a2(bagf)|g2(agfe)|d2c:| cGc cGc|cfe d2c::cBA GFE|Dfe d2c:| |:D>EF EFG|cde d2c:|



DRUNKEN BARNABY. English, Jig (6/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDDEEFF. "Drunken Barnaby" is contained in the 1835-41 music manuscript of Cumbrian musician James Winder. Drunken Barnaby is the title character to Richard Braithwaite's (1588–1673) book Drunken Barnaby's Four Journeys to the North of England (1638), written in rhymed Latin verse and English dogeral, and his most popular work. "It was originally written as a mock eclogue in which a shepherd welcomes another who has been traveling and asks about his journeys), it was then made accessible to a wider audience by being translated into English ‘couch’d in a reeling ryme’, that was apparently to be sung ‘to the old Tune of BARNABE’, a popular ballad which has not unfortunately been identified. The ‘shepherd’ who tells of his journeys is transformed into the archetypal English pub-crawler. Exactly what he does for a living is not clear, but in the last book, he marries, gives up the drink, and transforms himself into a horse-dealer going from market to market in Westmorland and West Yorkshire. Like Will Kempe’s 'Nine Days’ Wonder (1600) and John Taylor’s Pennyless Pilgrimage (1618), it is the narrative of a journey in which the writer lurches from inn to inn, giving a complimentary or scabrous description of each"[1].


Additional notes





Recorded sources : - Rootbeat Records RBRCD42, Leveret - "Diversions" (2019).




Back to Drunken Barnaby

0.00
(0 votes)