Annotation:Fair Quaker of Deal (1)

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FAIR QUAKER OF DEAL [1]. English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune dates to 1718, when it first appears in the Second Volume of the Dancing Master (3rd edition, p. 235), published by John Young, heir to the Playford music publishing and instrument selling concern in London. Young published it again in 1728 in his 4th edition of the volume. "Fair Quaker of Deal" also appears in the Walsh's similarly entitled 'Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master, editions of 1719 and 1754. London musician Thomas Hammersley entered it into his music manuscript collection of 1790. John Johnson prints a tune called "Sailor's Dance (2), or Fair Quaker of De'al" in his 1758 collection Two Hundred Favourite Country Dances..., vol. 8, but it is a different melody.

The title of the country dance takes its name from Dublin playwright Charles Shadwell's The Fair Quaker of Deal, Irish Hospitality, or, Virtue Rewarded (1720), dedicated to his friends in Kent where he was a one-time supervisor of the excise. It was produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with great success, owing partly to the acting of Miss Santlow as the heroine. Shadwell was himself the younger son of a successful playwright, Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692). He died in 1726.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes), 1986.

Recorded sources:




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