Annotation:Have at Thy Coat Old Woman

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HAVE AT THY COAT, OLD WOMAN. AKA and see "Stand Thy Ground Old Harry." English, Country Dance Tune (4/4 time). G Major (Merryweather, Raven): F Major (Chappell). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The tune was originally published by John Playford in his English Dancing Master of 1651, and was retained in every subsequent edition of the long-running series, through the 18th and final edition of 1728 (then published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns). It also appears in Playford's Musick's Delight on the Cithren of 1666. Rival London music publisher John Walsh included it in his Compleat Country Dancing Master of 1718, and in subsequent editions of that volume in 1731 and 1754, and it also appears in his Compleat Country Dancing Master, Volume the Fourth (1740). Chappell (1859) and Merryweather (1989) say the tune may date from 1625, perhaps deriving from a ballad in the Pepys Collection called "A merry new song of a rich Widdowes wooing, That married a young man to her own undooing" -- to which is the refrain:

Have at thy coat old woman,
Have at thy coat old woman,
Here and there and every where,
Have at thy coat old woman.

In Vox Borealis (1641) Chappell finds the following reference to the title:

But all this sport was little to the court-ladies, who began to be very melancholy for lack of company, till at last some young gentlemen revived an old game, called 'Have at thy coat, old woman.'

Additional notes

Source for notated version: - https://tunearch.org/wiki/TTA

Printed sources : - Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Time), vol. 1, 1859; p. 311. Merryweather (Merryweather's Tunes for the English Bagpipe), 1989; p. 41. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 41.

Recorded sources: -

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