Annotation:Humors of Wapping (The)
X:1 T:Humours of Wapping M:C| L:1/8 R:Jig and Country Dance B:London Magazine: or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, February 1756 (p. 85) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:Bb FE|DEFD B2 AG|ABcd e2 dc|dfdB cdec|d2 B4 FE| DEFD B2 AG|ABcd F2 ED|gabg fedc|d2 B4:| |:de|fdfd b2 aa|fdfd B2 cd|ecgf edcB|A2 F4 FE| DFBF GBeB|ABcd e2 g2|fdbg fedc|d2 B4:|]
HUMOURS OF WAPPING, THE. English, Hornpipe. B Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody was originally published in R. Baldwin's periodical London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer (1756), followed by an appearance in John Johnson's Two Hundred Favourite Country Dances, vol. 8 (London, 1758). It was later published by Charles and Samuel Thompson in their Compleat Collection, vol. 3 (London, 1773). It was entered into the American music manuscript copybooks of fiddlers John and William Pitt Turner (Norwich, Conn., 1780) and Daniel Aborn (1790), and the English manuscript of Thomas Hammersley (London, 1790) and William Vickers (Northumberland, 1770). The melody can be heard played by the mechanism a clock made by Bucks County, Pensylvania, clockmaker Joseph Ellicott (c. 1770's). The title comes from a play called The Constant Quaker, or The Humours of Wapping, which was a "droll" at Bartholemew Fair; a droll being a stock stage entertainment in which humorous scenes or parts of plays were interposed with singing and dancing.
