Annotation:Lady Caroline Stanhope's Birthday

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LADY CAROLINE STANHOPE'S BIRTHDAY. English, Country Dance Tune (cut time). E Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The melody was first published in London publisher David Rutherford's Compleat Collection of 200 Country Dances, vol. 2 (1760). Lady Caroline Stanhope (1747-1767) was the eldest daughter of William, 2nd Earl of Harrington, and her birthday was March 11th. If the tune was composed in the year Rutherford printed his collection, then it was in honor of her thirteenth birthday. In 1765 she married Kenneth MacKenzie, 1st Earl of Seaforth, but even as she did so, she became ill with consumption (tuberculosis), from which she died at age twenty. She gave birth to an only daughter, also Lady Caroline, in July, 1766.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Thompson (Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 2), 1765; No. 196.

Recorded sources:




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