Annotation:Lady Helen Dalrymple's New Reel

Find traditional instrumental music

Back to Lady Helen Dalrymple's New Reel


LADY HELEN DALRYMPLE'S NEW REEL. Scottish, Reel (cut time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCD. John Glen (1891) finds the earliest appearance of the tune in print in Ayrshire fiddler-composer biography:John Riddell's 1782 collection (p. 23).

Lady Dalrymple by John Thomas Seton (c. 1735-1806), c. 1775.

The Lady Dalrymple of Riddell's title may be Helen Ferguson (1741-1810), who in 1770 became the second wife of lawyer and historian Sir David Dalrymple, 3rd Baronet, later Lord Hailes, whose portrait was painted in 1775 by John Seton. She was the youngest daughter of Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, 2nd Baronet (Lord Kilkerran) and The Hon. Jean Fergusson (Maitland).

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Riddell (Collection of Scots Reels, Minuets &c. for the Violin), 1782; p. 23.

Recorded sources:




Back to Lady Helen Dalrymple's New Reel