Annotation:Lady Jane Montgomery's Strathspey
X:1 T:Lady Jane Montgomery L:1/8 M:C R:Strathspey B:Stewart-Robertson - The Athole Collection (1884) Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:F f|c<F c>A G>AB>d|c<F c>A c>df>a|f<d c>A G>A B<d|c<F c>A F2F:| f|F<f ~f>a g>fg>a|c<f ~f>a f>a f<c|d>fc>A G>AB>d|c<F c>A F2 F>f| F<f ~f>a g>fg>a|c<f ~f>a f>af>c|d>f c<A G>AB>d|Ff/g/ a>e ~f2 f>d||
LADY JANE MONTGOMERY'S STRATHSPEY. AKA and see "Earl of Home." Scottish, Strathspey. F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. Attributed to Inver, Perthshire, fiddler-composer Niel Gow (1727-1807) in the Fourth Collection (1800). Lady Jane (d. 1860) was the 2nd daughter of Hugh Montgomerie (1739-1819), 12th Earl of Eglinton, and Eleanora Hamilton, who married in 1779. Hugh was the Lord Lieutenant of Ayrshire (1796-1819) at the time the Gows printed their strathspey in honor of his daughter. She, along with her father, was on of the Proprietors and chief investors of the ill-fated Glasgow, Paisley and Ardrossan Canal, begun in 1807 and completed in 1811. Lady Jane married her cousin Captain Archibald Hamilton in 1828 (he was a former sea captain with the East India Company), but had no children. Lord Montgomerie bestowed upon the couple a life-rent interest in the mansion house of Rozelle. She participated in her brother's (who had become the 13th Earl) luxurious fete, the Eglinton Tournament, in 1839, a quasi-medieval pagent in which the majority of the elite guests attended in costume. Unfortunately for all, the Tournament coincided with inclement weather and was largely conducted in the rain. The first strain of the strathspey had previously been employed by Nathaniel Gow in "Earl of Home," which appeared in the Gow's Third Collection of Niel Gow's Reels (1792).
A companion tune, "Lady Jane Montgomery’s Reel" composed by William Shepherd, the music publishing partner of Nathaniel Gow in the firm of Gow & Shepherd, was published in Shepherd's Second Collection, issued at about the same time as The Fourth Collection of Niel Gow's Reels.