Annotation:Madam McKeeny's Scotch-Measure

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MADAM McKEENY'S SCOTCH-MEASURE. AKA and see "Ketty's Scots Measure," "My Daddy O." Scottish, Country Dance Tune (cut time) or Reel. C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB'. Published in 1700 by London publisher Henry Playford in A Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes, (Full of the Highland Humours) for the violin; Most of them being in the Compass of the Flute. The volume marks first appearance in print of the term 'Scotch Measure' with the melodies "My Lady Hope's Scotch Measure" and others. 'Scotch Measure' refers to a cut-time dance tune similar to a reel (some say it is an older form of a reel), however having the characteristic three quarter-note pattern in the melody in either the first three or the last three beats of the measure, interspersed with measures comprised mostly of eighth notes. The genre, if indeed it can be distinguished from reels, has fallen out of favor and has been replaced by reels.

Some sixty years later the melody was printed by James Oswald, a Scottish music publisher in London, in his Caledonian Pocket Companion, vol. V (1760) as "Ketty's Scots Measure" and more than 100 years later (c. 1806) the tune was published (again in London) by Irish uilleann piper O'Farrell as "My Daddy O" (who identified the tune as "Scotch").

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Alburger (Scottish Fiddlers and Their Music), 1983; Ex. 8, p. 26. Playford (A Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes), 1700; No. 4, p. 2.

Recorded sources:




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