Annotation:Mall Sims

Find traditional instrumental music

Back to Mall Sims

MALL SIMS. AKA - "Mall Simme." AKA and see "English Echo." English, Country Dance Air (4/4 time). D Minor (Raven): D Dorian (Chappell). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Raven): AABC (Chappell). The title refers to an unknown lady {Mall was a variant of Moll(y) or Mary}. The tune was likely originally a harp tune, according to William Chappell (1858), "as it has quite the character of harp music." It appears in the Skene Manuscript of c. 1615. Chappell (1859) also finds it in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, Rossiter's Consort Lessons (1599), Vallet's Secret des Muses (1615), Nederlandtsche Gedenck-Clank (1626), and Camphuysen's Stichtelycke Rymen (1647). Samuel Bayard (in his article "A Miscellany of Tune Notes," Studies in Folklore, p. 171) finds a "good and distinctive, but unmistakable" set of the tune under the title "Beckoning Fair One (The)" in Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (2nd edition, London, 1794). See also the variant "Wanton Season."

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Times), vol. 1, 1859; p. 261. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 12.

Recorded sources: Flying Fish, Robin Williamson - "Legacy of the Scottish Harpers, vol. 2."



Back to Mall Sims

Retrieved from "https://tunearch.org/w/index.php?title=Annotation:Mall_Sims&oldid=336996"