Annotation:Merry Girls of New York
X:1 T:Merry Girls of New York M:C| L:1/8 S:William Sydney Mount manuscripts N: Alongside the tune in his manuscript reads the note: "Composed by T. Ntt." At the top N:of the manuscript page is the date: "Stony Brook (Long Island, New York), Jan. 7th, N:1849." Z:Transcribed by Andrew Kuntz K:A E | A2A2 ABcA | BABc B3d | cdef edcB |ABcA EFGE | A2A2 ABcA | BABc B2f2 | fedc edcB | B3 A A2 :| |: (3efg | aece Acec | dBGB E2 ED | CEAE cAec | aecA E2 (3efg | aece Acec | dBGB E2f2 | fgaf edcB | B3 A A2 :|
MERRY GIRLS OF NEW YORK. American, Country Dance Tune (cut time). A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The tune appears in the private (loose) manuscripts of the American painter William Sidney Mount [1] (1807-1868), who was also a fiddler and much interested in the popular music of his day. Alongside the tune in his manuscript reads the note: "Composed by T. Ntt(?)." At the top of the manuscript pate is the date: "Stony Brook (Long Island, New York), Jan. 7th, 1849." The same (nearly identical) tune was entered a few years later into another Long Island musician's music manuscript; it appears in Book 1 (p. 5) of the 1851 mss. collection of Bellport (on the Atlantic shore) ship-builder and musician Isaac Homan.
There is a different, unrelated duple-time tune called "Merry Girls of New York", published by John & Michael Paff in New York in 1799 (Four New Country Dances), which was also entered into the music manuscript copybook of Gloucester, Mass., musician John Beach (c. 1801) as "The Merry Girls of York."
