Annotation:Miss Aubone Surtees’ Favourite
X:1 T:Miss Aubone Surtees Favorite C:A. Mackintosh M:C| R:Reel K:D S: A. Mackintosh "A Collection of Strathspeys, Reels, Jigs &c." (after 1797) K:D A,|D2FD CDB,D|A,DFA {A}G2 FE|.D.A.F.d .A.f.d.a|gefd {d}c2 BA| d2 df ecaA|B2dB Adfa|gbfa gbag|fedc d3|] g|fdaf ecBA|dBfd cAGF|BGdB Adfa|gefd {d}c2 BA| d2 df ecAc|B2dB AdFA|G2BG FAGB|AGFE D3|]
MISS AUBONE SURTEES’ FAVOURITE. AKA and see “Blaydon Flats.” Scottish, Reel (cut time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Composed by Scottish fiddler and composer Biography:Abraham Mackintosh (b. 1769), who lived in Tyneside in the English/Scottish Borders region. The melody (as "Blaydon Flats") is sometimes attributed to fiddler James Hill, who apparently liked and played the tune (and who may not have disabused the notion that it was his).
Aubone Surtees was a successful banker and merchant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northern England. In November, 1772, his eldest daughter, Bessie, eloped from a first floor window of their five story Jacobean family home to flee to Scotland to marry John Scott, the son of a coal merchant from Love Lane. When the families were reconciled some time later, there was an English marriage ceremony in St Nicholas' Cathedral. John Scott became a successful lawyer and later, as Lord Eldon, Lord Chancellor of England. The following excerpt is from Chapters From the Family Chests (British Genealogy, 1887).
His lordship lived to the good old age of eighty-six, dying at his house in Hamilton Place, on the 13th of January, 1838. Whatever the Struggles of his early married life may have been, his home was rendered cheerful and happy by the pretty wife who, in spite of paternal threats and scolding's, had braved everything for his sake, and had been rewarded by seeing him seated on the woolsack. He had in after life to regret her peculiarities, her stinginess, and her nervous repugnance to society; but he remained devoted in his attachment till the band of death tore her from him on the 28th of June, 1831. She had borne him two sons and two daughters. `Poor Bessie!' he said, in his old age, after she was dead; ' if ever there was an angel on earth, she was one. The only reparation which one man can make another for running away with his daughter, is to be good in his conduct towards her; and this, I think, I have been.’
Surtees, however, had six daughters and the tune title may refer to any one of them.
