Annotation:Miss Babie Gray's Minuet
X:1 T:Miss Babie Gray’s Minuet for the Flute M:3/4 L:1/8 R:Minuet B: Daniel Dow – Twenty Minuets and Sixteen Reels or Country Dances (c. 1775, p. 29) B: https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/106036365 Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G G2 GGGG|GDGB d2|(3cde d2c2|(3BAG (3FGA G2| (3Bdc (3BAG (Td>c/2d/4)|(3gba (3gdg (Ta>g/2a/4)|bg2 d2B|B2 A4:| |:d2 g2 (Ta>g/2a/4)| bgdB G2|Bdgd T(d>c/2d/4)|BGBd D2| EcGEcE|(3AFD GBdg|(3edc B2TA2|G6:|
MISS BABIE GRAY'S MINUET. Scottish, Minuet (3/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Composed by biography:Daniel Dow this minuet appears first in musician and dancing master James Gillespie's music manuscript collection (1768) as an untitled minuet. Several years later it appeared in Dow's Twenty Minuets and Sixteen Reels or Country Dances (c. 1775) and Robert Bremner's Collection of the Best Minuets for the Violin or German Flute (London) under a patron's title.
We assume 'Babie' was a nickname for 'Barbara.' The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art (March 23, 1878, p. 375) printed this anecdote:
Certain ladies of the name of Gray were said to be given to "frolics," but nothing more distinct is recorded than that they found a remedy for everything in gin. One of them, Miss Barbara Gray, fell asleep at her own tea-party, while her guests were taling of the best varnish for furniture, whereat she woke up with "put some gin in it--gin hurts naething."
