Annotation:Mumping Nelly
X: 1 T:Mumper Nell. JJo3.067 Z:vmp.Ruairidh Greig 2014 www.village-music-project.org.uk B:J.Johnson Choice Collection Vol 3 1744 M:C| L:1/8 Q:1/2=70 W:Each strain twice K:G g/f/|gG Gd/c/ BG Gd/c/|gG GA/B/ G=F Fg/f/|Gg Gd/c/ BGGB|cd/c/ Bc/B/ A=FFA|| GGga gGGB|GGga bBBA|GGga =fe/f/g2|cgBg A=FFA|| GG BG cA BG|GG BG A=F AF|GG BG cA BG|c(d/c/) Bg A=FFA|]
MUMPING NELLY. AKA and see "Mumper Nell." Scottish, English; Country Dance Tune (4/4 or cut time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDD. The melody appears in the Bodleian Manuscript (in the Bodleian Library, Oxford), inscribed "A Collection of the Newest Country Dances Performed in Scotland written at Edinburgh by D.A. Young, M.M. 1740" (p. 21). Fiddler and writing master Young also included the tune in his MacFarlane Manuscript of 1741. A few years later the tune was published in London by John Johnson in his A Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 3 (1744, p. 34) as "Mumper Nell." Northumbrian musician William Vickers included a tune called "Mopping Nelly (1)" in his 1770 music manuscript collection, but, although the titles are similar, there is no musical connection with the Young tune. See both "Mopping Nelly (1)" and "Mopping Nelly (2)" for more. Co. Leitrim piper and fiddler Stephen Grier's "Sleepy Moggy" has a similar first strain.
'Mumping', from the seventeenth-century Dutch verb mompen, to cheat or deceive, became an English dialect word meaning to scrounge' or 'beg'.
