Annotation:Nancy's Fancy

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X:1 T:Nancy’s Fancy. Irish M:2/4 L:1/8 R:Reel B:Robert Petrie – Third Collection of Strathspey Reels (1802, p. 24) N:Dedicated to Francis Garden Esq. Junior of Troup by N:Robert Petrie at Kirkmichael. Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:D A|df Tf2|ge Te2|fdcd|e/d/e/f/ eA| df Tf2|geeg|fe/d/ c/d/e/f/|d2d2:| |:A/B/4c/4|dcBA|GFED|TBAdF|E2 E(A/B/4c/4)| dcBA|GFED|Ad c/d/e/f/|d2d2:| |:f/d/f/d/ f/d/f/d/|g/e/g/e/ g/e/g/e/|f/d/f/d/ f/d/f/d/|e/d/c/B/ Ag| f/d/f/d/ f/d/f/d/|g/e/g/e/ g/e/g/e/|g/f/e/d/ c/d/e/f/|d2d2:|]



NANCY'S FANCY. AKA and see "Miss Colcroft's Favorite." Scottish?, Irish?, English?; Country Dance Tune (2/2 time). G Major (Kennedy & Raven): C Major (Karpeles, Sharp): D Major (Winter). Standard tuning (fiddle). ABC (Karpeles, Sharp): AABC (Kennedy & Raven). The melody was printed by Perthshire fiddler-composer Robert Petrie in his Third Collection of Strathspey Reels (1802, p. 24), where he identified its provenance as "Irish". However, it has no Irish melodic character to it, and sounds like a generic country dance. It was published earlier as "Miss Colcroft's Favorite" in William Campbell's 9th Book of New and Favorite Country Dances & Strathspey Reels (London, 1795, p. 8), though whether it was one of his 'new' selections or one of the 'favorites' is not known. Versions of the tune were entered in the music manuscript collection of James Winder (Cumbria, 1835-41), and in the mid-19th century music manuscript of William Winter (1774-1861), a shoemaker and violin player who lived in West Bagborough in Somerset, southwest England.

The first part of this tune appears as the second part of the Pennsylvania-collected "Cheat River (The)" (Bayard, 1981; No. 370, p. 361). Thomas Hardy, English novelist, fiddler and accordion player, mentions the tune in his novel The Return of the Native (Book Second, chapter 5).


Additional notes
Source for notated version : - Collected in Devonshire in 1907 by Cecil Sharp from William Ford, a sixty-two-year-old blacksmith living at Upton Pyne, near Exeter. Ford was a concertina player and dancer for most of his life. Priscilla Wyatt-Edgell said of him: "No one, I should think, cold be more difficult to collect from. He played as if he was inventing the tune as he went along and he never could explain anything as it all come more or less naturally to him."

Printed sources : - Karpeles & Schofield (A Selection of 100 English Folk Dance Airs), 1951; p. 3. Kennedy (Fiddlers Tune Book, vol. 2), 1954; p. 27. Petrie (Third Collection of Strathspey Reels), 1802; p. 24. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 146. Sharp (Country Dance Tunes), 1909; p. 7. Geoff Woolfe (William Winter’s Quantocks Tune Book), 2007; No. 300, p. 108 (ms. originally dated 1850).






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