Hello! Ask me (almost) anything about traditional music.
Annotation:New Langolee (1)
X:1 T:New Langolee [1] M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Jig Q:"Allegretto" B:William Forde – 300 National Melodies of the British Isles (c. 1841, p. 29, p. 97) B: https://www.itma.ie/digital-library/text/300-national-melodies-of-the-british-isles.-vol.-3-100.-irish-airs N:William Forde (c.1795–1850) was a musician, music collector and scholar from County Cork Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:C c/A/|GAc cde|fag fed|ecA GAc|e>fd c2:| c|ceg ga_b|agf gec|ceg abc’|c>dc cAG| faf ege|d>cd ecA|cAG GAc|e>fd c2||
NEW LANGOLEE [1] (An Langoli Nuad). AKA and see "Banks of the Dee (1) (The)," "Caledonian Quadrille - Figure 3," "Dear Harp of My Country," "Lango Lee (2)," "Miss L.F.'s Favourite," "Paddy Bull's Expedition," "Trip to Canterbury (A)." English, Irish; Air (6/8 time, "with expression"). G Major (most versions): A Major (Thompson/1780): B Flat Major (Manson). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. A curious item for collector Francis O'Neill Irish collection, as "Lango Lee" was originally a song published in London appearing about 1775. Bruce Olson, found the tune "among the nine country dance tunes used for a comic dance performance in London, The Irish Fair (1772), where it is entitled "New Langolee," and is set too high for a vocal score." The melody was the vehicle for the song "The Banks of the Dee" and the several parodies that followed the original. It had explicitly sexual lyrics, and 'langolee' is supposed to mean 'the stiff dick' in Irish. The song (entitled "Langolee"), from The Festival of Anacreon, seventh edition (1789), begins:
Ye Ladies attend to your juvenile poet,
Whose labours are always devoted to ye,
Whose ambition it is, and most of you know it,
To charm all your hearts, with his Langolee.
Langolee! what sweet vowels compose it,
It is the delight of each fair maid that knows it
And she that does not, may with rapture suppose it,
That Irish shillalee, call'd Langolee.
See also the song "Paddy Bull's Expedition" from the Universal Songster (vol. ii, p. 215) that uses the melody. It begins:
When I took my departure from Dublin's sweet town,
And for England's own self through the seas I did plough, For four long days and nights I was tossed up and down,
Like a quid of chewed hay in the throat of a cow;
While afraid off the deck in the ocean to slip, sir,
I clung like a cat, fast old for to keep, sir,
Round about the big post that grows our of the ship, sir,
Oh! I never more thought to sing 'Langolee'.
"Dear Harp of My Country" is Thomas Moore's song set to the melody, while "Banks of the Dee (The)," written by John Tait of Edinburgh in 1775, is a slow time version.
The air, employed as a country dance under both "Lango Lee" and "New Lango Lee" titles, was published in London in Thomas Skillern's Skillern's Compleat Collection of Two Hundred & Four Reels...Country Dances (1780), and in Charles and Samuel Thompson's Compleat Collection of Two Hundred Country Dances, vol. 4 (1780). The melody appears in several American musicians manuscripts, including the manuscript collections of Captain George Bush (1753?-1797), a fiddler and officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, Eben and William Iriving (Middletown, N.Y. and at sea, 1796), flute player Joseph Cabot (Cambridge, MA., 1784), and P. Van Schaack, Jr. (Kinderhook, N.Y., 1820).
"New Lango Lee" also was entered by English musicians into their copybooks; an anonymous early 19th century Staffordshire ms., and T.J. Dixon's second copybook (Lincolnshire, early 19th cent., Nos. 49, 55). Isle of Man flute player William Killey's (Jurby) mid-19th century music manuscript collection contains a version of the tune under the title "Wife of J's Favourite" (No. 28); one wonders if the title is a tease of "J" considering the langolee associations.
See also note for Lango Lee for more.
