Annotation:Orlabear's Maggot
X:1 T:Short and Sweet: Or, Orlabear's Maggot M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Country Dance Tune B: K:Gmin g/f/|g2d B>AG|G,2A, B,2a|bag fde|d2B B2|| d/c/|Bdf Bdf|Acf Acf|GBd gab|(^fe/f/g/a/) d2g/f/|gdc B>AG|G3 G2||
ORLABEAR'S MAGGOT. AKA and see "Short and Sweet (1)." English, Country Dance Tune (6/8 time). G Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. Orlabear's Maggot" is the alternate title given for "Short and Sweet", a country dance and tune printed in London publisher John Young's Third Volume of the Dancing Master, second edition [1] (1726), and in John Walsh's Third Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1735, 1745 and 1754) and The Compleat Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fifth (London, 1755). Dance instructions were also published in the London periodical The Weekly Amusement: or, The Universal Magazine in 1735.
The title probably refers to a Mr. Orlabeer, who was one of forty-seven dancing masters listed by Mr. Isaac, himself a London dancing master, on page four of his Collection of ball-dances perform'd at court (London, c. 1706 [2]). Orlabeer was still active as a dancing master in 1721, where his name is included in a similar list of dancing masters, "as they were Read at the Academy in Chancery Lane, by John Weaver, Dancing Master" and printed that year in Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures upon Dancing.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century country dance tunes sometimes had the word "maggot" in their titles, perhaps derived from Italian Maggiolatta or Italian May song, but used in England to mean a whim, fancy, plaything, 'trifle'--essentially an 'earworm'.
