Annotation:Playing Amang the Rashes

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PLAYING AMANG THE RASHES. AKA and see "Boyne Water (1)," "Rashes (The)," "Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation," "Wee German Lairdie," "Wha the Deil hae We Gotten for a King?," "When the King came o'er the water," "King William's March," "Cavalcade of the Boyne." This 17th century British Isles tune first appears in a music manuscript collection, William Graham's Flute Book of 1694, and in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. 5, 1719, p. 112 (untitled). Alan Ramsay also published the song "Playing amang the rashes" in his Tea Table Miscellany (1724, I, 60), with Jacobite words said to have been written by Lady Keith Marischall, mother of Marshall Keith, a favorite general of Frederic the Great. Ramsay marks it with a 'Z' to indicate it was an old song in his time.

John Glen, in Early Scottish Melodies (1900, No. 351), gives “Playing Amang the Rashes” as an alternate title for “Boyne Water (1).” An excellent discussion of the large and extended tune family is in Cazden et al Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982) in the note for song No. 1, "A Shantyman's Life" (pp. 37-39).

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