Annotation:Spla-Foot Nance

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X:1 T:Spla-Foot Nance M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Air Q:"With Spirit" S:Joyce – Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G B/A/|G2A B2d|e2d g2f|efg d2B|c2A A2B/A/| G2A B2d|e2d g2e|=f2d c2A|A2G G2|| d|g2d e2d|e2f gfe|d2B c2d|e2A A2B/A/| GAG BAB|def g2e|=fef dcA|A2G G2||



SPLA-FOOT NANCE. AKA - "Splay-Foot Nance." Irish, Air (6/8 time, "with spirit"). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Splay-footed meant having the feet broad or turned inward in the early 19th century. "There was a half comic song to this air, composed in my own time by a local bard, ridiculing a neighbour, a big bony ungainly girl, universally known as 'Spla foot Nance'" [Joyce]. Joyce, who heard the song when young in County Limerick, remembered but one verse:

There was Spla-foot Nance to try her chance,
She took a notion of a man;
She stood on her toes and says she—“here goes,
I’ll cock my cap at Shaun MacCann.”
So Slpa foot Nance began to dance
And off to Shaun’s little house she ran;
But his mother rushed out with a terrible shout;--
“How daar you come coortin to Shaun MacCann!”


Additional notes



Printed sources : - Joyce (Old Irish Folk Music and Songs), 1909; No. 132, p. 67.






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