Annotation:Ted Smith's Hornpipe
X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x
TED SMITH’S HORNPIPE. AKA – “Tite Smith’s Hornpipe.” AKA and see “McDermott's Hornpipe (2), “South Shore.” English, Hornpipe. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). An irregular tune in the ‘A’ part. From fiddler Stephen Baldwin (1873-1955) of Upton Bishop, Herefordshire, who recorded it in 1954. Another version of the tune was published in Menteith & Burgess The Coleford Jig, Traditional Tunes from Gloucestershire (2004). Keith Chandler has found the tune is named for gypsy fiddler ‘Tite’ Smith’, with whom Baldwin associated the tune. Smith was born Josiah Smith but was known as ‘Tite Nepture’. He died in 1898 when aged about 70, in a ditch with only a few inches of water in it. Smith had a local reputation as a tavern fiddler.
Phillip Heath-Coleman, in his article “Ceol rince na mBreathnach” (Musical Traditions Article MT272 [1]), traces the melody in British and Irish tradition, beginning with the cognate “Phillips's Hornpipe” from the 1837 music manuscripts of John Moore (Wellington, Shropshire). Jackie Small found that Irish piper Patsy Touhey (1865-1923) recorded a version (for Francis O’Neill, on wax cylinder) of the hornpipe under the title “Taylor's Hornpipe” (perhaps named for the New York/Philadelphia émigré uilleann pipe-making brothers Billy and Charles Taylor). Touhey’s tune does not appear in the O’Neill collection (although it does in the Dunn Family manuscripts), but O’Neill did print a version under the title “McDermott's Reel,” from the playing of irascible County Tipperery fiddler Edward Cronin. Heath-Coleman himself found versions in the mid-19th century manuscript book of William Lister (East Boldon, County Durham) as “Monckey”, in a Welsh collection from Glamoragan as “Monkey Hornpipe (2),” and as untitled tunes in the mss. of John Readshaw of Alston (on Tyne), Cumberland, and Lionel Winship (Wark, Northumberland). Finally, P.H-C. finds “South Shore” in Köhlers' Violin Repository (1880-1885) to be a member of this tune family. See "Monkey Hornpipe (2)" for more.
