Annotation:Tom Tinker's My True Love
X: 1 T:Tom Tinker. (p)1651.PLFD1.100 M:6/4 L:1/4 Q:3/4=100 S:Playford, Dancing Master,1st Ed.,1651. O:England;London H:1651. Z:Chris Partington. K:D d|dfdegB/c/|dc>BA2g|f>ef/g/afd|ecAd2:| |:d|ef2eg2|dc>BA2g|f>ef/g/afd|ecAd2:|
TOM TINKER('S MY TRUE LOVE)]. AKA - "Which way shall I turn me?" English, Air and Country Dance Tune (3/4 and 6/4 time). D Major (Playford): F Major (Gay). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part, AB, AABB (Playford). "Tom Tinker" is a country dance first published by John Playford in the first edition of his English Dancing Master (1651, No. 100). It survived in subsequent editions of the Dancing Master through the 10th edition of 1698, after which it was dropped from the long-running Dancing Master editions. Thomas D'Urfey printed a version of the "Tom Tinker" melody for a bawdy song in Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy vol. VI (1720, pp. 265-67), which Kidson (1922) declares is a "very coarse song." It begins:
Tom Tinker's my true love, and I am his dear,
And I will go with him, his budget to bear,
For of all the young men he has the best luck:
All the day he will fuddle, at night he will—
CHO:
This way, that way, which way you will,
I am sure I say nothing that you can take ill!
With hammer on kettle he tabbers all day,
At night he will tumble on strummell or hay.
He calls me his jewel, his delicate duck:
And then he will take up my smicket to—
There was an old woman, on crutches she came
To lusty Tom Tinker, Tom Tinker by name:
And though she was aged near three-score and five,
She kicked up her heels, and resolved to—
John Gay used a version of the melody as the indicated air for his song "Which way shall I turn me?" in his Beggar's Opera (1729).
