Annotation:Tuzzy Muzzy
X:1 % T:Tuzzy Muzzy M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Country Dance Tune B:John Walsh – Caledonian Country Dances vol. II (1737, No. 331, p. 71) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:D D2 (3E/F/G/ A2B|ABG FED|D2 (3E/F/G A2g|fdf ecA| D2 (3E/F/G/ A2B|AFA EFG|FAd Bcd |FGE D3:| |:d2 (3e/f/g/ a2g|fdf ecA|Bcd AFd|GAF E2 G/F/E/| D2 (3E/F/G/ A2g|afa gec|dfd Bcd|FGE D3:|]
TUZZY MUZZY. AKA and see "Tuzzimuzzy." English, Country Dance Tune and Jig (6/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. "Tuzzy Muzzy" was first published in John Walsh's Caledonian Country Dances, vol. II (c. 1737, No. 331), and later appeared in Walsh's Fourth Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1747, p. 23). David Rutherford included it in his Compleat Collection of 200 of the Most Celebrated Country Dances (London, 1756, p. 63). Belgian music publisher Benoit Andrez also printed it in his Recueil de Contredances Angloises (Leige, 1780).
'Tuzzy Muzzy' or 'Tussie-mussie' originally referred to a bespoke posie, assembled from flowers and herbs, usually to convey a specific message. Its first recorded appearance was in about 1440, when it was written as tusmose, later 'tuzzy muzzie', probably a rhyming reduplicated form of tussy. However, by the early 18th century it had become a term for the vagina. Captain Francis Grose in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) calls it: 'The monosyllable,' a euphemism of that time for cunt, the vagina. William Dugdale was a famous publisher of porn in London (the Dictionary of National Biography says of him, ”During the 1840s he made his name as the largest publisher of obscene titles in England, a position unchallenged for over twenty years.”) One of his titles was a song book entitled The Tuzzymuzzy Songster: a Capital Collection of Prime Chaunts.