Valiant Jockey
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VALIANT JOCKEY. AKA - "Valiant Jocky." English, Air & Country Dance Tune (3/4 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB (Walsh): AABB (Oswald). An Anglo-Scottish song and dance tune first printed in Henry Playford's Apollo's Banquet, the Second Book (London, 1691). Playford later included it in the 9th edition of the Dancing Master [1] (1695) and it was retained in all subsequent editions through the 18th and final edition of 1728 (published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns). The dance directions and tune were also printed by John Young in his several editions of The Complete Country Dancing-Master (1718, 1731 & 1754).
"Valiant Jockie" was also a 17th century broadside ballad about Scots woman's desire to join her lover, sometimes attributed to Thomas D'Urfey. In the Roxburghe Collection it is also called "The Maiden Warrier; or, The Damsel's Resolution to fight in field by the side of Jockey her entire Love" ("To an excellent new tune"). The first stanza goes:
Valiant Jockie's march'd away,
To fight a Battle with great Mackay;
Leaving me poor Soul alas! forlorne,
To curse the hour that ever I was born
But I swear I'll follow too,
And dearest Jockie's fate purse;
Near him be, to guard his precious Life,
Never Scot had such a Loyal Wife.
Sword i'le ear, I'le cut my hair;
Tane my Cheeks that was so fair;
In Souldiers weed to him I'le speed,
Never such a Trooper crost the Tweide.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 1), 1760; p. 13. Walsh (Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth), London, 1740; No. 186.
Recorded sources:
