Annotation:Woodstock Bower
X:1 T: Woodstock Bower M:3/4 L:1/8 R:Country Dance B: Young – Second Volume of the Dancing Master, 1st edition (1710, p. 93) K:Dmin Ad ^cA d2|Ad cB/A/ GF|AA/B/ cB/A/ GF/E/|DA GF ED:|| c>d e/d/c f2|ed/c/ =Be cA|c>d cA c2|ed/c/ =Be cA| c>d cA B2|AG/F/ EA GF|AA/B/ cB/A/ GF/E/|DA GF ED| c>d e/d/c F2|ed/c/ =Be cA|c>d cA GF|E2-ED D2|]
WOODSTOCK BOWER. English, Country Dance Tune (3/4 time). D Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. The melody, with directions for a country dance, appears in a four editions of The Second Volume of the Dancing Master, published in London by John Young from 1710 to 1728. Dance and tune were also printed by rival London music publisher John Walsh in his New Country Dancing Master, 2nd Book (1710) and later in his Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (1719).
Woodstock Bower is famous in legend as the place were the mistress of King Henry II, Fair Rosamond, met her "melancholy and horrible fate" at the hands of the injured Queen Eleanor, as the ballads have it ("In Woodstock Bower there once grew a flower,"). Woodstock in eight miles from Oxford. Poetically, a bower generally means a house belonging to a lady, or a lady's apartment. See also note for "annotation:Rosamond's Bower."
