Annotation:Zinzan's Maggot (1)

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ZINZAN'S MAGGOT [1]. English, Triple Hornpipe (3/2 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. In addition to Rutherford's printing, "Zinzan's Maggot (1)" was also published in John Walsh's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing Master, Third Edition (1736, p. 68, with another printing in 1749) and John Johnson's An Extraordinary Collection of Pleasant and Merry Humours (London, 1740, p. 99). There is another, different tune called "Zinzan's Maggot (2)" in Daniel Wright's An Extraordinary Collection of Pleasant & Merry Humours (1715).

There was a family named Zinzan in Elizabethan England, that included a Robert Zinzano, an equerry in the royal stable who was knighted in 1603. They were Italians who had been in England since the 1550's. Robert's son's, Alexander and Sigismund were tilters on James's Accessions Days, and were mentioned as having danced in Ben Johnson's masques. A William Zinzan was admitted to the Royal Society of Musicians in 1739, soon after its founding in 1738.

Sixteenth and seventeenth century country dance tunes sometimes had the word "maggot" in their titles, perhaps derived from Italian Maggiolatta or Italian May song, but used in England to mean a whim, fancy, plaything, 'trifle'--essentially an 'earworm'.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Rutherford (Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances), London, 1740; p. 99.

Recorded sources:

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