Cock Of The North: A Song History
"Cock of the North" was the nickname of the Duke of Gordon, the dominant power in north-east Scotland.[1][2] The tune itself is much older than its title. The Traditional Tune Archive notes that the scholars Kidson and Bayard both traced it to the 17th century, when it went by titles such as "Jumping Joan" and "Joan's Placket," and it was printed as "Jumping Joan" in Playford's Dancing Master from the 1674 edition onward. Chappell went further, claiming that a reference in Samuel Pepys's diary was its earliest mention.[1] The Scots Language Centre likewise dates its first written form to more than three centuries ago, under the name "Jumping Joan."[2] Among the later printed sources the Archive lists is Keith Norman MacDonald's Gesto Collection of Highland Music (1895).[1]
Hill and Adamson, Officer of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders Reading to the Troops, Edinburgh Castle, salted paper print, 1846. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).
As a 6/8 march the tune became closely tied to the Gordon Highlanders, and the Archive notes its use as a regimental march past in quick time.[1] Its best-known moment came in 1897 at the storming of the Dargai Heights. Gordon Highlanders piper George Findlater was shot through both legs, sat up against a rock and played on, and he was awarded the Victoria Cross.[1][2] A Piping Press survey of First World War pipe tunes lists it as the Gordon Highlanders' battalion regimental march.[3]
The melody also spread well beyond the pipes. In Newfoundland it was known as "Auntie Mary,"[1] and in Ireland "Cock of the North" is one of the alternate titles of a slide usually called "Chase Me Charlie."[4] Bayard was told of, though he never heard, a bawdy New England song sung to the tune under the name "Chase Me Charlie."[1] Don Messer's Islanders cut it as one of their first sides for Apex Records in 1942, and a Maine version appears on the Folkways album Old Grey Goose: Maine Country Dance Music and Song (1980).[1] Today the North Atlantic Tune List carries it as a jig in G (possibly A) under all three names.[5]
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