Jock Tamson's Hornpipe: A Song History

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"Jock Tamson's Hornpipe" is a hornpipe in D that the Traditional Tune Archive classes as originally Scottish and also American, naming New England as its region.[1] No composer or date of composition is given in the sources consulted here.[1] The Archive cross-references the tune with "My Heather Hills," a Scottish hornpipe printed around 1880 in the first volume of Kerr's Merry Melodies.[2] Under the Jock Tamson title, the earliest printing the Archive lists is William Bradbury Ryan's Ryan's Mammoth Collection, published in 1883.[1][3]

Dim cottage interior with a Highland man in a kilt holding a baby while a woman in a red hood leans over them, a girl and collie dogs by the fire

Sir David Wilkie, The Highland Family, oil on wood, 1824. A Scottish family at home, shown for the saying behind the title; it has no connection to the tune.

According to the Archive, Don Meade believes the name comes from a character in Scottish dialect songs.[1] The Dictionary of the Scots Language explains the general Scots phrase "Jock Tamson's bairns" as meaning the whole human race, or any group joined by a common feeling or aim; its earliest quotation, from 1847, gives the saying with "John" in place of "Jock" and presents it as an expression of mutual good fellowship.[4] The Archive also lists the tune in the Robbins collection (New York, 1933), in Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes (1940), and in Miller and Perron's New England Fiddler's Repertoire (1983).[1] According to the Archive, Perlman's 1996 book The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island treats a Prince Edward Island reel called "The Road to India" as a simplified version of it.[5] Larry Conger includes it in Flat-Picked Fiddle Tunes, a Fingers Of Steel book of fiddle tunes that its description says most players don't yet know, arranged in DAD tuning and sold with an MP3 recording of each song.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Jock Tamson's Hornpipe"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Jock Tamson's Hornpipe (1)" (annotation).
  2. The Traditional Tune Archive: "My Heather Hills" (annotation).
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Jock Tamson's Hornpipe (1)".
  4. Dictionary of the Scots Language: "Jock".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Road to India (The)" (annotation).
  6. Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, Flat-Picked Fiddle Tunes".
  7. Image: Sir David Wilkie, The Highland Family, oil on wood, 1824. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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