Massasoit Hornpipe: A Song History

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The Massasoit Hornpipe is an American hornpipe in D major, built from two repeated strains, and the sources consulted here name no composer.[1] It was printed in Ryan's Mammoth Collection in 1883 and appears again in Cole's 1940 compilation 1000 Fiddle Tunes.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive adds that the Boston music publisher Elias Howe had issued the same melody a few years before Ryan, under the title "Buckley's Hornpipe."[1]

Painting of cattle grazing and resting by a stream in green meadows, with tall trees and low hills under a cloudy sky.

James McDougal Hart, Morning in New England, oil on canvas, 1873. A New England landscape from the decade of Ryan's collection, shown for the region.

The title recalls Massasoit,[1] grand sachem of the Wampanoag, whose people lived in parts of present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island.[2] In March 1621 he visited the newly founded Plymouth Colony, and he kept peace with the English settlers for the rest of his life.[2] The Tune Archive's notes recall that Governor Bradford invited him and about ninety of his men to the colony's harvest feast, remembered as the first Thanksgiving, so that the guests outnumbered the Pilgrims.[1] As settlers pressed onto Wampanoag land, relations worsened after his death in 1661, ending in King Philip's War of 1675, led by his second son.[2]

Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione include it in Occasional Number 1, a book of 18 traditional songs and tunes for mountain dulcimer drawn from the repertoire of their group, The Doofus.[3]

Our book that contains the song "Massasoit Hornpipe"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Massasoit Hornpipe".
  2. Britannica: "Massasoit".
  3. Neal Walters and Heidi Cerrigione: "The Doofus, Occasional Number 1".
  4. Image: James McDougal Hart, Morning in New England, oil on canvas, 1873. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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