Prince William: A Song History
"Prince William" is an English country dance tune in common time, played as a march with two repeated strains.[1] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, the prince of the title is William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (1721–1765), the youngest son of George II, who defeated the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart at Culloden and whose harsh treatment of the Highlands afterward earned him the name "Butcher Cumberland."[1] The tune and its dance were first printed in John Walsh's Complete Country Dancing Master in 1731, when the prince was a boy of about ten, and Walsh reissued it in later collections.[1] Around 1740 it also appeared in Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, edited by Daniel Wright, with a dance for three couples.[1]
After David Morier, Equestrian Portrait of William, Duke of Cumberland (1721–1765), reverse-painted and mirrored glass, ca. 1751–60. The Duke of Cumberland, the prince the tune is named for; the portrait has no connection to the tune.
In the 1970s the tune found fresh use in North America as a march for New England contra dancing.[1] The Canterbury Country Dance Orchestra recorded it, and the English band Brass Monkey, who learned it from that recording through musicians in Minneapolis, released it on See How It Runs in 1986, bringing it back to English audiences.[1] It is one of the old English dance melodies Mark Gilston sets for dulcimer in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, a book he publishes himself, offered on DulcimerDownloads as a 39-page PDF with each song also supplied as a separate PDF.[2]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Prince William".
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
- Image: After David Morier, Equestrian Portrait of William, Duke of Cumberland (1721–1765), reverse-painted and mirrored glass, ca. 1751–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.