Scotch Cap: A Song History

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Scotch Cap is a tune and country dance that the London publisher John Playford printed, with directions for the dance, in the first edition of The English Dancing Master in 1651.[1] It stayed in every later edition of the Dancing Master through the tenth, of 1698, and from the fourth edition of 1670 it also appeared under the title "Edinburgh Castle."[1] The Traditional Tune Archive gives it in D Dorian, in 6/4 or 6/8 time.[1] What the title means is uncertain: the usual view ties it to the Scotch bonnet, a cap once worn everywhere, while a suggestion credited to Williamson reads it as a nightcap, in the sense of a last drink before bed.[1]

Etching of the Tower of London seen across the Thames, with sailing ships and rowing boats on the river

Wenceslaus Hollar, Tower of London, etching. London in the seventeenth century, when Playford published the tune there; the etching has no connection to the tune.

Cecil Sharp printed the tune in his Country Dance Tunes of 1909, and later tune collections by Karpeles and Schofield (1965), Raven (1984, with a facsimile of Playford's page) and Barnes (1986) carried it as well.[1] The Folk Dance Orchestra recorded it with "The Boatman" on one side of an HMV 78, catalogue number B.4456, with Cecil Sharp and Arnold Foster named in the credits.[2] In 1959 Vox issued it on The English Country Dancing Master, credited to the Telemann Society Orchestra and Richard Schulze, in a group of Playford dances set for two recorders and harpsichord.[3] The Archive also lists recordings by Robin Williamson, on Legacy of the Scottish Harpers, vol. 1, and by Hesperus, on Early American Roots (1997).[1]

For dulcimer, Scotch Cap is in Mark Gilston's English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1, a self-published set of arrangements whose alphabetical tune list runs from "All In A Garden Green" to "Woodicock."[4]

Our book that contains the song "Scotch Cap"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Scotch Cap (The)".
  2. Internet Archive: "(A) Scotch Cap; (B) The Boatman," Folk Dance Orchestra, HMV B.4456.
  3. Internet Archive: "The English Country Dancing Master," Telemann Society Orchestra, Vox (1959).
  4. Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1".
  5. Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, Tower of London, etching. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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