Shepherd's Wife's Waltz: A Song History

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The title points back to Scotland. An air called "The Shepherd's Wife" was printed in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum to carry a comic pastoral song by Robert Burns, and the tune scholar John Glen traced its earliest printing to a volume of William Napier's Scots song collection from the 1790s.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive gives settings in both G and E-flat and notes that the old air is sometimes played as a waltz today.[1] The sources consulted here do not show whether the "Shepherd's Wife's Waltz" played at American jams is that Scottish air in waltz time or a different melody that borrowed the name.

Etching of two shepherds resting under tall trees in a rocky glen

Paul Sandby, The Gentle Shepherd: Patie and Roger, etching, 1758. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). The scene illustrates Allan Ramsay’s Scottish pastoral play.

Under the waltz title, fiddler Bill Northcutt recorded the tune in G for the 1973 Stoneway LP Front Porch Fiddling.[2] It appears in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[3]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Shepherd's Wife (The)".
  2. Slippery-Hill: "Shepherd's Wife Waltz".
  3. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".