Peterborough Morris
Peterborough Morris Music
(Comments by Mark Swingler)
Repertoires expand and contract according to circumstance. This page lists tunes in current, past and maybe future use. Links go to videos or sound files by Peterborough Morris (PM) unless stated otherwise. If a video is too fast to follow, you may be able to slow it down, as described here.
Most traditional morris tunes are on the Morris Ring website in ABC, sheet music, and mp3 formats are not repeated here. Others are given below if we have it.
But there is more to playing for dancing than simply knowing the tune. Please download and review this excellent article:- Playing Music for Morris Dancing by Jeff Bigler
Dances are listed according to the styles of the villages where they were collected.
Tunes are listed under the name of the dance, which may not be the common name of the tune. Alternative tune titles are given when known.
Adderbury
Beaux of London City / Shooting, G YouTube
The Bell, G. We perform this with eight dancers arranged like ninepins around the musician. This tune is more usually known as The Minstrel Boy.
Black Joke, G YouTube
Bluebells of Scotland, G YouTube
The Buffoon, G YouTube
Lads-a-Buncham (aka "Oh Dear Mother") in G video,
Badby
Beaux of London City, G YouTube
Broad Cupid, G YouTube. The tune is also known as "From Night Til Morn"
Bampton (traditional)
Banbury Bill, D. Same dance as the Rose Tree.
Glorishears, G or D mp3 audio
Highland Mary, G YouTube
Maid of the Mill, G
The Rose Tree, D
The Quaker, G and D YouTube
Princess Royal, Bampton jig, Bm. YouTube from 20 seconds in. A very well-know tune, but the Bampton version is in a minor key. The usual key for a D/G melodeon would be Em, but the wide range of this version doesn't fit on the keyboard. So it ended up in Bm, played mostly on the "D" row.
Bampton (modern)
Lollipop Man, G. We imagined how the Ducklington dance would be if it had been adopted in Bampton. The tune is shared with the Burns song Lea Rig.
Over the Hills and Far Away, D. YouTube PM put Bampton figures to the well-known tune.
Riggs of Doom, G. Devised by Utrecht Morris in Bampton style, tune by Frans Tromp. Notation here (search for Frans, and maybe log on to melnet.) Not easy to get Tromp's chords on the melodeon. I like this version on YouTube of John Golightly on melodeon and friend and here is Utrecht Morris.
Trunkles, G. A newish dance in Bampton style using the Bledington tune but with sequence A/B/C. See also Trunkles Bledington below.
Bidford-on-Avon
Abraham Brown the Sailor, D mp3 with dance instructions!
Old Woman Tossed up in a Blanket, G YouTube
Princess Royal, as played by Phillip Taylor of Shakespeare Morris mp3
Morris Off, as played by Phillip Taylor of Shakespeare Morris mp3
Bledington
Skirmish YouTube video of Nick Barber playing for White Rose Morris using Nick's own tune. Music notation can be found on Nick's website.
Black Joker PDF mid file. We practiced this in the 1980s with just the one odd half-bar at the beginning of the "B" music, but our current version has a second half-bar!
Brackley
Jockey to the Fair, G YouTube
Maid of the Mill, G
Fieldtown
Nutting Girl jig mp3
Headington
Old Mother Oxford
Headington and Bampton
Bonney Green Garters. The finale dance used by many Morris sides.
Hinton-in-the Hedges
Getting Upstairs, G or D
Lads-a-Buncham, G YouTube
Illmington (Jig)
Bold Nelson's Praise, G This tune is missing from the Morris Ring website so we give it here in
PDF and mid formats. It is a version of the well-known Princess Royal.
Small but significant differences occur in the C-music at the end of the "slows". The first time the C-music lead-in notes occur, they are quick, but not quick when they re-appear a moment later. And there is a
half-bar with a quick note as the speed returns to normal. (This
paragraph and dowloads corrected 2202-03-25)
Many morris tunes are from popular songs, although in this case the tune appears to precede the lyrics.
Info here and
here.
Lichfield
Vandals of Hammerwich, G
Ravensthorpe
Shepherd's Hey. (No Ravensthorpe music notation could be found on line, but there are Youtube videos of both East Suffolk Morris Men and Moulton Morris Men. They differ slightly and perhaps vary from verse to verse. Here is the ESMM version on YouTube with notation as heard by the webmaster as mid and PDF files.)
Ruardean
Soldier's Joy PDF and Stephen Baldwin on fiddle 1954
Greensleeves PDF and Stephen Baldwin on fiddle 1954. The dance figure music is AA and the chorus BABA, hence the sequence AA BABA, then repeated as necessary.
Steeple Claydon
The Steeple Claydon Morris Dance, there is only one, to the tune of Old Mother Oxford, YouTube video of John Weaver playing for Brackley Morris.
Upton-on-Severn
Stick Dance, G. YouTube. Maud Karpeles noted this down under the name Twin Sisters as a traditional tune while in Vermont in 1929. In an article in the EFDS journal in 1933 she suggested this as a tune suitable for the Upton Stick Dance. - And it stuck!
Wheatley
Processional. Used for coming on.
Trunkles, A or G ("A Handbook of Morris Dances" by Lionel Bacon gives the key signature as two sharps, but I reckon it's in "A")
Beyond the usual repertoire...
Bledington
Trunkles, G YouTube
William and Nancy, G YouTube
Young Collins, G YouTube
Bucknell
Bonnets so Blue, G, jig YouTube
Sherborne
I'll Go and 'List for a Sailor, Em YouTube
(Please avoid confusing the morris dance tune with the song tune "The Unfortunate Tailor".)
Not even tunes used by Peterborough Morris. In 1982 PM travelled to Bourges, Peterborough's French twin. There we met local folk dance group
Notre Berry. We loved their tunes
and one of their musicians recorded these for us.
(To follow - 1982 tape being digitised) And further beyond the usual repertoire. - Not Morris, but Notre Berry