I do not know to what extent the tunebook was actually intended as a memorial to the first President or if this was simply used an excuse. It could rightly have been referred to as the Second NPS tunebook. at the time of its publication in 1956, the First tunebook was still a 36 page publication which was extremely limited by modern standards. The publication of this book placed a great strain on the Society finances.
The book contains 112 tunes of which 88 came from the manuscript of John Armstrong of Carrick - a farmstead near Elsdon, Northumberland. Sadly this manuscript is now lost, but even so, I can easily identify 12 of the tunes which were probably added to the manuscript contents, and I would suggest that if those who were familiar with the tradition were to put their heads together, the gap could be narrowed and we could come fairly close to identifying the 88 tunes which were in the manuscript.
In former times, a musicians manuscript book was his notebook. They copied tunes from the manuscripts of others. When visiting, they would offer to write out a tune or two in their hosts book. Every writing involved effort, not as now when we can download a hundred tunes from the internet in an instant. The breadth of their musical experience was far more limited than ours, but they produced a musical genre which we seek to recapture.
By the way, there are some cracking tunes in it.
- Bellingham Boat - a classic but difficult to render on pipes
- Mr Sharp's Quadrille
- Newcastle Station
- Queen of Sluts
- Erin go Bragh - I haven't got my head around this one but there is a local fiddler who does a fine rendition and makes me want to look further.
- Andrew Carey - No variations, Sorry.
- Catterthun
- Captain Ross - A great introductory reel. It gets better as the player gets better.
- Remember Me - A classic hornpipe attributed to Whinham.
- 6 or more good hornpipes including Millicent's Favourite
- Rowley Burn - A Forster Charlton tune - This was probably not in the Armstrong manuscript
Does anyone else have favourites from this book? If we are interested in tradition, some of us should surely be trawling through the old publications for forgotten gems
Barry