I have put online at www.piob.info a scan of the Rook manuscript. This dates from about 1840 and has over 1000 tunes; it gives us versions of a lot of tunes that lie between the earliest manuscript sources and the later printed collections.
The manuscript is believed to be from North East England and has a drawing of Northumbrian pipes on the cover. However a number of the tunes go up to high D and so may well have been played on the union pipes, which were also common in Northumberland at the time. (The flute was passing out of fashion as a folk instrument on the UK mainland in the early 19th century.)
Thanks to Anita Evans who scanned the manuscript and compiled the index, and to Matt Seattle whose copy she scanned
Great work, Ross Anita Matt! Already noticed a few familiar titles with interesting setttings, like the slip jig/special dance Shuffle and Cut, which turned up later in a fiddle-fied version in Ryan’s, wherefrom it was cut+pasted into O’Neill’s books. This setting is more pipes - kinda like what I’d done to make the tune playable in the first place.
“Charley” = Over the Water to C. is given with a gajillion piping variations - compare “Shamboy” (i.e., Sean Bui) in O’Farrell’s. I’m quite fond of this tune lately as it’s also a little ditty in American folk music, which can fit these 6/8 jigs if you want:
Your weevily wheat’s not fit to eat
And neither is your barley.
Just give me a bushel of your best rye grain
To bake a cake for Charlie.
I notice there’s a “Ross’s Reel” too. Wish I had a theme song…theme tune, I mean. Ryan’s has a “Larry Dunne’s Reel” even. You could phonetically retitle a certain banjo tune “D’Arcy’s Dream.”
Was the flute in fashion as a folk instrument before the early 19th, then? Were books like Peacock’s also “Suitable for the German Flute”?
