Balance a Straw
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Balance a Straw" also known as "From the Man I Love", "The Tulip",<br> "Lads a Bunchum", "The Captain and His Whiskers" is an English (originally) and<br> American country and morris dance tune in 4/4 time and G Major. The parts are played<br> AABB (Bacon, Ascot-Under-Wychwood), AABCC (Raven, Bledington version), AAB, CCB, CCB<br> (Mallinson, Bledington version).<br> The melody and title are derived from the chorus of the first and last stanzas of a<br> popular song by James Oswald (died c. 1769), sung in the opera The Reprisal and first<br> performed in London in 1757. The opening line contains the alternate title by which it was<br> known ("From the Man I Love") and both titles appear in period references from England and<br> the United States. The melody was entered into the c. 1770 music copybook of fiddler<br> William Clark of Lincoln.<br> As a morris dance tune it was collected in the<br> Ascot-under-Wychwood, Bledington, and Brackley England, areas during the latter 19th<br> century (when most morris tunes were sought out and recorded). Ernest MacMillan identifies<br> a tune having this title in an instrumental setting of 1759, though the melody is unrelated<br> to the one here referenced, being clearly a version of "Wearing of the Green."<br> The A and B parts are a 4/4 version of "Balance the Straw".<br> There are some similarities between "Balance a Straw" and a march known variously as<br> "Sir Barry Denny's March", "Inverary March" and "O'Brien of Arra", however, there may not<br> be a cognate relationship between the two.<br>
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