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