"Hunt the Squirrel", also known as "The Geud Man of Ballangigh" is an English, Scottish, Irish, American; Country Dance Tune in 6/8 time and A Major (Fleming-Williams, Johnson, Karpeles, Raven, Sharp), G Major (Barnes, Oswald) or F Major (Stanford/Petrie). The parts are played AB (Stanford/Petrie): AABB (most versions): AABBCCDD (Oswald). Barlow lists it in The Complete Country Dances from Playford's Dancing Master (1984) as having appeared in the 14th edition of 1709. Both dance instructions and melody of this English piece appear in Walsh's Country Dancing Master of 1718 and in Playford's (then published by John Young) The Dancing Master, volume I, 17th edition (after 1721). Directions for the dance to this tune have also been recovered from the Holmain MS. (c. 1710-1750) from Dumfries-shire, Scotland. The dance involves a gentleman following or 'chasing' his partner for a phrase of music, after which she turns and 'hunts' him; the whole being a coy stylization of pursuing love. "Hunt the Squirrel" was the vehicle for a number of songs in ballad operas. It was employed in John Gay's Polly (1729), The Fashionable Lady; or, Harlequin's Opera (1730), The Generous Free-Mason; or, The Constant Lady (1731) and Sylvia; or, The Country Burial (1731). Use of melodies in ballad operas and for dancing went both ways. Playwrights and producers may have been attempting to make their products accessible to a general audience by employing relatively well-known or popular tunes for songs or perhaps publishers expediently reused plates from their country dance collections when they needed to insert an air in their opera publications, and selected melodies that scanned to the words. It was printed in Barnes' English Country Dance Tunes (1986), Fleming-Williams & Shaw's English Dance Airs; Popular Selection, Book 1 (1965), Johnson's Twenty-Eight Country Dances as Done at the New Boston Fair, vol. 8 (1988), Karpeles & Schofield's A Selection of 100 English Folk Dance Airs (1951) (appears as "The Geud Man of Ballangigh"), Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 11 (1760), Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984), Sharp's Country Dance Tunes (1909), Stanford/Petrie's Complete Collection (1905) and Walsh's Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth (1740).