Hunting the Hare
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Hunting the Hare", known in Wales as "Helar's Ysgfarnog" is also known as "Newcastle Beer",<br> "Mr. Basse His Career", "The Career" or "Mount Taragh's Triumph" is an English, Irish, American<br> Jig in F Major (Raven) or D Major (Ashman, Cole, Joyce, Kerr, Williamson).<br> The parts are played AB (Cole, Joyce), ABB (Kerr, Raven) or AABB (Ashman, Williamson).<br> The title "Hunting the Hare" probably has sexual connotations similar to "The Cuckoo's Nest".<br> The melody appears in Twenty Four Dances for the Year 1768 and was used as the melody for<br> various song sheets in the 18th century, including a song called "Newcastle Beer" by<br> John Cunningham (1729-1773). Chappell traces the tune to an air for much older ballads and<br> notes that it was printed in 3/4 time in John Gay's ballad opera of Achilles (1738) entitled<br> "A Minuet." He finds versions in Antidote to Melancholy (1661) and Pills to Purge Melancholy<br> (1707) under the title "The Green Gown", a name derived from the last line of each stanza<br> of the song. Finally, versions of the tune can also be found as "Room for Company", a balled<br> in the Pepys Collection, and as "Room for Cuckolds" in Playford's Musick's Recreation on the<br> Lyra Viol (1652). <br> The tune was also known in Wales by the name "Helar's Ysgfarnog" (Williamson, 1976). In the<br> United States it appears in several MS collection of around 1800. The title is not to be<br> confused with that of another and different popular melody of the period, "Hunt the Squirrel".<br> It was printed in Ashman's The Ironbridge Hornpipe (1991) (appears as "Hunt the Hare"),<br> Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes (1940), Joyce's Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909),<br> Kerr's Merry Melodies, vol. 3,<br> Preston's Preston's Twenty-Four Country Dances for the Year 1798 (1798),<br> Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984),<br> Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883) and<br> Williamson's English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Fiddle Tunes (1976). <br> It was recorded by Alistair Anderson on Alistair Anderson Plays English Concertina (1972).<br>
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