"Erie Hornpipe" is an American hornpipe in D Major played AABB. The title may refer to the Great Lake itself or to the port city of Erie, Pennsylvania. The tune sounds American and it should not be forgotten that numerous tunes in Ryan's Mammoth Collection have black-face minstrel origins. The "Erie Hornpipe" may be one, especially since nearby Buffalo was the origin of the minstrel troupe the Virginia Serenaders in 1844 and early minstrel performances were recorded in Erie. Since then, Seattle fiddler, researcher and publisher Vivian Williams has found the "Erie Hornpipe" in a violin tutor by George Saunders, a self-described "Professor of Music and Dancing," entitled New and Scientific Self-Instructing School for the Violin (1847, reprinted by Oliver Ditson in the 1850's). Therein 'Professor' Saunders credits himself with composing the "Erie Hornpipe". Vivian writes: "I think Saunders probably did compose the tunes he claimed. In his book he seems quite conscientious about marking his tunes with his initials and leaving the rest unmarked. He comments that he wrote all the cotillion sets himself, and they are all initialed...On the other hand, he didn't initial any of the standard 'Contra, Spanish and Fancy Dances' in the book..." "Erie Hornpipe" is among the tunes entered into the neatly penned c. 1860-1890 music manuscript collection of H.E. Packard of West Halifax, Vermont. It was printed in Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes (1940), Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883) and Saunders' New and Complete Instructor for the Violin (1847). I couldn't live in Erie and not include this one.