The Maid in the Pump Room
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Mandolin Tablature
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traditional
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"The Maid in the Pump-Room" is a New England hornpipe or reel in G Major. The parts are<br> played AABB.<br> The melody was entered into the 1801 music manuscript copybook of musician Abel Shattuck<br> (1759-1816) of Colrain, Mass., although the parts are reversed from the tune printed in<br> Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883). Dance instructions for "Maid in Pump Room" were<br> printed in Boston in Saltator's A Treatise on Dancing (1802), which may or may not be<br> the same ones printed with the tune in Elizabeth Burchenal's 1918 American dance manual.<br> "In England the room or building at a spa or mineral spring where water was dispensed<br> for drinking was called a pump room. In the New England home, the pump room was the<br> 'cool pantry', later known as the 'butt'ry' and was often used for dairy purposes.<br> It was not uncommon on the New England farm to have the water conveniently brought to<br> the shelter of the house well, where the well or spring water could be pumped for<br> general use" (Linscott, 1939).<br> It was printed in<br> Ryan's Mammoth Collection (1883),<br> Burchenal's American Country Dances, vol. 1 (1918),<br> Linscott's Folk Songs of Old New England (1939) and<br> Cole's 1000 Fiddle Tunes (1940).<br>
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