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"Ricketts' Hornpipe", also known as "The Aldridge Hornpipe",
"The Manchester Hornpipe", "The Spanish Hornpipe", "The Wrexham Hornpipe"
and other names. It is known in both the British Isles and America.
It has been printed in O'Neill's Music of Ireland, O'Neill's The Dance
Music of Ireland - 1001 Gems, One Thousand Fiddle Tunes and other
collections of Irish tunes.
John Bill Ricketts was an early circus entrepreneur who brought a circus from England to America in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Circuses in an earlier era usually included fancy dancing, and the circuses of Ricketts included dancers such as Pennsylvanian John Durang, who became famous in early America. Both Ricketts and Durang had hornpipes named for them that have endured in American tradition, in both the North and the South, through the twentieth century. "Fair Morning Hornpipe" is a West Virginia variation of "Ricketts' Hornpipe". |