Issue 2424: Incorrect alternative name

New issue submitted

As usual with the tunes part of the database, any investigation turns up multiple problems. There is already a tune Merry-Go-Round (#11475) reported in a different collection - and which is linked to a dance by Anselm. Are they the same or different tunes?

Yes, the two are the same tune. We should amalgamate these entries.

Assigned changed to »murrough« (previously »None«)
Disposition changed to »Fixed« (previously »New«)

OK, with that confirmation I have:

• added another alias The Merry-Go-Round to the Flirtation Hornpipe tune (#3545)
• assigned #3545 to Anselm’s dance The Jet Set Hornpipe instead of #11475
• switched the reference from #11475 to #3545 in the Peter Elmes recording of Catch the Wind (#9333)
• deleted the duplicate The Merry-Go-Round tune (#11475)

By the way Anselm, although Recordings have the nice feature of using the alias name when referring to the tune, that is not supported in tunes for dances. There is only a comment (which I used for your dance). It would be good and consistent if the tune alias was supported everywhere tunes can be linked.

I believe that hanging everything off “Flirtation Hornpipe” is doing it the wrong way round.

I checked my copy of Kerr’s Collection, and the tune appears there under the title “The Merry Go-Round” (without the first dash, but Kerr’s is often playing fast and loose with spellings). We don’t seem to have an actual printed source that contains the tune under the title “Flirtation Hornpipe”, and indeed “Flirtation Hornpipe” is less the name of a particular tune and more the name of a genre of tunes, which would include “The Merry-Go-Round”. (The various volumes of Kerr’s have whole chapters dedicated to “Tunes for Country dances, Flirtations, &c.”)

ISTR that the whole shebang about the original tune for Catch the Wind arose in the first place because the Elma Grech recording called the tune “Flirtation Hornpipe” (actually the whole set of tunes is called “Flirtation Hornpipes”), and when the dance started becoming popular and was about to be published by the RSCDS, the people in charge of the music (presumably at the time Muriel Johnstone and/or Mo Rutherford) saw “Flirtation Hornpipe” and thought “Oh, a flirtation hornpipe, let’s pick ‘The Navvie’, that’s a nice tune and it hasn’t been used“). The fact that the deviser really meant that other specific flirtation hornpipe called “The Merry-Go-Round” only came to light when it was too late to change.

In a nutshell, what I would like to see is the following:

• The entry #3545 should be called “The Merry-Go-Round” with “Flirtation Hornpipe” as an alias (and “The Merry Go-Round” as a spelling alias, for safety)
• The “Catch the Wind” recordings which actually use the tune (there are some that go all over the place) should refer to #3545 with an alias pointing to whatever the tune is called on the recording if that isn’t “The Merry-Go-Round”.

I have changed the database accordingly.

Incidentally I have added the tune-alias facility to “Suggested Tunes” for dances and the tunes tab of the Publication detail page in my development version of the database, so that will come around in due course and we can then arrange that the “Catch the Wind” dance entry refers to #3545 with the alias “Flirtation Hornpipe”.