Issue 2184: Dance name changes as we edit book 24 (John Mitchell heritage project)

New issue submitted

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

I will make a start on these. At least the simple ones.

For the first one, do you really mean “Sheperd”? The usual spelling has two h, ie “Shepherd”.

And yes, having a “pre-version” of the updated book (by email) would probably be helpful.

On looking more carefully, I have a couple of questions.

(1) Many dances are named after tunes. In some cases the current dance name in the database exactly matches the tune name. Eg #9 “Draper’s Gardens” with apostrophe is both tune and dance name. You asked the dance name have the apostrophe removed. And if the name appears like that in the book then SCDDB should certainly follow that. My question would be, until such as a time as SCDDB can seamlessly handle searches with/without apostrophes, perhaps its best to keep the original as an alias? A supplementary question is that perhaps SCDDB has both dance and tune name spelled incorrectly in which case it would be nice to fix both. That clearly needs more research (I looked up one or two, see below).

(2) For the cases where the database already has aliases (eg dance #9 currently Amsbury) are you suggesting (a) the title should be changed and all existing aliases should be removed or (b) the main title should be swapped by the current main title should become an alias? I guess someone who originally entered the data thought there were multiple names for this dance so I would be a bit reluctant to just remove it, ie I am inclined to option b.

Meanwhile I have made the minor changes requested to the names of dances #9, #26, #30, #34, #38, #80, #96.

Regarding tune names, for dance #78 in this publication (Mr Hamilton of Washaw) I made a quick google search and wonder if “Washaw” should really be “Wishaw”? The tradition tune archive has an entry for “Mr Hamilton of Wishaw” but not “Mr Hamilton of Washaw”.

Whereas for #73 there seem to be references to both “Miss Spark’s Maggot” and “Miss Sparks’s Maggot”. This kind of confusion again inclines me towards adding spelling aliases rather than deciding which might be slightly more correct.

Received from Viktor Lehmann by email (along with draft PDF):

okay, I see the problem - looks like John Mitchell had some issues again with spelling. I am always heavily relying on his spelling when it is ongoingly consistent, but seems that now and then even then some names can be wrong.

So please, forget about changes to “Draper’s Gardens” and “Draper’s Maggot” now that I checked them online in some archives. Put them as I spelled them here and everything’s fine, with apostrophe, as is already in the database. This should resolve issue 1 on your list.

With regard to issue 2: I don’t want aliases to be deleted, as I think this is worthwhile information for the ones who search the database. As you can see in the attached PDF, John worked with alternative names too, in the table of contents as well as on the dance sheets AND some “general notes”. As for the publication list in the database, it would just be more fitting to put the FIRST name in the ToC as the main name and make the other ones “alternative”, just out of consistency reasons re the publication itself. So, yes, rather “swapping” than deleting. The ToC will give you a hint as to how to proceed.

As these are historical dances, it might happen that even in the archives we come across different spellings to the same dances. John obviously decided to only go for real name variations, not slight spelling variations. If you come across those, like in “Mrs Sparks’s Maggot”, please feel free to add further aliases to the database. In rare cases, “maggot” is spelt “magot” or something else.

You didn’t mention changes on #70 and hope you didn’t do anything, please keep the uppercase “D” for “Donald” as is. Research indicates that the tune is spelt with uppercase-D.

The “Washaw” thing: I agree entirely. This CAN’T be true, even though John is consistent through all entries. There is nothing that indicates any reference to “Washaw”, whilst there are tunes and references to “Wishaw”. I changed it. Perhaps at the time he had a wrong source and of course no internet as we know it now was available to him to double check.

This leaves us with the following items:

dance 11 this title is plain wrong. “Mrs Booth’s Minuet” is double in the list, yet HERE this is not an alternative title to the dance (compare to 79, but those are different dances), the real 11 name is “Draper’s Maggot” (keep apostrophe, as discussed above)

dance 21 (swap to alternative title) “The Fair Quaker of Deal”

dance 72 (swap to alternative title, as “Coreli” might be misspelled anyway. New title: “Mr Cosgill’s Delight”

dance 73 (missing “s” after name) “Miss Sparks’s Maggot” (and add an alias for “Miss Spark’s Maggot” if you like)

dance 121 (swap to alternative title) “We’ll Wed and We’ll Bed”

dance 122 (swap to alternative title) “Well-hall”

THANK YOU!!!

I have now made almost all the requested changes except for the Draper’s Maggot / Mrs Booth’s Minuet business (dances 11 and 79 in the publication).

Searching SCDDB for “Draper” I found that Eric has been over this before. There is still an unlinked and scheduled-for-deletion dance (https://my.strathspey.org/dd/dance/17196/) which currently has the title “Drapers Maggot TRANSFER LINKS TO DANCE 1484”.

What this means is that an attempt was made to delete what was thought to be duplicate, but this was not allowed as some user had a reference to it, eg in a dance collection. Such entries can only be reassigned by Anselm.

Clearly this never happened. So we could just reinstate this entry.

However although Viktor says the two dances are different, in the updated PDF of the book the dance instructions do appear to be identical. The only difference is that the tempo is given as Waltz for one and Minuet for the other. The set of tunes is also different though Draper’s Maggot is mentioned for both dances.

I am not quite sure what the policy is here. I have come across at least one example in the database of two dances that are actually identical choreography but devised by different people at different times with different names. So reinstating this duplicate-apart-from-music does not seem unreasonable.