Issue 3592: Duplicate of #2418

New issue submitted

Disposition changed to “Needs help” (previously “New”)

The two tunes appear to be listed separately as being on different page numbers (5 & 20) in the publication “Old Scottish Music collected and adapted for SCD” (https://my.strathspey.org/dd/publication/776/) so I wonder if there is some difference between them to justify separate entries?

Good catch! This is peculiar indeed. Sadly, I do not have this publication, so I cannot check.

One can however notice that #2418 contains exclusively jig recordings, while #2582 also contains some reels. My guess is therefore that #2418 is the well-know jig (favourite of Lady Charlotte Murray, apparently), original tune to The Chequered Court, while #2582 is another tune, a reel (probably about the same Lady Charlotte Murray?). Because of the proximity of names, and maybe because of lot of “Favourite [Reel/Jig/Strathspey]” suffixes tend to be shortened to “Favourite” or even dropped, a lot of recordings were subsequently linked to the wrong tune in the database. One can for instance note that all recordings of The Chequered Court in #2582 (the wrong one) have an id above 6000, making them more recent addition to the database than most of the recordings of #2418 (the entry for book 42’s recording by Marian has id 488, for instance).

In the meantime, I did check the recordings that I had in my collection, and I can confirm that all the following contain the exact same tune despite being linked to different database entries. On the side of Lady Charlotte Murray (#2582):

• The Chequered Court by Reel of Seven https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/8930/
• The Chequered Court by W James A Gray https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/6463/
• The Chequered Court by Luke Brady’s Scottish Dance Band https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/9527/

On the side of Lady Charlotte Murray’s Favourite Jig (#2418):

• The Chequered Court by Kenny Thomson and the Wardlaw Scottish Dance Band https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/5610/
• The Chequered Court by Colin Dewar and his Scottish Dance Band https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/5876/
• The Chequered Court by Marian Anderson and her Band https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/488/
• The Merry Dancers by Neil Barron and his Scottish Dance Band https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/200/

Assigned changed to “murrough” (previously “None”)
Disposition changed to “Being handled” (previously “Needs help”)

Thanks Niols. I happen to live almost next door to the British Library in London and found that they have a copy of the book “Old Scottish Music collected and adapted for SCD” (https://my.strathspey.org/dd/publication/776/). So I popped in this morning to have a look. It is classified as “special materials” but after checking the condition of the book they let me photograph pages 5 and 20 for personal use. I can send them to you if you like - as long as you do not publish them!

I was anyway able to compare them with the Traditional Tune Archive and the two tunes are different.

SCDDB tune #2418 (Lady Charlotte Murray’s Favourite Jig) on page 5 of the book is a Jig and to my non-expert eye it seems to correspond well to https://tunearch.org/wiki/Lady_Charlotte_Murray_(1).

SCDDB tune #2582 (Lady Charlotte Murray) on page 20 of the book is a Reel and seems to match https://tunearch.org/wiki/Lady_Charlotte_Murray_(2) - though in the book it is ascribed just to “A.Shand” (whereas the jig on page 5 is “Arr. by A.Shand”). SCDDB claims its by Niel Gow but the Traditional Tune Archive says its by Daniel Gow. I suspect the latter is more reliable than SCDDB.

So my guess is that any recording of The Chequered Court which links tune #2582 ought to be changed to #2418. Probably any recordings of reels should link #2582.

I do not have time to do that right now. But I have added some extra info to both tunes.

Amazing that you could access this book! I’m always interested in seeing how the originals look like, so I would love to have a look at them, but only if you feel comfortable with it.

Then I agree:

SCDDB tune #2418 (Lady Charlotte Murray’s Favourite Jig) on page 5 of the book is a Jig. It does correspond to https://tunearch.org/wiki/Lady_Charlotte_Murray_(1) and it is the original tune for The Chequered Court. It seems to also be catalogued in The Session as “The Cat in the Corner” (although “Lady Charlotte […]” is listed as an alternative name): https://thesession.org/tunes/3867

SCDDB tune #2582 (Lady Charlotte Murray) on page 20 of the book is a Reel. It does correspond to https://tunearch.org/wiki/Lady_Charlotte_Murray_(2). I could not find it in The Session. It was published c. 1750-1810 in “A Second Collection of Strathspey Reels, etc.” (a digital version is available here: https://imslp.org/wiki/A_Second_Collection_of_Strathspey_Reels,etc.(MacDonald,_Malcolm) ) but without an explicit composer.

So my guess is that any recording of The Chequered Court which links tune #2582 ought to be changed to #2418.

I agree!

Disposition changed to “Fixed” (previously “Being handled”)

OK, so I have now changed all jig recordings which referenced tune #2582 to use tune #2418. At least in the two CDs I have (James Gray & Luke Brady) the tune is listed in the CD insert just as “Lady Charlotte Murray”. I set that to be the “as” alias name for all of them. I also decided to change the composer of #2582 to Daniel Dow as mentioned in the Traditional Tune Archive.

The updated recordings were:

• https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/6263/ 8x32 Bar Jig (Bobby Murray)
• https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/6463/ The Chequered Court (James Gray)
• https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/8930/ The Chequered Court (Reel of Seven)
• https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/9527/ The Chequered Court (Luke Brady)
• https://my.strathspey.org/dd/recording/9798/ The Chequered Court (James Coutts)

Niols, I sent the two photos by private email.