The Morris Ring

The "Black Book" by Lionel Bacon

The purpose of this index is to provide links to Lionel Bacon's A Handbook  of Morris Dances tunes in abc notation. Each link leads to an index to the tunes for a particular named tradition, e.g. abcBidford.html, and this in turn links to all the abc version(s) of the tunes in another file e.g. Bidford.abc. At some stage we hope to provide references from the tunes to various CDs (mostly available from the Morris Shop).

Traditions

Others

Lionel Bacon on fiddle Lionel Bacon

Lionel was a founder member of Winchester Morris Men in 1953. he also danced with Cambridge Morris Men (from 1932), was with The Travelling Morrice, and also a member of London Pride and of Whitchurch Morris Men. The 'Black Book', his aide memoire, is the most important book for Cotswold morris dancers since the Morris Dance Books were published by Cecil Sharp. It provides, "a baseline based upon traditional sources" (2nd Ed.). "A Handbook of Morris Dances" was first published in 1974, then with corrections, a Second Edition appeared in 1986. Copies are available from the Morris Ring Shop.

Chris Walshaw's abc Musical Notation Language

Chris keeps a file of up-to-date information about abc musical notation. If you want to use abc you will need to find software for your computer, Chris maintains a list (Web based, Windows, Mac, Palm, Command Line), but also recommends checking Frank's ABC Site Index at http://www.abc-notation.com/index.html.

1. For Macs, Barfly (Version 1.71 March 2006), by Phil Taylor, which you can get via http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/. Phil describes this as A shareware integrated text editor/player/viewer for abc music files. You can also get an English Concertina sound file, maybe less appropriate than an Anglo for the sound of Morris. The program has edit and music display. It also allows transposition of the sound, and outputs of music in various formats (.gif, .png, etc.) You can try it, and run it for free, but it is fairer to send Phil £20 and register your version. I did. The best ABC program out there!
2. DOS, Linux, Palm, Psion, Unix, Windows users there are a lot of other abc programs which can be found via a search of Frank's ABC Index. However you might like to try Neil Jennings program, Harmony, his program, to quote him ’is the only one I know of which will add chords to a melody‘. This program can make ANGLO Concertina or Melodeon Tablature. Neil danced with Dubai-Sharjah from 1978 to 1982, then started a side in Luxembourg, then danced with Men of Sweyn's Ey.

You have the software, so why not try a source for other abc English tunes, The Village Music Project. {Includes John Clare's collection of Northamptonshire melodies}. Try also, Andrew Kuntz's "A Descriptive Index of North American and British Isles Music for the Folk Violin and Other Instruments", see http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/FCfiles.html

One other thing ... Steve Allen has registered abc notation with IANA and the tunes should be served as the MIME type text/vnd.abc with the WWW server. Most WWW browsers (such as Firefox, not Safari(!)) are then capable of being configured to recognize these links and display them as ASCII text, as sheet music, and/or as audible sound via an abc application such as Barfly. Steve's server is one of the few that works properly!

The 'Black Book' abc files

We owe a big debt (many pints!) to Vaughan Hully of Shakespeare Morris Men for converting all of the Black Book tunes into abc format files. He sent me a complete set of these, he also sent us the information that Shakespeare Morris Men have about the Trunch Dance Tradition from Norfolk. Share and enjoy! For the purpose of this index I arranged the abc files into traditions. If there are errors, musical or otherwise, please contact the webeditor [at] themorrisring [dot] org (subject: Morris%20Ring%20website%20-%20abc%20files%20page) (web editor). You will almost certainly want to adjust the tempo! Change (or insert) a line such as Q:120 {120 beat per minute} or Q:6/8=200. Where Q is absent, a default tempo is set, but it is preferable to define Q. See, Chris Walsall's description of the abc notation, also John Chambers ABC Primer.

Abbreviations used here and in the Black Book

Sources are given as a quote from the Black Book for each tradition, the abbreviations used are also as in the Black Book. Tunes which are named, but for which there is no music given, are shown in a lighter colour, thus..

Generally the same as in Bacon: