A tune to honour the wonderful Dipper family of Heytesbury, Wilts; musicians, instrument makers and all-round good eggs.
(Sept ’25) Turns out that this is not an original tune. It has a very close resemblance to Da Slockit Light by Shetland fiddler Tom Anderson (1910-91), which I didn’t know I knew. The original is a lovely tune and I hope that my misremembered refashioning of it as a hornpipe is not too dreadful.
All three of the Pressed Men have a concertina built by the Dippers: Dick has played a Dipper G/D Anglo since the 1980s, I acquired Max, the bass English (above), in the early 2000s, and Ian finally realised a long-held ambition to have a G/D Anglo in October 2021. We all went to Heytesbury to collect it and spent a very happy afternoon sitting in the sunshine with Colin and Rosalie, “running-in” the new instrument with its band-mates. I named the next tune I came up with (28th Nov) “Dippers’ Delight or Dippers’ Maggot” to remind us of the occasion.
Here’s the tune in ABC notation:
X: 1
T: Dippers' Delight or Dippers' Maggot
C: Mark Fry
N: 28th Nov 2021. Also known as The North Shropshire Hornpipe after the famous LibDem by-election win, 16/12/21
M: 12/8
L: 1/8
Q: 165
R: Hornpipe
K: Dmaj
F2E | D3F3 A3d2e | f2ed2c d3A3 | B2cd2B A2cd2F | G2FE2D A3F2E |
D3F3 A3d2e | f2ed2c d3A3 | B2cd2B A2GF2E | F3D3D3 :|
d3 |: c2de2d c2AB2c | d3f3 d6 | e2fg2f e2dc2B | c3A3 A6 |
B2cd2B A2cd2F | G2FE2D A3F2E | D2FA2c d2cd2e | f3d3d6 :And here’s the score as a PDF: