KittyBridges's "Collection of Country Dances 1745"
"A Collection of Country Dances 1745"
KittyBridges, 1745
This directory contains ABC transcriptions of the tunes and dances in Kitty Bridges' "A Collection of Country Dances 1745".

The tunes are numbered sequentially, with the 2-digit tune number used at the start of a tune's file name.

Here's a table of symbols and abbreviations used in the booklet. Kitty's dance notation includes abbreviations ending with a dot below a final superscript letter. The txt column is how they've been transcribed in the ABC files; the meaning column is the modern spelling of the word or phrase.

img txt meaning
.| :| :|: .:| .| :| :|: .:| end of musical strain
& & and
1.st 1 1.st 2 1st First
2.d 2d Second
3.d 3d third
Cu. Cu. Couple
Cup.l Cup.l Couple
Coup.l Coup.l Couple
Coup.l's Coup.l's Couple's
P.r Part.r P.r Part.r Partner
w.th w.th with
Wo. Wo. Woman
Wom.n Wom.n Woman
y.e y.e the
y.r y.r your

One tune has two versions, "We are all a Coming", due to the use of two voices to represent alternate notes. ABC has a syntax this, called "voice overlays", but most ABC software doesn't handle it. So I've produced two versions of this tune, the first using chords to approximate the two voices, the other using voice overlays. There are also two "KittyBridges*.abc' files containing all the tunes, labelled with "_NO" (No Overlays) and "_VO" (Voice Overlays) to distinguish them. This is somewhat an experiment, because the gimmicky notation isn't really all that important here, but the VO version does let us transcribe exactly what's in the collection.

There are a few other concessions to the fact that ABC is a "modern" music notation, in the sense that it mimics the ways that modern publishers mostly represent music. Thus, the 18th-century use of "... :||: ... :||:" repeat notation is transcribed as "|: ... :||: ... :|", to satisfy ABC's various software. Some of the repeat notation isn't clear, and in such cases I've transcribed it as-is, which may not work with some ABC software.

Some experimental ABC tune-listing programs: Tune lister Collection lister Session lister
[ICO]NameLast modifiedSizeDescription
[PARENTDIR]Parent Directory   -  
[ ]KittyBridges_1745_NO..>2015-11-22 15:16 20K 
[ ]KittyBridges_1745_VO..>2015-11-22 15:16 20K 
[ ]Makefile 2015-01-03 14:00 3.9K 
[ ]02_Just_a_going.abc 2015-01-01 10:29 1.2K 
[ ]12_Frisk_it.abc 2015-01-02 09:25 1.1K 
[ ]01_Cooler.abc 2015-01-01 10:12 1.1K 
[ ]04_Neer_a_Bottom.abc 2015-11-22 15:16 1.0K 
[ ]10_Bed_Chamber.abc 2015-01-01 19:29 1.0K 
[ ]17-We_are_all_a_Comi..>2015-01-02 14:22 1.0K 
[ ]17=We_are_all_a_Comi..>2015-01-02 14:22 1.0K 
[ ]18_Pau_Paw.abc 2015-01-02 10:47 942  
[ ]11_Drops_of_Brandy.abc 2015-01-02 09:05 936  
[ ]06_Merry_Councellor.abc2015-01-01 11:40 905  
[ ]00_Title.abc 2015-01-02 16:41 889  
[ ]15_So_she_bid_me_tel..>2015-01-02 10:05 877  
[ ]05_Kentish_Crickette..>2015-01-01 11:00 868  
[ ]13_Prince_George.abc 2015-01-02 09:37 858  
[ ]03_Mosee.abc 2015-01-01 10:38 852  
[ ]09_Quite_Prodigious.abc2015-01-01 19:17 851  
[ ]19_Aurottis_Dutch_Sk..>2015-01-02 10:55 839  
[ ]14_Bread_and_Cheese.abc2015-01-02 09:51 820  
[ ]07_Four_Drunken_Maid..>2015-01-01 18:00 820  
[ ]21_Alister.abc 2015-01-02 13:44 806  
[ ]20_Topsy_Turvy.abc 2015-01-02 13:38 802  
[ ]08_Jaques_Ramble.abc 2015-01-01 19:13 793  
[ ]16_Trip_to_Farley.abc 2015-01-02 10:15 694  
[ ]proto.abc 2015-01-01 10:05 383  
[DIR]src/ 2024-05-01 08:50 -  
[DIR]img/ 2024-05-01 08:50 -  
[DIR]fmt/ 2024-05-01 08:50 -