The Girl I Left Behind Me – Fiddle Tune a Day – Day 182

Honestly, before I played this song, I didn’t know much about the Girl I Left Behind Me. I knew that it was a popular Civil War Era Tune, and that the A Part of it appears in the Swing Tune American Patrol (along with Redwing.) I didn’t even know the proper name, or the melody to the B Part. But, since this is Fiddle Tune a Day, and I must play a new fiddle tune every day, today’s tune is The Girl I left behind me.

GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME [1], THE (or “An Spailpin Fanach”). AKA and see  “As Slow Our Ship,” “Brighton Camp,” “The Gal I Left Behind Me,” “Pretty Little Girl (I Left Behind Me) [2],” “An S(p)ailpin Fanach [1],” “The Rambling Laborer,” “The Wandering Harvest Labourer.” Old‑Time, American, Irish, Scottish, English; Air, Hornpipe, March, Two‑Step, Polka, Set, Sword, Country and Morris Dance Tune (2/4 time). G Major (almost all versions): A Flat Major (O’Sullivan/Bunting): C Major (Ashman). Standard tuning. One part (Linscott, Raven): AB (Bayard, O’Sullivan/Bunting, Shaw): AABB (Ashman, Brody, Ford, Kennedy, Perlman, Phillips, Sweet, Tubridy): AABBCC (Hall & Stafford).

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There are conflicting assertions about the both the provenance and antiquity of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” a popular traditional melody claimed vociferously by both the English and Irish. It does appear to date to the 18^th century, but that general date is almost all that can be said for certainty at this time.  Irish claims revolve around the melodies appearance under the title “The S(p)ailpin Fanach” (or “The Rambling Laborer), words and music printed in Dublin in 1791, although Bunting (1840) asserts it was known much earlier. Bunting himself collected the tune from an elderly Irish harper, Arthur O’Neill, in the year 1800. Several authors (Moffat) have noted its resemblance to the Irish melody “The Rose Tree in Full Bearing,” accompanied by suggestions that “The Girl I Left Behind Me” is a derivative tune. Alfred Moffat, in his Minstrelsy of Ireland (1897, pg. 14), was perhaps the first to recognize the connection, although others (such as Samuel Bayard) finds little relationship between the two. Moffat thought it was also true that the British knew the melody as “Brighton Camp,” dating from the 1758-1759 encampments of Admirals Rodney and Hawke, but that the original Irish provenance still held, citing its “Irish flavour” as well as the “Rose Tree” resemblance. In Moffat’s view, the version of the air that Bunting printed was “a mere parody on the genuine (Irish) air,” an opinion that early 20^th century English musicologist Frank Kidson (writing in Groves, 1910) agreed with. Bunting’s version, stated Kidson, along with the version of the melody employed by Moore, “quite destroy the strongly marked rhythm of the simple marching form.” The latter named person refers to Thomas Moore and his song “As slow our ship,” published in Irish Melodies (1818), which used “The Girl I Left Behind Me” as the vehicle for his words. 20^th century music writer Sigmund Spaeth simply called it an Irish folk-tune, “first written down in 1800.”

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Claims of English provenance are just as forceful, although occasionally vague. For example, Linscott (Folk Songs of Old New England, 1939), maintained that was derived from an old British marching song, and that “in Queen Elizabeth’s time it was very popular and was played when a man-of-war weighed anchor or when a regiment moved in or out of town.”  The assertion is perhaps apocryphal, for the same is said of a few other melodies (“Off She Goes,” for example). Although “The Girl I Left Behind Me’s” employment as a military leave-taking is a persistent and repeated assertion, there is little actual evidence that it was employed for that purpose, at least before the American Civil War. English musicologist William Chappell (1859) dated the song “Brighton Camp” (which employs the “Girl I Left Behind Me” melody) to 1758, associating the title with the encampments at Brighton established there and at other locations on the coast of England to watch for the French fleet, which had been threatening an invasion of the island. When the English navy defeated the French later in 1759, the fears that established the watch camps dissipated and then were ridiculed in pantomime and farce in London.  Parenthetically, the once fishing-village of Brighton, in east Sussex, became very popular in the next decade riding on the growing fashion for bathing. While still a prince, George IV visited the spa starting in 1783 and purchased an estate nearby, engaging famous architect John Nash to transform it into the elegant oriental Pavilion that is today a tourist attraction. Brighton was again the location of a military encampment of many thousands of men in the summers of 1793-95, again in response to fears of a French invasion.

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Unfortunately, there are no surviving early printings of the melody under the title “Brighton Camp” that have been found. Chappell alluded to manuscripts in his possession which did establish the connection, but they were not named by him, nor have any surfaced since. It is known, however, that the song air “The Girl I Left Behind Me” seems to have quickly entered military tradition as a marching air around the beginning of the 19^th century. Interestingly, Bunting and Chappell communicated about the tune, with the former writing in 1840 to the Englishman that: “It is a pretty tune, and has been played for the last fifty years, to my knowledge, by the fifes and drums, and bands of different regiments, on their leaving the towns for new quarters.”  It is was said by Chappell that the melody was printed in a manuscript of c. 1770 in the possession of a Dr. Rimbault, and that it appears in march form in manuscript collections of military music from that pre-(American) Revolutionary era, although he specifies none by name, and, indeed, none have been found by subsequent researchers. Its specific use as a military leave-taking march—already referred to and often repeated—is said to have dated to before the American revolution when a British naval vessel set sail or an army unit left for service abroad. Nevertheless, while plausible, there is no solid evidence it was generally employed this way. It may be that the story of the naval leave-taking aspect— apocryphal or not—was the inspiration for Moore’s “As slow our ship” song.

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Frank Kidson (Groves, 1910) discusses the problem of dating the tune with any certainty, although he does attest that a manuscript in his possession ‘dates it with certainty to 1797’. However, the earliest corroborated citation for a printed version of the song is in Issue 72 of Charms of Melody (approximately 1805-6). There is a reference to the song in a songbook called The New Whim of the Night, or the Town and Country Songster for 1799 wherein there is a song entitled “The Girls we love so dearly” written by R. Rusted to the tune “The Girl I left behind me.” Kidson points to a printing of “Brighton Camp” with the “Girl I Left Behind Me” melody in the publication The Gentleman’s Amusement c. 1810, an English publication. Fuld (The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk) finds the melody under the same title in a Irish publication, Hime’s Pocket Book for the German Flute or Violin (Dublin, n.d., vol. III, p. 67), and asserts it is the earliest extent publication of the melody. He also notes that the song “Girl I Left Behind Me” appears in Bell’s Rhymes of the Northern Bards (1812). Kidson has a version from a musician’s manuscript book dating from around 1815, which he reprinted in Songs of the Georgian Period, (Moffat & Kidson). A published version under the title “Brighton Camp or The Girl I Left Behind Me” indicates that both titles were in currency for the melody and can be found in Riley’s Flute Melodies (1816), an American publication. “The Girl I Left Behind Me” appears in the music manuscript of Shropshire musician John Moore of c. 1837-1840.

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There are a few literary references to the song or melody. For example, “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” clearly a reference to the military use of the song, was the title of a chapter (XXX) in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848), an indictment of self-centered and foolish people set in the Napoleonic era. The English novelist Thomas Hardy, himself an accordionist and fiddler, mentioned the tune in scene notes to The Dynasts (1904), also set during the wars with Napoleon:

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A June sunrise; the beams struggling through the window curtains.

A canopied bed in a recess on the left. The quick notes of ‘Brighton

Camp’ or ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me,’ strike sharply into the room

from fifes and drums without.

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James Fenimore Cooper mentions the tune in his novel of the sea, The Pilot (1824), as the characters sail near enough to shore to hear the roar of the surf:

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Looking affectionately, though still recklessly, at the boy who stood

at his side, he said:
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“Dull music, Mr. Merry.”
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“So dull, sir, that I can’t dance to it,” returned the midshipman. “Nor
do I believe there is a man in the ship who would not rather hear ‘The
girl I left behind me,’ than those execrable sounds.”
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“The Girl I Left Behind Me” has a long and illustrious history in America, although not, as some would like to believe, prior to the beginning of the 19^th century. Paul Tyler finds the tunes in music manuscript books of Abel Shattucks (c. 1801) and John Carrol (c. 1804-1812). The latter was a military fifer and fiddler at Fort Niagra who succumbed to influenza in 1812, prior to hostilities with Britain. As mentioned, it appears in Rileys Flute Melodies, published in several volumes in New York beginning in 1814. Dolph (1929) prints a standard text popular at the time of the Civil War, which was a great favorite with Gen. George Custer, and is still the official regimental song of the 7th Cavalry (see also “Garryowen”). “My grandfather tells me that he heard it played by bands in both armies at the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, in 1862” (Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, Vol. III, 1980). Cauthen (1990) finds reference to its being played during the Civil War in an account by Georgia fiddler Ben Smith of the 12th Alabama Infantry; she calls it a “show tune” which was popularized during that war and which entered folk tradition through discharged soldiers.  The United States army troop [The Old Guard] at Fort Snelling, Minesota, considered it a favorite in the 19^th century.  The melody appears in Bruce and Emmett’s Drummers’ and Fifers’ Guide, published in 1862 to help codify and train the hordes of new musicians needed for service in the Union Army early in the American Civil War. Therein it is remarked: “This air and (drum) beat is generally played at the departure of the soldiers from one city (or camp) to another” [George Bruce was a drum major in the New York National Guard, 7^th Regiment, and had served in the United States Army as principal drum instructor at the installation at Governor’s Island in New York harbor. Emmett was none-other than Daniel Decatur Emmett, a principal figure in the mid-19^th century minstrel craze and composer of “Dixie” (ironically turned into a Confederate anthem during the war) and “Old Dan Tucker,” among other favorites. Emmett had been a fifer for the 6^th U.S. Infantry in the mid-1850’s]. Today it remains in use by the U.S. Army and is played at the United States Military Academy at West Point as part of the medley for the cadets’ final formation at graduation.

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Notwithstanding its popularity as a song or martial air, “The Girl” gained renewed currency as a dance tune in the South. Linscott (1939) remarks that in New England it was a great march favorite and that it “has always been popular as a country dance tune.” The piece was a ‘catagory tune’ in an 1899 Gallatin, Tenn., fiddle contest; each fiddler would play his (or her?) rendition, with the best version winning a prize (C. Wolfe, The Devil’s Box, vol. 14, No. 4, 12/1/80). It was cited as having commonly been played at Orange County, New York country dances in the 1930’s (Lettie Osborn, New York Folklore Quarterly), and was in the repertoire of Arizona fiddler Kenner C. Kartchner whose hey-day was in the early 20th century. Also in repertories of Uncle Jimmy Thompson (1848‑1931) {Texas, Tenn.) as “The Girl I Left Behind,” Mainer Mellie Dunham (Henry Ford’s champion fiddler in the late 1920’s), and Buffalo Valley, Pa., dance fiddlers Harry Daddario and Ralph Sauers. It was recorded for the Library of Congress by folklorist/musicologist Vance Randolph in the early 1940’s from Ozark Mountain fiddlers.

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Morris and sword dance versions in this setting of the tune have been collected from the Abingdon, Handsworth, Bampton, Longborough, and Lichfield, England, areas, {the latter has a ‘C’ part which is the tune ‘Here we go round the Mulberry bush…’}. Barnes (2005) prints a 3-part morris dance version from Lancashire. It was a hit of the late 20^th century folk revival in England, its popularity spurred by Bill Leader, Reg Hall and Bob Davenport’s influential recording “English Country Music” (1965), a limited release which featured Norfolk fiddler Walter Bulwer and his wife Daisy (piano), and Billy Cooper (hammered dulcimer). The recording became a collector’s item until it was re-released on LP by Topic Records in 1976. In Scotland “The Girl I Left Behind Me” was the name of a solo dance with twelve steps and was performed to “The Girl…” melody. This Scottish dance was transported to Cape Breton and entered dance tradition there where it was performed during the 19th century. Elias Howe (c. 1867) printed the tune along with contra-dance directions in 1000 Jigs and Reels.

SPAILPÍN FÁNAC(H) [1], AN. AKA and see “As Slow Our Ship,” “Brighton Camp,” “The Girl I Left Behind Me [1],” “The Rambling Laborer,” “The Wandering Labourer.” Irish, Slow Air (4/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning. One part. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin discusses the ordeal of the spailpín, or wandering laborer, in his book A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music (1998).  The spailpín was a landless individual—holding nothing save the cabin he occupied—and by necessity hired himself out to whomever would employ him. He survived on a system of conacre in which he had to meet the uncertain prospect of growing enough crops to pay his rent with enough left to feed his family; when times were hard, as they often were, the spailpín took himself to a hiring fair in hopes of temporary migrant employment to stave off eviction and starvation. According to the Devon Commission of 1843, he belonged to the most ‘wretched of the many wretched classes in Ireland.’ The first verse of the 18^th century song describes the contempt the men of the western part of the island faced when they had to apply to the landholding farmers of the richer lands of Munster and Leinster for work. Ó hAllmhuráin points out it was the spailpín and his family who were the chief victims of the Great Famine in the mid 19^th century.