ORCHESTRAL COLLEGE HORNPIPE - THE SAILOR'S HORNPIPE

THE SAILOR'S HORNPIPE

ORCHESTRAL COLLEGE HORNPIPE

SONGWRITER: J. Dale of London

COUNTRY: ENGLAND

ALBUM: The Sailor's Hornpipe

LABEL: ROUNDER RECORDS

GENRE: HORNPIPE MELODY

YEAR: 1998

The Sailor's Hornpipe (also known as The College Hornpipe and Jack's the Lad) is a traditional hornpipe melody.

Originally in triple time, this famous folk melody appears to have started as a dance performed to the accompaniment of the hornpipe, a Celtic instrument. "The Sailor's Hornpipe" or "The Sailors' Hornpipe" is also known by many variant names including the "College Hornpipe", and of course has numerous different arrangements. The nautical connection did not develop until about the end of the Seventeenth and beginning of the Eighteenth Centuries when it found its way into the repertoire of sailors. Also about this time, its time signature was changed to 4/4 or 2/4 time.

The usual tune for this dance was first printed as the "College Hornpipe" in 1797 or 1798 by J. Dale of London. It was found in manuscript collections before then – for instance the fine syncopated version in the William Vickers manuscript, written on Tyneside, dated 1770. The dance imitates the life of a sailor and their duties aboard ship. Due to the small space that the dance required, and no need for a partner, the dance was popular on-board ship.

Accompaniment may have been the music of a tin whistle or, from the 19th century, a squeezebox. Samuel Pepys referred to it in his diary as "The Jig of the Ship" and Captain Cook, who took a piper on at least one voyage, is noted to have ordered his men to dance the hornpipe in order to keep them in good health. The dance on-ship became less common when fiddlers ceased to be included in ships' crew members.

In dramatic stage productions, from around the sixteenth century, a popular feature was a sea dance. But the nineteenth century saw the more familiar form of the "sailors’ hornpipe" introduced. Nautical duties (for example the hauling of ropes, rowing, climbing the rigging and saluting) provided the dance movements.

In the 1941 children's novel The Moffats by Eleanor Estes, Joey Moffat is supposed to do the hornpipe in a dancing school recital. Overcome by stage fright, he can't remember the steps until a tiny lap dog – formerly a sailor's pet – hears the music and jumps into the centre of the floor to take up the dance.