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Blue Eyed Stranger (Sherborne)

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Alternative title: Country Gardens

Source: C. Sharp ms nos. 1727 & 2462 in Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Performer: Simpson, George
Place Collected: Didcot
Date collected: 25 July 1908 & 31 March 1910
Collector: Sharp, Cecil

Morris tune from Sherborne, Gloucestershire. Although Sharp visited Simpson at Upton, near Didcot, then in Berkshire, now in Oxfordshire, he had previously lived at Sherborne, and was Sharp’s informant for the Sherborne morris dances.

In the linked abc file this is tune number X:1

Blue Eyed Stranger is the tune usually called Country Gardens.

Country Garden appeared on page 37 of the Quaker’s Opera, published in London about 1728. (See http://imslp.org/wiki/The_Quaker’s_Opera_(Walker,_Thomas)