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Trunkles

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Source: RK Schofield's mss KWS/2/5 Bledington p 8 at VWML
Date collected: Aug 1925, Aug 1937

The tune, Trunkles , was played for a morris dance in a number of places across the South Midlands.  Both the B and C musics are danced by opposite couples in pairs. In the B music they salute and return to place. In the C music they cross the set with a different step each time. The name of the tune is derived from Trincalo’s Reel, composed by Charles Dibden in 1769 for a production of The Tempest. (1)

The notation of the B music from Charles Benfield makes it clear that, in groups of 2 notes, the first was played twice as long as the second. Similar tunes are often notated in 4/4, with the 1st note 3 times the length of the 2nd.

Reference
(1) Heaney, Michael (2023), The Ancient English Morris Dance, p 220, Oxford, Archaeopress.

Note by Charles Menteith