William Vickers Manuscript
From 1770-2 a man called William Vickers made a manuscript collection of dance tunes, of which some 580 survive, including both pipe and fiddle tunes. The manuscript is incomplete - 31 pages have not survived, though their contents are listed at the beginning of the book. In the mid-19th century, it belonged to the pipemaker John Baty, of Wark, Northumberland, and it now belongs to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is kept in the Northumberland County Record Office at Woodhorn, Ashington. The man Little is known of the man himself, but something can be learned from the manuscript - he was obviously a keen musician, and many tunes are only playable on the fiddle. The collection does not only contain fiddle tunes however, for instance there are numerous tunes with the characteristic 9-note range and mode of the Border pipes. Several of the tune titles refer to Northumberland and Durham and a lot of other tunes are local to the region, so it is reasonable to conclu ...
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Society Of Antiquaries Of Newcastle Upon Tyne
The Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, the oldest provincial antiquarian society in England, was founded in 1813. It is a registered charity under English law. It has had a long-standing interest in the archaeology of the north-east of England, particularly of Hadrian's Wall, but also covering prehistoric and medieval periods, as well as industrial archaeology. It has also maintained an interest in the traditional music of the north-east of England, and particularly the Northumbrian smallpipes. The Society ma