Some notes on Leslie's March

 The Potomac Valley Scottish Fiddle Club has retired its newsletter, but if you have an idea for an article, we'll post it here in our blog, which will then be reposted to Facebook.

Inaugurating this, David Anker has given us some great info on the tune Leslie's March:

Hi fellow Scottish fiddlers,

Happy New Year, y'all!

I greatly enjoyed our jam session last month, where one of the tunes played was "Leslie's March". Some of you may recall that I asked (via Chat) whether this march had a connection with the Battle of Marston Moor, the largest battle of the English Great Civil War.  Since no one had a definite answer there, I decided to research it.  I found a book entitled "Scottish Songs Prior to Robert Burns" online.  Here is the URL for it:

           https://deriv.nls.uk/dcn23/9449/94499987.23.pdf 

You can see that on p. 32 of this book, there is a song "General Leslie's March to Longmarston Moor", and the musical score for it is very similar to our tune "Leslie's March" on page V-31.  The tune in the book is essentially our tune with some ornamentation added.

This is one of those Scottish tunes which have some history connected with them.  In this case, it is very

important history -- clearly very important in English history and, arguably, very important in the history of the development of Constitutional government in the English-speaking world, and even in the history of Constitutional government in the world as a whole.  The English Great Civil War, in which Parliament defeated the crown, established limits on Royal power and Royalty's dependence on Parliament.

This war was an English civil war much more than a Scottish civil war.  There was an influential group of 

Scottish aristocrats called the Covenanters, and apparently both sides in this civil war sought for the help of the Covenanters.  It was the Roundheads (Parliamentarians) who got this help at a critical time, when it looked as if the Cavaliers (Royalists) were close to winning.  It was at the Battle of Marston Moor that there were 3 armies on the Roundhead side and two armies on the Cavalier side, and one of those 3 armies was provided by the Covenanters, and lead by Alexander Leslie.

The circumstances surrounding the interactions of the Covenanters and other Scots with the two English sides were complicated, and partly involved the Church in the two kingdoms and its place in the power structure of society.  For certain historical reasons, the English preferred their church to be subordinate to the state, whereas the Scots preferred the reverse.  The historian G. M. Trevelyan in his "History of England" describes this and how, at the crucial juncture when the Roundheads desperately needed help from the Scots, these differences were papered over with ambiguous language in a written agreement (called "The Solemn League and Covanant") whereby the Roundheads got this help.  See the attached file for a brief description of these events.

A number of the songs in the book have historical significance, including "The Flowers of the Forest", which we also had.

    

Please feel free to forward this to anyone who you know personally and who you think might be interested. 

     With best wishes for a happy New Year,

     David Anker 

Thanks, David!