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Description: | One of the 'big' tunes, named after the Irishman Jack Lattin (1711-31) who died as a result of his exertions in winning a wager in which he danced 'from Castle Browne To Morristown'. Jack was a friend of Larry Grogan, also commemorated by a tune (Vickers No. 297). The first known appearances of Jack's tune are in an Irish publication and a Scottish manuscript both dated 1734 so the tune, probably composed soon after his death in commemoration, had already begun its travels by then. It has since entered the traditional repertoires of the Irish, Northumbrian, Border and Highland pipes, is found in Scottish, Irish and English fiddle collections, and was used by Burns for his song The Lass Of Ecclefechan. It is the foundation of many variation sets which differ from each other as much as the spelling of Jack Lattin varies from one to another. 'Jackey Layton' is the Northumbrian pipers' title, and there are good smallpipe versions in the Peacock and Clough collections. The longest sets are in 18th century Scottish fiddle collections, the Brown manuscript version having 25 strains. Vickers' version is simple but good. It has three out of the four original strains (the original's strain 3 is missing) and a fourth strain of its own.This tune forms part of the The William Vickers' manuscript, dated 1770. The Index to the manuscript shows that part of the book is now missing, but the very substantial surviving part contains 580 tunes, or 'Country Dances' as the author calls them. It is not easy to pinpoint Vickers's location as his name is not uncommon, but he may be the William Vickers who shows up in genealogical records as an 'Officer of Exise' [sic] in Newcastle. It is fairly safe to assume that the collection was made in North East England because although it contains a lot of Scottish and English tunes it has local material which is not found in other sources. ; 18th century tune book compiled by William Vickers | Rights holder: | rights holder : Society of Antiquaries | Temporal: | start=1761;end=1800; | Source: | Folk Archive Resource North East | Identifier: | farne:R0300302 | Go to resource |
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