"Argiers" is also known as "Argeers" or “The Wedding Night”.
The tune dates at least to 1651, when it was first published in Playford’s
first edition of The English Dancing Master, with the alternate title
“The Wedding Night”. Williamson (1976) identifies the melody as a morris dance
tune from southern England, and suggests that the title might have been a
garbled version of the North African territory of 'Algiers.' This may be true:
the Barbary coast, including Algiers, was long the haven of pirates that
prayed on shipping for many centuries. Shakespeare and Dryden both refer to
Algerian pirates by the term ‘Argiers’, and Luttrell writes: “His majestie hath
granted a brief for making charitable collections for the redemption of
captives at Argiers”. The Barbary pirates remained active into the next
century, and they were a topic of Playford’s day in England, as the country
sought to suppress them in support of trade. Samuel Pepys makes mention in
his diary for November 22nd, 1662:
“News that Sir J. Lawson hath made up a peace now with Tunis and Tripoli, as well as Argiers, by which he will come home very highly honoured.”‘Algiers’ was also apparently in common use in the 1660’s as a term meaning a ‘haven for thieves’. A London pamphlet issued in 1662 titled “The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith. Commonly called 'Mal Cutpurse'", purported to be the ‘diary’ of an infamous Fleet Street criminal. She relates that her house received all kinds of stolen goods—“My House was the Algiers where (thieves) trafficked in safety without the Bribes to those Fellows (i.e. thief-catchers, the policemen of the era) ...". It is printed in Sharp's Country Dance Tunes (1909) and Williamson's English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Fiddle Tunes (1976). It was recorded on the Country Capers CD by The New York Renaissance Band and Hesperus on Early American Roots (1997). |