"The Spanish Gipsy", also known as "The Fairy Queen" and "Come Follow Me" is an English country dance in 6/4 time and D Major.
"The Spanish Gypsy” appears in John Playford's Dancing Master, 1st edition (1651, as “Spanish Jeepsie”) and in all subsequent editions through the final 18th (1728), Playford’s Musick's Delight on the Cithren (1666), The Musical Miscellany (1729), Walsh's Dancing Master (as "Fairy Queen") and several ballad operas, such as The Bay's Opera (1727), and The Fashionable Lady (1730) (where is appears as the tune for the song "Come, follow, follow me"). Chappell (1859) states the title is from a ballad appearing in a play by Middleton and Rowley, called "The Spanish Gipsie" (1623). It became better known as "Fairy Queen" and "Come, follow, follow me" from other ballads written to the air. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, in their 2007 book Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture convincingly argue that Playford’s air did not originally accompany the “Come follow your leader” song, and that it in fact did not accompany any song in the play. Rather it was a melody that accompanied a dance without singing that occurs in scene 5.3 when four couples are on stage, the last dance of the work.
It was printed in Barnes's English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2 (2005), Barlow's The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford’s Dancing Master (1985), Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 1 (1859) and Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984).