Happy Hannah (1898)... Theodore Havermeyer Northrop

[Steve Harrison]

As well as banjo, I also play accordion, mainly Celtic and English traditional folk dance tunes. I came across this piece described as a cakewalk.

To my ears it's very Celtic influenced, possibly based on a traditional tune, and is more of a hornpipe than a cakewalk. It's got some nice triplet passages and cracks along at a good pace. Maybe it should be re-titled 'Happy Hannah's Hornpipe'?  The score and midi are now in the library....Steve.

[Jody Stecher]

I found it in a the Music Library and gave a listen.   The descending diddly-dums are reminiscent of some of James Hill's  Tyneside fiddle compositions. There's a rum pum pum phrase  ending making it hornpipe-ish and also aligning it with some Scottish marches, and there's a Scots Snap (short long) ending to the first phrase that is quasi-strathspey kinda sorta.. All these rhythms can be found in other cakewalks and other 19th century American banjo pieces. One that comes to mind immediately is Eli Green's Cakewalk which has the same "scots snap" ending to its first line.   Melodically I don't hear anything that sounds Scottish or Irish. The early American banjo tutors (books) were full of Scottish and Irish melodies but I'm not finding anything like them in Happy Hannah.  So I don't think there is a traditional tune that this is based on.  I think Northrop grabbed a ladleful  of typical bits and pieces and cobbled them together and it turned out that he had dipped the ladle in a part of the Component Pot that had a concentration of Celtic and NE English motifs.