English Dance Tunes: Maiden Lane/Shepherd and Shepherdess

The tune 'Maiden Lane' was first published in London by John Playford in his first volume of the English Dancing Master in 1651. The Maiden Lane area in Covent Garden, London, apparently named after a statue of the Virgin Mary that once stood in the street, was in Playford's day a 'dowdy site of "mean houses"'. The 'Shepherd and Shepherdess' was learnt from the contemporary English country dance band Boldwood, whose Becky Price found it in a dusty manuscript at Cecil Sharp House in London. Recorded in rehearsal at Radcliffe-on-Trent, UK, summer 2019.