Product Description
An original tune by John Parry (bardic name: Bardd Alaw), based on the style of old harp tunes, and written by him in Denbigh in 1804. It was first published in The Welsh Harper, being an Extensive Collection of Welsh Airs (1839). Charles J. Mathews, a famous entertainer of the time, set English words for the tune, and it came to be known in English circles as 'Jenny Jones'. According to The Life of Charles James Mathews (Charles Dickens; London 1879), he visited Wales during 1824-1826, and he heard a harper playing the tune in a hotel in Llangollen. He had never heard the tune before and had no idea who had written it, but he liked it so much that he memorised it. In the farmhouse where he was staying, there was a maid called Jenny Jones and a farm servant named David Morgan. Mathews wrote a ballad for the tune, giving it the name of the maid. One night, he said, he sang the ballad in the house of friends in London, and at the end of the evening, an old man came up to him and said that he had written the tune and that it had been awarded a prize in the 1804 Eisteddfod under the title 'Cader Idris'. That old man was Bardd Alaw. Later Mathews used the ballad under the title Jenny Jones in a revue called, He would be an actor, and it is said that the tune was whistled everywhere in the London streets after that. This lovely Welsh melody has been arranged for five-part flute choir (1, 2, 3, Alto, Bass).
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