Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a selection of Songs From The Secret Garden, a UK production from a while back. I learned Sandy Boys from Dwight Diller, but I suspect he'd say I rock and rolled it, and that it should be more of a march. The second tune is an actual march, or was used that way once people got it out of the opera Atalanta by Handel, who I'd think probably got the tune off some other people in the first place. I found it in the early 1990s in the 1798 Northampton, MA publication The American Musical Miscellany where it first appeared with these words. Local musician Elias Mann most likely did the arrangement, or at least his descendants remember it being one of his more memorable musical accomplishments. It went from there to a number of other places including the 7 shape book Christian Harmony and from there into the modern 4 shape collection Shenandoah Harmony. My dear friend Eliza Carthy recorded a lovely rendition recently. There are other verses, of course- I have some recollection of figuring out they're by Barnabas Bidwell from out in Berkshire County, and came together for a theatrical production from his student days at Yale in the 1780s, but I can't remember why I think that or where I came across anything suggesting it.
Here's a selection of Songs From The Secret Garden, a UK production from a while back. I learned Sandy Boys from Dwight Diller, but I suspect he'd say I rock and rolled it, and that it should be more of a march. The second tune is an actual march, or was used that way once people got it out of the opera Atalanta by Handel, who I'd think probably got the tune off some other people in the first place. I found it in the early 1990s in the 1798 Northampton, MA publication The American Musical Miscellany where it first appeared with these words. Local musician Elias Mann most likely did the arrangement, or at least his descendants remember it being one of his more memorable musical accomplishments. It went from there to a number of other places including the 7 shape book Christian Harmony and from there into the modern 4 shape collection Shenandoah Harmony. My dear friend Eliza Carthy recorded a lovely rendition recently. There are other verses, of course- I have some recollection of figuring out they're by Barnabas Bidwell from out in Berkshire County, and came together for a theatrical production from his student days at Yale in the 1780s, but I can't remember why I think that or where I came across anything suggesting it.
