Robinson: Row well you marriners

 A nautical dance

Thomas Robinson (c 1560 – c 1610) was a lutenist who published a tutor for lute (The Schoole of Musicke) in 1603. This piece is the third of a number of his works that I have transcribed for low-G ukulele, and will be posting over the next few weeks.

This is an arrangement of a well-known dance that is still performed today, sometimes under the title "Row well ye mariners". 

I have appended the melody of the original dance to the uke arrangement, so you can see how they relate to each other. Robinson’s version agrees quite closely with the later dance tunes, but is much more syncopated, so probably not intended as an accompaniment to dancers. Bar 5, an ornament of the bass line, seems not to be part of the dance.

You can see and download a pdf of my arrangement here.

Happy plucking!

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Footnotes

SOURCE: Thomas Robinson, 1603, The Schoole of Musike (f. 33? or I2). Facsimile at: https://ks4.imslp.net/files/imglnks/usimg/9/9a/IMSLP247275-PMLP401021-Thomas_Robinson_School.pdf

The dance melody: Playford's School of English Dance (1650).

There is a facsimile of keyboard version arranged by Cecil J Sharp here: http://round.soc.srcf.net/files/mariners.pdf.

Roger Ruthen has made an accessible arrangement for uke (key of F) from the melody in Playford's dance book here: https://pdfminstrel.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/row_well_ye_mariners.pdf