Aikbank is on the line of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway, which was constructed in the early 1840s; in 1841 Rook and his family moved to Whitehaven, where in 1844, he started working as Art Master at nearby St.
[2] The title reads MULTUM IN PARVO, or a Collection of old English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh tunes, for the... (there is then an illustration of various musical instruments, a fiddle, Northumbrian pipes, a trumpet, an accordion, a flute and a piccolo) ... containing upwards of 1260 airs, selected by John Rook, Waverton.
The selection of tunes is both wide and varied, and gives a detailed picture of the repertoire of a knowledgeable musician, who seems to have had access to an extensive collection of sources.
Most of the tunes in the early part of the manuscript, numbering several hundred, are marked with the letter "G", apparently referring to his grandfather Joseph, also a musician.
Two tunes, Paddy O'Rafferty and Horse and away to Newmarket correspond to parts of the versions in the Lionel Winship manuscript, from Wark, in North Tynedale, suggesting that both compilers learned them from the same source.
Cut and Dry Dolly,[4] while broadly similar to Peacock's version, has a range going higher than the single octave compass of the unkeyed smallpipe chanter, and an extra strain not found in Peacock; two very similar versions are found in a manuscript compiled by the Ancient Melodies Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne it is known that James Reid and his sister Elizabeth Oliver were two of the informants when the Committee was collecting the music.
It thus seems that an older single octave 4-strain version which was known to Bewick, was elaborated before 1840 by some other piper, possibly one of the Reid family, to use the extra compass of the keyed chanter.
The slow 6/8 march Squire Dacre's, often called Noble Squire Dacre elsewhere, commemorates a local noble family; having 4 strains, rather than the two found in the Northumbrian Minstrelsy, it is the most elaborate version known, though similar to a three-strain version in Riddell's Scotch, Galwegian and Border Tunes, from Moffat, a little north of the Border.
The fact that John Peel is marked "from memory", suggests that the other tunes were taken predominantly from printed or manuscript copies, which is corroborated by the closeness of some of them to known earlier versions.
Among these are a variation set on Lasses likes nae Brandy, deriving indirectly from a composition by David Young, in the Macfarlane manuscript,[7] probably via a later printed collection by McLean - the following tune, a minuet, is attributed to McLean; a variation set on Further Benn the Welcomer, deriving from a version in Flores Musicae, or The Scots Musician, published in 1773, of which a copy is in the Wighton Collection at the University of Dundee; and a tune here called Nea Good Luck, but generally known as Up and war them all Willie, a version deriving from Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion of about 1750.
[8] Rook's title may derive from the fact that this tune, and the song in 6/8 time, Nae Good Luck, use the same passamezzo moderno ground bass.