I believe I first heard this tune a few years ago, played by Rachel Eddy and Adam Hurt in a recording of a 2014 jam at the Clifftop festival on YouTube. Because I haven’t been to many in-person jams since the start of the pandemic, I’ve been getting most of my new tunes from YouTube or Slippery Hill, both of which contain more than a lifetime’s worth of tunes.

This one comes from the playing of Lee Triplett (1897–1981), of Clay County, West Virginia. You can hear him playing it at https://www.slippery-hill.com/content/sailing-over-england, where it sounds like he’s playing it with the high part first, in the opposite order of how I learned it. That’s also how the Canotes taught it in their stringband class in 2010, a recording of which you can find at https://stringband.mossyroof.com/, so the Rachel Eddy & Adam Hurt version seems to be the odd one out. I like just that little extra bit of syncopation in this version, though.

I do wonder what the title refers to. Hot air balloons? Zeppelins? And which England? There’s a town in Arkansas named England, apparently.

I’m trying something new this month and linking to a transcription of this tune in Michael Eskin’s ABC Tools, where you can play the tune in a web browser, looping and adjusting the speed as you like using the “Tune Trainer” feature: https://baz.link/sailingoverengland Let me know in the comments if you find this feature useful, and if so I’ll try to make sure to add it for future tunes, and maybe go back and add it to previous ones.

—Josh