Transcription notes for "24 Country Dances for the Year 1805" by Mr. Gray,
published 1805 in London at Thompson's Music Warehouse.

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It's not clear whether "Mr Gray" wrote both the tunes and the dances, or just
the  dances.   It was common practice at the time to use tunes without giving
any credits to the musicians.  So I've included a commented-out "%C" line  in
the tunes that mentions Gray, to help search sites find these tunes using his
name, while not explicitly listing him as the composer.  You can change  this
in your copy if you like.

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Some of the dance descriptions  use  phrase  separators  that  are  mostly  a
horizontal line with 2 dots above and/or below.  These are notated in the ABC
as ":|", "|:" or ":|:, i.e., rotated by 90 degrees.   Modern  notation  would
replace  these  with  the  bar  numbers (1-8, 9-16, etc.) aligned at the left
edge.  These symbols are used inconsistently, as was common at the time.

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The music typically has no initial repeat, and a  final  double  repeat  that
looks  like  :||: as was common back then.  The ABC transcriptions have |: at
the start if there is no pickup note, and :| at the end.  All  the  tunes  in
this  collection  have  two  4-  or 8-bar strains, both repeated.  A few have
phrases with odd length.

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Common abbreviations in the dance descriptions:

C.    Couple
Cu.   Couple
D.o   (unknown, the 'o' is a superscript above the dot)
Gen:  Gentleman
Gent: Gentleman
Jst   first (using 'J' as '1')
mid:  middle