This piece originally appeared in John Playford’s ‘The Dancing Master’ (first published 1661) which was a manual for dancing, complete with sheet music and instructions for how to do the steps for each dance. It is thought that the term ‘maggot’ simply means ‘favourite’, though it has also been argued that it means the same as the modern term ‘earworm’, meaning a tune that gets stuck in your head and won’t go away!
In recent years this melody is best known from its inclusion in several Jane Austen TV and film adaptations, including BBC’s Pride & Prejudice (1995) and Emma (1996).