About The John Buttrey Manuscript. The John Buttrey Manuscript is a massive hand-written book of about 1000 tunes compiled for the use of a British fife and drum band in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It was created in England and brought to Canada in the first half of the 19th century but possibly not by John Buttrey himself. It is none-the-less a good representation of the sorts of music that would have been heard in a garrison town like York between about 1784 and 1820. There are duty tunes, marches, jigs and reels and song tunes - along with harmony parts for hundreds of the pieces. In the margins and end pages are some wonderful pen and ink and watercolour sketches of various subjects and scenes. Although the book is primarily written out for the fife it also contains a fingering chart for the fiddle on one page.