Don’t be modest, Peter. I’ll bet you can do a mean King of the Fairies!
The Cumann na bPíobairí Collection of Pipe-Friendly Tunes by John Walsh lists the following set dances:
The Ace and Deuce of Pipering (2 versions)
The Blackbird
The Garden of Daisies
The Three Sea Captains
Rodney’s Glory (we can’t talk about this on a family forum)
Poll Ha’Penny (The Garden of Butterflies)
The Drunken Gauger
The Long Note
The Humours of Bandon
A Job of Journeywork
Madam Bonaparte (2 versions)
The Downfall of Paris (would that be you, Joe?)
The Blackthorn Stick
The Hunt
St. Patrick’s Day
Surely that’s enough to keep you busy for a while.
Peter, is that Hurry the Jug as lilted by Tom Lenihan, and, as he recounts, played by Garrett Barry to ensure he got his fair share of the drink? I’ve seen that title attached to other tunes too.
The Tom Lenihan one is also called Billy O’Rourke is the Boy, and was the tune used by Bess Cronin for the Derby Ram; also called Aonach Bhearna na Gaoithe (Rowdle-um-randy), as sung by Seosaimhin ni Bheaglaoich.
There is a specific sort of tune called a set dance, though it is quite rare. The Young Tom Ennis is the only one I can think of at the moment, and its a great tune. They are lovely, slowish and very rymthic tunes, quite nice!
Sorry about the confusion. What I ment was actuall dances accompanied by a set tune. Such as ‘The Drunken Gauger’. Hope that makes this clearer.
Yeah but technically if you have a dance with a set rythem. You could probably dance to any tune. As long as the tune had the same rythem. For instance you wouldn’t accompany a 6/8 dance with a 12/8 slip jig .
Sigh. So what’s the joke about the King of the Faeries? I was going to learn it next from my book. I was looking forward to it. I guess I am doomed to being an ITM nerd. That’s okay. I assume I should not be caught dead playing it, but where I am there is little chance of being caught doing anything so I guess I will forge ahead with my plan. I’ll wait til Nano opens his coffee shop for my public debut.
King of the Fairies has a bad rep because it’s often part of the beginner’s repertory and gets played to agonising death. Shame, really. It’s not so bad a tune.
Ah, this dude John Cullinane wrote a book, a couple of books actually, about dancing. I’ve the “History of Irish Dancing” one where he tells you everything you’d ever want to know about set dances, dancing masters, teachers, etc. etc. etc. The section on set dances shows that the steps danced to them were as distinct as the variations in how they’re played, also that many of them have quite modern elements, being composed in parts only 50 years ago or so, and that the steps are still evolving even though the music is basically set in stone now.
The Chieftones play a version of the Ace and Deuce on LP #7 that comes from Garret Barry, along with a bunch of “fragments” of his playing or some such. This version is in D, heaps of crans in it and I remember someone remarking on how the tune put the piper to the test in every way except this. It’s a great modally tune in D.
Cullinane mentions more set dances in his book, The Funny Tailor, Rub the Bag, etc. etc. Jockey to the Fair. They’re all lovely tunes. Leo Rowsome made sure his students learned them, especially the Blackbird. They’d want to learn more reels, he’d tell them to play the Blackbird again. O’Neill’s Marches and Miscellaneous section has various tunes which may have been set dances in the past, if they’re not being danced now, such as Shuffle and Cut, a slip jig he swiped out of Ryan’s Mammoth Collection. It wound up there because it was labeled as an “Old Irish Dance” I think it said.
Where’s Mount Phoebus, Peter? Sounds like a place where Dionysus would go mountain biking.
Though not composed of unequal bars, I suppose this might be of interest. In PW Joyce’s first collection (the 1875 one), he has a tune “Báta na bPlandaighe”, The Planting Stick. He was informed there was a dance in Connacht pantomiming the planting of potatoes, though in Munster he says, the planting stick is understood as a cabbage planting implement. He learned the tune from his father.
The tune is better known now as Brian O’Lynn. The only real difference in his setting is that the tune repeats the same 4 bars to make up the first part, rather than ascending to the F nat near the end. In case my description is unclear:
B | cAd cAG | EGE GAB | cAd cAG | EAA A2 B | cAd cAG | EGE GAB | cAd cAG | EAA A2 ||
And just for the heck of it, here’s an alternate version of King of the Fairies as collected by John E. Pigot, and included in PW Joyce’s later collection. It has the title “Grá Mo Chroí Do Shean Wig” … Your Old Wig is the Love of My Heart. I imagine this was collected as a song tune, but I like the strength in this version, especially the opening of the 2nd part in comparison to the usual King of the Fairies.
X: 690
T: Gra Mo Chroi Do Shean Wig
M: 4/4
K: Gdor
L: 1/8
Q: 1/4=100
As a beginner who is going to be totally traditional by including this in my (very small) repertoire, it will be a good project for me to compare the version in my book with this one.
By the way, are these two works of PW Joyce accesible on-line? I have just become aware of them and wanted to check a reference in one, but couldn’t find it. I thought since possibly the copyright would be old that they might be on-line. Perhaps there are newer copyrighted editions which are not in the public domain.
Be aware I posted it for it’s relative obscurity, thinking that perhaps those who are tired of the usual tune will find some redemption in a non-standard version.
By the way, are these two works of PW Joyce accesible on-line?
Part of his “Old Irish Folk Music and Song” was available at one time. I did a cursory google just now but didn’t find it. As I recall, only the first part of that collection was put into ABC. His section of songs set to their tune was not transcribed, nor the selections from the Forde and Pigot collections.
Noting the key sig as G dorian automatically makes all the Bs flat so I don’t have to mark them each time. So, yes, you are correct.
I only left it in that key to present it as it appears in the collection. It makes a lot of sense to knock the tune down to E unless we’d like to exercise our unused chanter keys a little :
You can change the low Bs to Es, like the usual version.
