Dinney Delaney's into Yellow Wattle (If The Cap Fits)

Whistle
1

Somebody help me figure this one out. I’ve been listening to If the Cap Fits, by Kevin Burke. (You should be listening to it, too, if you haven’t.)

Track 2 starts with a single jig (or slide; 12/8 meter), called Dinney Delaney’s (also known as The Old Hag in the Kiln). Burke then goes into a double jig (6/8 meter) called The Yellow Wattle*, which I first learned as John William’s Jig, with slightly different B part. StevieJ tells me that it’s a Micho Russel tune.

Anyway, it is the transition that has me stumped. I’ve been listening and counting it out over and over and what I come up with is that Burke just blends the two tunes into one another. It’s a really subtle shift that catches me by surprise still, after all he is going from 12/8 to 6/8 and thus shifting the strong beats. (I think he does that by accenting Dinney Delaney’s almost into a double jig…)

Here is how I hear it:
Dinney Delaney’s (D-mixolydian, 1 sharp)
A A ( A2D ~D3 A2G EFG | A2D ~D3 G2A GED |… )
B B ( dcA AGE ~C3 ABc … )
A A
B B
A’ A’ (A2D ~D3 A2B G2B | A2B G2A E2G EDD | I think…)
B B=A of Yellow Wattle
[here, halfway through the repeat of the B part, he just starts playing the second half of the A part of The Yellow Wattle.]
Yellow Wattle (D-mix):
B B
A A etc, etc…

The transitions sounds to me something like this:

(Dinney’s B:)
dcA AGE ~C3 ABc | dcA AGE dcA AGE | dcA AGE ~A3 AGE | D2A cde | dcA GED | and into Yellow Wattle B-part…

The stuff in italics is sort of a mysterious mix of tunes, and after it, it’s clearly the Yellow Wattle, end of A part. So, the effect is that you don’t know if you’ve been listening to the B part of DD’s or to the A part of the YW. It’s like, in a dream, somebody you’ve been talking to suddenly turns into somebody else.

Is that wild, or what?

Provided, of course, that I haven’t gone off my rocker. So I’d be grateful if those with better ears than I can confirm my impressions here… Thanks.


*) Wattle, n., A fleshy, wrinkled, often brightly colored fold of skin hanging from the neck or throat, characteristic of certain birds, such as chickens or turkeys, and some lizards. Just in case you wondered.

/bloomfield


[ This Message was edited by: bloomfield on 2002-07-19 11:50 ]

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excellent question, Bloomfield; I don’t have the CD but having done it a few times myself, the subtleties of blending one type of jig into another within a set of tunes can be tricky because you have to get the tempos and the accents just right.

BTW, “wattles” are also a kind of marsh grass that can be dried out and woven to make baskets or even housing-ever hear of “daub-and-wattle” construction?

3

On 2002-07-19 10:49, Pat Cannady wrote:

BTW, “wattles” are also a kind of marsh grass that can be dried out and woven to make baskets or even housing-ever hear of “daub-and-wattle” construction?

Yeah, now that you mention it. I didn’t think of that. Somehow I 've always associated that title with flabby fleshy things… :slight_smile:

4

I tried to listen to the tunes to find out what was going on. I just got confused. I kept hearing this one part over and over alternating with something else. So I looked the tunes up at JC’s. The version of Wattle that I printed doesn’t exactly match Burke’s but there is one that’s closer. Anyway, the second part of Dinny is hardly distinguishable from the first part of Wattle. There are some minor differences in the versions I printed off but it’s clear they’re substantially the thing.

Steve

5

On 2002-07-19 13:49, SteveK wrote:
Anyway, the second part of Dinny is hardly distinguishable from the first part of Wattle

hmmm, I don’t know Burke’s versions but would think that’s a bit of a bold statement given the versions I know.

6

On 2002-07-19 14:10, Peter Laban wrote:
hmmm, I don’t know Burke’s versions but would think that’s a bit of a bold statement given the versions I know.

Maybe “essentially the same” is too strong but close enough to be confusing. The first, third and fifth measures are identical in the printed versions so that the same phrase keeps repeating throughout in both tunes. I’d have to go back to the recording to check them to make sure they’re the same as Burke’s. Obviously, I can’t comment about the versions you play.

Steve

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“If the cap fits” - takes me back! Time was when I knew that album practically by heart. You’re quite correct Bloomfield, he switches between the two tunes by stitching the two parts together in the middle. That was obvious to me the first time I heard it, but then I was very familiar with his version of Dinny Delaney’s from the Bothy Band. Bit of a gimmick but the effect is playful, and fun.

He was prone to this kind of thing (way back in the old days, when Kevin Burke was very skinny and Paddy Keenan was distinctly podgy. How things change. (Hmm I was a bit skinnier myself 25 years ago!)). On the same album, first track, he switches from “A Kerry Reel” into “Good Morning to Your Nightcap” by taking the halfnote E that finishes the one as the halfnote E that starts the other. And on Promenade he switches from a hornpipe version of “Old Torn Petticoat” into the reel halfway through the repeat of the second part.

8

Peter, you gotta go out and get that recording, and let me know what’s going on. Should I email you an MP3 of the track? It’s a great bit of music and lots of C#-rolls in it. :roll:

In defense of SteveK, Burke certainly emphasises the similarities here. There is that repeated dcA AGE phrase in Dinney(B) and it also goes dcA AGE G2A GED (thats second measure of the B part). That’s not entirely dissimilar to the phrase from Yellow Wattle that goes …dcA GED | dcA ABG | ABG AGE | D2A cde | dcA GED :expressionless:

I know it’s harly scientific to cite to my own denseness, but Burke certainly had me confused trying to hear the end of one tune and the beginning of the next… :slight_smile:

\

/bloomfield


[ This Message was edited by: Bloomfield on 2002-07-19 14:44 ]

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On 2002-07-19 14:26, StevieJ wrote:
“If the cap fits” - takes me back! Time was when I knew that album practically by heart. You’re quite correct Bloomfield, he switches between the two tunes by stitching the two parts together in the middle. That was obvious to me the first time I heard it, but then I was very familiar with his version of Dinny Delaney’s from the Bothy Band. Bit of a gimmick but the effect is playful, and fun.

Steve, our posts just crossed. I was hoping you’d chime in (in fact I filched the album cover jpg from Brother Steve’s :blush:).

I guess I am just starting down the road to perdition, I mean, to The Tradition. I had been listening to it casually, and while I always got a sort of “at sea” feeling in the middle of that track, I often feel that way, anyhow. So when I started playing along on Yellow Wattle and then learning Dinney Delaney’s (what a great tune that is, too, it sounds really old, like Hag at the Churn), I realized that something was fishy. Cool!

Can you tell me if I am right in feeling that he plays DD with a decidedly double-jiggy feel, and not the more streched-out slide-feel?

(I don’t know what my boss would think if he read my posts here on c & f…)

/bloomfield

[ This Message was edited by: Bloomfield on 2002-07-19 14:41 ]

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The cap never fitted me somehow, I don’t quite know why, there’s something in the playing that doesn’t appeal to me at all. That’s why I don’t really know it.
Interesting by the way I loved the Bothy Band but can’t really enjoy Burke, Keenan or Molloy’s post Bothy solo projects.

I knew offcourse there were similarities between the two but they are not quite identical. The big feature of the turn of the Hag at the Kiln are the long C naturals that are wholly absent from the first part of the Yellow Wattle. Giving both tunes a different character despite the similarities.

I know The Hag at the Kiln from the 1899 cylinder recording by Dinny Delaney and versions by John Kelly[who recorded it on a very obscure Gael Linn EP, for the first time naming the tune after Delaney] and Pat Mitchell and the Yellow Wattle as Micho Russell played it [he learned it from Patrick Flanagan, his neighbour]. Planxty recorded the tune but it never made onto any of the official albums, it was realeased on the compilation ‘The High kings of Tara’ around 1981.
Both are among my all time favourite tunes, especially the Yellow Wattle. The C rolls go lovely on the pipes and they are on the c nat, just to avoid confusion.
Anyway it is not completely uncommon to go all fuzzy going from one into the next. Try get your head around Seamus Ennis going from Hand me down the Tackle [the pure drop] into The Flax in Bloom on the pure drop lp. Mistake or brilliance. Or both.

Denis Delaney was by the way a blind piper from Ballinasloe, a number of cylinder recording of his magnificent playing survive. There are a good few stories in circulation about him, like how he was an excellent judge of cattle despite his blindness. It is generally written in the books he ran a music hall, a shebeen or something like that. Breandan Breatnach put me straight on that one once, it was actually a brothel.



[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-07-20 04:07 ]

[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-07-20 05:53 ]

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Great info, thanks Peter. I’d really like to hunt down the Micho Russel recording of Yellow Wattle. Do you know if it’s on one of the CDs (I only have Whistling Ambassador, so far, and it’s not on there).

On the Yellow Wattle, do you play the long Ds at the beginning of measures 1, 5 etc. low or high?

12

Hm, I think Micho’s Yellow Wattle was on the old Topic solo one, if youi cannot get hold of that I have him taped but you’ll have to bear listening to a piper playing with him [not sure I want to hear that tape actually]. I remember he played The piper’s chair with it.
I start the tune on high ds dcA AGE A3 ABc dcA ABc dcA GED etc low D crans followed by low C nats for the second part [nice tonal effect]also note the c’ s you come down on are flat and the ones going up to are sharp


[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-07-22 11:37 ]