Flings; Favorite Jig

Whistle
1

I’m away for the weekend and during practice session (with my latest bag of most-played travel whistles, i.e., Copeland soprano D, Low G, Low D, Burke sop. D, Abell delrin sop. D, Seery sop. D), I made some observations.

First, there is a classification of tunes, i.e., Fling, that I hardly ever see in tunebooks (I have with me Foinn Seisiun - Session Tune Sets- Book 1 and a Mel Bay tune book). Indeed, I only have two flings in my repertoire, Some Say the Devil is Dead and Cis Ni Lithain. It seems that these are played with a good deal of “swing” to them and are differentiated by the rhythm and accenting of certain notes or phrases. I notice that I am driven to a sort of dance of various parts of me whilst playing to a degree beyond any other types of tunes. My daughter caught me this afternoon kind of high-stepping or kicking one leg up and out while playing Cis Ni Lithain, one of my favorite tunes.

Can any of the more musically erudite among you define for me what makes a fling a fling and why there don’t appear to be as many of them written down as the other forms (e.g., jig, reel, hornpipe, polka, air, slide)?

I also realized after uears of playing that I actually do have a single favorite jig - The Rolling Waves, aka, The Lonesome Jig. This is filled with crans and rolls and beautiful phrasing (esp the triplet combinations)and is difficult to play well and smoothly at some speed. After all these years I’ve really slowed it down to correctly get the full ornamentation and yet play smoothly and with rhythm. It is a spectacular tune, a version of which can be found on the Portland album by Kevin Burke and Michael O’Domhnaill.

It still amazes me how I still re-discover the wonderful feel of these tunes. And I also re-appreciate the teaching of Bill Ochs, who made great efforts not only to specifically teach but to immerse in and expose students to the entire experience of this music.

Oh well, back to playing.

Philo

2

First, there is a classification of tunes, i.e., Fling, that I hardly ever see in tunebooks (I have with me Foinn Seisiun - Session Tune Sets- Book 1 and a Mel Bay tune book). Indeed, I only have two flings in my repertoire, Some Say the Devil is Dead and Cis Ni Lithain. It seems that these are played with a good deal of “swing” to them and are differentiated by the rhythm and accenting of certain notes or phrases. I notice that I am driven to a sort of dance of various parts of me whilst playing to a degree beyond any other types of tunes. My daughter caught me this afternoon kind of high-stepping or kicking one leg up and out while playing Cis Ni Lithain, one of my favorite tunes.

Philo

Phil,

There’s good reason for you wanting to kick up one leg. The fling rhythm (highland fling)is such for exactly that purpose. If you’re familiar with strathspeys (variation on a reel) you’ll note that the fling rhythm is akin to the strathspey, but doubled (16th notes alternating with 8th). You probably aren’t seeing many in tune books because it is a Scottish dance composition. My tunes books for Highland and Smallpipes are filled with them, while my tune books for Irish trad. are not.

Teri

3

Thank you Terry!

4

There are a few flings in circulation not all that many but Love will you marry me springs to mind, Kitty got a clinking, coming from the fair and a rake of unnamed ones. I was just playing one which was actually composed by Terry ‘Cuz’ Teehan which works well on the whistle [even though in A. Only during the week I wrote down another one fro ma Willie Clancy whistle tape, one I hadn’t come across before to be honest so I scribbled it down while at it.
They are there but you have to go out looking for them.

5

and thanks Peter!