Seeing as we don’t do this often enough here (by God, can’t remember the last time I saw one posted!), here’s a neat little reel that I’ve been tinkering with lately (this is my version of it):
no “reel” reason (ok…bad pun!) for using 2/4…I’m just so used to it from my F&D days that reels are easier to read for me when I can see them in 2/4, so I usually put them that way.
Honestly, same thing…cut time, common time or 2/4 for the purposes of reading…timing is different of course, but I don’t know (or haven’t ever heard) how it applies to the Irish tunes…in F&D, made a world of difference (as it does in the classical music realm, too).
so feel free in your ABC program to make the time into C or C| to your preference.
History of the tune? I got this from a manuscript of fife/piccolo tunes, c. 1880. It’s also called “Molly, Put The Kettle On” but I like the Baubee name better.
I’ll be posting another soon that I got from the same book and bookend with this one as a set. It’s also in G.
You should have posted it in something REALLY funky like 2/1.
I’ve always seen the title as “Jennnie’s Bawbee,” as a transcription of the Scots pronunciation of “baby.” I don’t think it’s a last name. With that title, it’s a not-uncommon reel in Scottish trad music.
On 2002-05-08 19:12, David Migoya wrote:
It’s also called “Molly, Put The Kettle On” …
David and Stuart, it would appear you’ve never heard the old nursery rhyme “Polly put the kettle on.” I’m stunned. I guess it can’t be well known on this side of the Atlantic, but it’s been very familiar to every British child born in the past couple of centuries. Anyway that’s the tune for it.
Polly put the kettle on
Polly put the kettle on
Polly put the kettle on
We’ll all have tea
(B part)
Sookie take it off again
Sookie take it off again
Sookie take it off again
They’ve all gone away.
Inspiring stuff, but it does make a nice little dance tune.
I’ve always seen the name spelled ‘Sukey’, except when it’s spelled ‘Suki’, but the latter is when it comes from Japan. I do actually wonder, if anyone knows whether Sukey is a diminuitive of another name? Every historical Sukey I can locate appears to have had that as her full name, but there have been other examples of diminutives becoming names in their own right, so that doesn’t say much…
I also wonder whether the name is actually currently popular anywhere? It’s pretty much unheard of in this corner of the U.S. (except in fiction, for those of us that read… )
Yeah, I’ve seen this tune called Jennie’s Bawbee. But now it seems the meaning of “bawbee” is incorrect; someone on the flute list mentioned that it was the smallest Scottish coin “in olden days.”
But I’ve now found the REAL definition: a “bawbee” was a debased copper coin equal to a halfpenny (so not the smallest denomination) in or about the reign of James V. But the site where I found that definition equivocates as to whether the word is a corrption of the French “bas billon,” which means “debased,” or if it’s from the name of the laird of Sillebawby, who was a mintmaster.
Jenny’s bawbee, they say, is her “marriage portion.” In modern American English, we might call the tune “Diddly squat.”
