The..umm..Pure Drop…ummm…I forget now…
Cheers,
DG
hi
m.
I blame Pat Sky
RORY
So, I take it no one actually knows where the term Pure Drop comes from?
In the mid 70’s a friend of mine asked me to recommend a piping recording that he could take with him as he was leaving Ireland for foreign parts – as I already had a copy of the Pure Drop I suggested it to him, but forgot to tell him that the B side was backwards. Years later, when he returned to Ireland, he told me that he had enjoyed
‘most of the album, but couldn’t really get into the B side – seemed like Ennis was into some very esoteric sound, or was he literally hitting the pure drop too often’.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth, so apparently he still thinks of Seamus Ennis as some kind of Jimi Hendrix-like person.
Next page please!
The Pure Drop is a reference to home made whiskey or poitin (pronounced putcheen). Its made from potatos. It’s a clear liquid (like pure alcohol).
Its quality and consistency differ from greatly from maker to maker. In some cases, it has caused sever sickness, blindness and death (due to contaminants in the mix). The level of alcohol varies between 100% proof and 160% proof, depending on who distills it.
Apart from drinking, it’s also used in the making of fruit cakes (particularly Christmas cakes) and for rubbing on horses and greyhounds before races (it works like Deep Heat or Ben Gay, to warm up the mussles and avoid injury).
In Ireland, it is illegal to distill alcohol without a licence. In old days, poitin was distilled using outdoor stills, usually halfway up a mountain, where bailiffs and peelers (a reference to police, nothing to do with potatos) could be seen coming from far off.
These days, a company in Co. Clare sells Poitin and you can buy it in Shannon and Dublin duty-free for about 30 euros a bottle. But when I was a nipper, no shopkeeper would be seen dead with a bottle of poitin on the premises (although virtually every house in the town had a bottle of it hidden somewhere).
All that to say that the Pure Drop refers to poitin.
Alright! Comes the dawn! Thanks, PJ… (Thanks, eric, via PM)
Now, with regards to music, in Walsh’s tune book,
the Pure Drop tune is attributed to Ennis… Did he write this tune?
Or did he just rename an existing tune, calling it Pure Drop
to give it an ‘edge’ so to speak?
It is also known as:
Bob Steele’s
Hand Me Down My Tackle
Reidy Johnson’s
Tom Steele’s
I believe the references in Walsh’s book are the names of the piper he is taking his version from.
djm
As I’ve always understood it “Pure Drop” refered to distilled spirits that had not yet been “Proofed” (cut with water). Poitin and moonshine would certainly fit that definition.
I think one of the big problems with SE’s repertoire is that he was such a big collector of music that it’ll always be very difficult to distinguish the tunes he collected from those he wrote.
I think one of the big problems with SE’s repertoire is that he was such a big collector of music that it’ll always be very difficult to distinguish the tunes he collected from those he wrote.
What one’s did he write?
It’s a gas thing, you’d be playing tunes for years and then you find out who wrote the things.
Tommy
the Pure Drop tune is attributed to Ennis… Did he write this tune?
No, he did not write this tune. From Ennis’s liner notes:
“The Pure Drop:
This reel has all the hallmarks of an old pipers’ reel in that it includes movements peculiar to chanter-playing and lends itself to drone-blending and comfortably attained harmony-playing. A simpler version appears in O’Neill’s collection (Chicago 1903) with this title and it is played on a 78 of the 1930’s by Sonny Brogan (accordion) under the title ‘Hand me Down the Tackle.’”
HTH
I never heard that Seamus Ennis ever wrote a tune. One of his main sources was O’Neill’s for many, many tunes and settings, especially the hornpipes. In jigs, his distinctive version of the Gold Ring was right out of O’Neill’s, for instance. Ace and Deuce of Piping was another one lifted right out of O’Neill’s.
Ooo! A Moire! 
Are we bored?
djm
For some reason, this thread just brings that out in a person. 
Joseph-no regs yet?eh!
As usual, Kevin, always comes in kind of late…