It is a common one, I keep hearing a bit of it in my head, and that means it is probably time to learn it.
Please excuse the pitiful playing…
Thanks in advance
Sounds like “The Sally Gardens” in A, Phill. It’s probably more commonly played in G. And it’s different from the song “Down By the Sally Gardens”.
Perfect, thanks MTG. I knew someone would spot it from that execrable clip - though that was by memory so I am not disappointed by the wrong key. Saves me plowing through my abc’s one by one.
There really ought to be a tune search facility - though playing it in the wrong key would flummox that, as would my inability to transcribe. 
Actually, TunePal is pretty good for exactly that, wrong key and all. You should try it.
What a wonderful idea. Unfortunately my playing was not good enough for tunepal. I defeated modern technology 
The tune search on tunedb (on Woodenflute) will let you search by the first bar or so of a rough ABC transcription, and can be set to search for that pitch-pattern in any other key. The tunedb database isn’t as big as some, though. I tested it with the pattern “eaeacac”, set for reel and Amaj and transpose - it didn’t get The Sally Gardens on the first level search, but it was top hit when I clicked “widen search”.
Thats another good idea Jem, but I would need to know that I was in the wrong key, and that I was playing a reel . If I had to make guesses and feed in my poor transcription I might need to try quite a few tunes before finding the right one. I took the lazy impose-on-others way. I looked up the dots and could hear the tune as I read the dots - so I must have heard the tune lots. If bits are floating unbidden through my brain then that just confirms it.
I was quite excited when MTG mentioned tunePal, and disappointed when it failed; but I guess the human brain beats all at pattern-matching.
You wouldn’t actually need to know you were in the wrong key - assume you are and search that way (entering the key you are noodling in is the only essential), then view the choices hit upon and play through them (in their normal key, of course) until you find the right/closest one.That’s the beauty of it - and tunepal would do something similar if it recognised your noodle. Not knowing it was a reel would also only be a minor handicap - you’d have to weed out tunes in other rhythms. But surely you can tell if you’re in a duple or triple time signature? So starting with reels for 2 or 4 counts and jigs for triplet counts would get you a fair way.
You obviously do not understand the depth of my musical ignorance . This is not unusual, since you are so at ease in the musical world that keys and rhythms are as obvious to you as breathing. This is far from true for me - I would not lay money on my ability to detect duple or triple time - especially working from memory. Similarly guessing a key (other than that marked on the whistle) is a magic too arcane for me - I am amazed quite often by this ability. For example, I learnt ‘Both Sides The Tweed’ without thinking about the key. When I started playing it at a session none had heard it, but few asked what key, most just guessed. By the end of the first run through there was a pretty respectable collective sound being made. It might be a trivial tune to those in the know, but to me that is still an opaque mystery. Sometimes I wonder if I have the musical equivalent of dyslexia (no offense intended to those that have the real thing).
A lot of my music is done by copying what I hear (with lots of clues about pitch from notation), and then trying to fit it with either a metronome or with what other musicians are doing. Sometimes I succeed.
Phill, I can’t think of a better way to go about it at the start. 
Yes, I can see why you say that (thanks for the encouragement), and if that is where I am up to then so be it. But I find a frustrating gap between the theory and the practice. I understand about modes, scales, intervals, and rhythms on an intellectual level, but none of that seems to connect with what I hear. So when someone says ‘just type in your abc, say what key it is in and what rhythm’ it implies hours of perhaps fruitless effort… and I feel stupid. This is probably a consequence of my coming late (with a partially ossified brain 
) to music.
Nothing wrong the way you asked for help, or that you asked for help. No apologies needed. This is a sociable musical forum, no? The more is asked the better it will get. Life often is already too dominated by robots.
On a whistle, key is reasonably easy - if you play it on a D whistle without accidentals, it’s probably in D. The relative minors all sound pretty obviously minor. And so on, I think. The people at your session were probably playing by ear at least as much as thinking consciously of key. My favourite question isn’t “what key is it in?” but “what note does it start on?”