What’s the pipes reel in Planxty’s Jolly Beggar Man?
I don’t have the recording to hand but I think it might be the Wise Maid:
Thanks!
I have the CD here and about the reel they say
“This is followed by a reel learned form Sean Keane. The name of the reel seems to have been lost. Sean didn’t know it and extensive research has proved fruitless.”
I just listened to it and it does sound like Wise Maid, played on a flat-pitch chanter. Lovely stuff.
Was a B stick wasn’t it?
I always thought that the choice of reel was a piece of delicious, deliberate irony on Planxty’s part. I would have called the tune “The Sadder, But Wiser Maid”, myself.
The term “extensive research” in this case is most likely code for three minutes of staring at the ceiling over a few pints, although it’s true that it was a little harder to find the names of tunes back then. Planxty had some fun horsing around with tune titles…I’ve got some old live recordings from the 70s, and on one of them Christy introduced a set “specially written for the night, nocturnal rhapsodies,” which they call “The Lady in the Island, The Gatehouse Maid, The Digger of the JCV, and Scratch the Pillow,” which is in reality The Lady on the Island, The Gatehouse Maid, the Virginia, and the Galtee Rangers.
I’m gonna vote for C#.
As for me…I vote that Liam used a C chanter…anyone got the answer ? 
Hmm, I guess I don’t understand the uncertainty here. On the “Planxty” (1972) album recording, both the song and tune are performed in the concert key of B Major. Assuming no post-recording pitch trickery, and assuming Liam plays The Wise Maid in D fingering as normal, it means that he’s playing a B chanter.
A C chanter or C# chanter would have him fingering the tune in Db Major or C Major respectively, which seems … unlikely. Especially since it couldn’t account for the bottom D (concert B) of the tune.
On the “Planxty Live” (1982) album, the same set is performed in D Major, with Liam presumably playing a concert pitch D chanter, as on nearly all of his recordings with Planxty.
I was under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that Liam played Ennis’ Coyne C# set.
He owns the Coyne set (as well as a bunch of other sets and chanters), but to what extent he plays the Coyne is anyone’s guess.
Assuming there was no post-recording trickery, I voted B (for the 1972 “Planxty” recording) due to the pitch being in unison with my B natural whistle, (I don’t have a B set unfortunately! 
) and it simply sounded too flat for C#. There is a video recording of Planxty, 1980 I think, and they did the Jolly Beggar/The Wise Maid set in D major - Come West Along the Road dvd series, I forget which one however… But it’s in there!
Cheers!
When I saw Planxty after they reformed in the 1980s they named the tune as The Wise Maid.
Ian
Agreed.
Yes.