"Road to Boston" (and learning fiddle tunes by ear)

On YouTube, a fiddle player named Hillar Bergman plays it through twice.

A nice PDF file at http://calfolk.ca/tunes1/on-the-road-to-boston.pdf ... on the Calgary Folk Music website featuring "Information about Folk, Fiddle and Celtic music in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and nearby communities." It has a link to an awfully good handout on "Picking Up Fiddle Tunes By Ear At Jam Sessions" by Joel Mabus. Both websites worth checking out further.

There's information about the tune on The Session traditional Irish music website, in the comments section on "Road to Boston." It's in 2/4 time (a polka).

Andrew Kunz' "Fiddler's Companion" has this on "Road to Boston":

ROAD TO BOSTON. AKA and see "On the Road to Boston," "Boston March," "Road to London." American, Reel. USA; New England, Pennsylvania. D Major. Standard tuning. AB (Silberberg): AABB (most versions): AA'BB' (Phillips). "This old fifers' march is known by the above name in the Northeast as well as in Pennsylvania. A New England game song beginning:

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It's a long road to Boston, boys, (ter)

Oh when shall we get there?

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may possibly account for this title; if so, the fact emphasizes the close connection between playparty and dance tunes to which we have already referred (see Introduction). Mr. Devan stated that there were words known to the tune in Fayette County, but he could not recall them. They may or may not have included those just quoted" (Bayard, 1944). In his 1981 collection Bayard calls the tune international, at least the first strain, and probably quite old. Close variants from the Continent appear in Bouillet, Album Auvergnat, pg. 30, as "Bourree d'Aigueperse," and in Quellien, "Chansons et Danses des Bretons," (p. 287, No. 9) {Ed.--This bourree also appears in Stevens Massif collection, collected in the Auvergne region of Central France); while the second part of an Irish tune described as a 'quadrille' corresponds to the first part of "Road to Boston" (see Joyce 1909, No. 277). A southern variant appears in Ford, p. 174, as "Exhibition March No. 2."./ One of the tunes identified by 93 yr. old Benjamin Smith of Needham, Mass., in 1853 as the most popular American army tunes of the Revolutionary War; until their musicians learned "Yankee Doodle" and "The White Cockade" from hearing the British playing them in the distance (Winstock, 1970; pg. 71).