* GIG 0910 * Edgar Lee Masters - "The Sangamon"

A lot harder to track down the tunes ...

John Armstrong renamed fiddle tunes, e.g. "Missouri Harmony" and Masters' account of the time they met in 1914 [something I read yesterday said 1916 but it is 1914, see Across Spoon River 330-31) leaves open the possibilty, shall we say, that Armstrong didn't mind telling a good story ... and I doubt it would have occurred to him that researchers a hundred years later would go crazy trying to straighten him out.

Why so many Irish tunes in Masters' list?

Here's an Edgar Lee Masters "Fiddler Jones" Poem animation [animations aren't my cup of tea, but the audio sounds like ELM reciting the poem ... complete text in the notes]

Rocky Road to Jordan [?]

http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/ROC.htm Fiddler's Companion
ROCKY ROAD TO JORDAN. Old-Time, Breakdown. D Major. From the playing of Dwight “Red” Lamb. “Rocky Road to Jordon” is one of ‘100 essential Missouri tunes’ listed by Missouri fiddler Charlie Walden.

Another possiblity is that it's related to "Rocky Road to Dublin."

Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel ?


... Norman and Nancy Blake in 1988 ...




Way up Tar Creek

????

Foggy Mountain Top

Flatt + Scruggs + Maybelle Carter - Foggy Mountain Top ??

Hell Amongst the Yearlings

Alan Jabour http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/afcreed:@field(NUMBER+@band(afcreed+13705b21)) Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection ""Hell among the Yearlings" (sometimes known in bowdlerized forms such as "Rounding Up the Cattle") is a tune of the Upper South. It was recorded by West Virginian Clark Kessinger on an early hillbilly record with an irregular first strain that lingers on the high A and requires two extra beats. Nearly all current versions in bluegrass style or in contest fiddling circles perpetuate this irregularity, but Henry Reed's set has the normal number of bars and beats."

Andrew Kuntz http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/HEL_HER.htm Fiddler's Companion
HELL AMONG(ST) THE YEARLINGS [1]. AKA ‑ "Trouble Among the Yearlings," "Hell After the Yearlings," "Devil Among the Yearlings," "Round Up the Yearlings," "Hell Among the Indians." Old‑Time, Breakdowwn. USA; Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska. G Major (Ford, Thede): D Major (Bayard, Brody, Christeson, Fiddler Magazine, John Hatcher, Phillips): C Major (Christeson/1984, Songer). Standard tuning. AB (Christeson, 1984): AA'B (Bayard): AABB (Thede): AA'BB (Phillips): AA'BB' (Fiddler Magazine): AABBCCDD (Songer). Several unrelated tunes in various parts of the United States carry the name “Hell Among(st) the Yearlings,” so obviously a memorable title in rural communities. The title has itself aroused some speculation. It is thought by some to represent ‘trouble with the cattle’—yearlings being young cattle that are bred for the first time and quite rambunctious. Another interpretation hinges on ‘hell’ as a term for dense underbrush and thicketed country, with the title meaning that the yearlings are in the underbrush, thus making it quite a chore to round them up. Chicago musician Paul Tyler made the following comments (Fiddle-L, 5/10/04).

[quotes Masters with this headnote: "In 1939, Edgar Lee Masters (of Spoon River fame) published in Esquire an account of a visit he made with Theodore Dreiser to the home fiddler John Armstrong in Oakford, Illinois. The account reappeared in Masters’ book The Sangamon in the Rivers of America series.]"

Freight Hoppers playing "Hell Amongst the Yearlings" at a festival in Flagstaff, Ariz.



Chubby Wise

Little Drops of Brandy [?]

"Drops of Brandy." From The London LP (record) Andy Dejarlis And The Early Settlers. Dejarlis was a Canadian Metis player of the mid-20th century ...



Also an Irish 9/8 slip jig. Junior contestants of the Southern Maryland Celtic Festival harp competition, April 27 2008 playing an Irish slip jig, Drops of Brandy.



And by a Metis player in Dallas, Texas (long way from home) , who plays it very fast, almost as a reel ...



Kuntz has this. See especially the discussion of Canada:

DROPS OF BRANDY [1] (“Braona Brannda” or “Braoinini Brannda”). AKA and see “Cummilum,” "Drops of Whiskey," "A Drop of Whiskey," "New Drops of Brandy," "Oh, Mary Take My Advice." Irish (originally?), Scottish, English; Jig (9/8 time). England; Shropshire, Lancashire, Northumberland, Lincolnshire. G Major (most versions): A Major (Martin, Silberberg, Trim). Standard tuning. AB (O'Neill/1001, Silberberg): AAB (Tubridy): AABB (most versions). AABB’ (Martin). There are two main versions of this tune, an old and a new, the latter often known as "New Drops of Brandy." The older versions can be found in the English manuscripts of John Moore and William Vickers. Merryweather (1989) notes it bears some resemblance to Playford's "Scotland." The title appears in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian song and dance tunes, which he published c. 1800 and also appears in the Scottish Drummond Castle Manuscript in the possession of the Earl of Ancaster at Drummond Castle. This latter MS is inscribed "A Collection of Country Dances written for the use of his Grace the Duke of Perth by Dav. Young, 1734" (and for this reason it is sometimes called the Duke of Perth MS). Editor Seattle (1987) says Vickers' version is a non-standard variation. There is some evidence a 17th century Scots jig called “Hey My Nannie” is ancestral to “Drops of Brandy.”

***

Drops of Brandy is also the name of a specific country dance known throughout the British Isles under two names. In Ireland, O’Neill (1913) tells us “a special dance was performed to the melody,” and indeed, “Drops of Brandy” is a favorite tune for solo step dancing competitions. A Scottish dance called Drops of Brandy was performed to a schottische, while the exact same figures were danced to a jig and known as the dance Strip the Willow, report Flett & Flett (1964). In fact, the R.S.C.D.S.’s “official” tune for the dance Strip the Willow is “Drops of Brandy,” although a variety of suitable jigs in 6/8 time are also employed on the ceilidh circuit. Emmerson (1972) states that the tune “Drops of Brandy” is often associated with the dance Strip the Willow, so much so that in England the dance is known by the title Drops of Brandy (although it is performed there to schottische-type tunes); “Today, Strip the Willow can be encountered danced to marches or to reels with Country Dance steps, or more often with unbridled abandon.” Martin (2002) also suggests the tune as a vehicle for the dance Strip the Willow (played in a medley with “Brose and Butter” and “I Hae a Wife of my Ain”). Compare also with untitled slip jig collected from Donegal fiddler John Doherty, printed in The Northern Fiddler (1979, pg. 61b), and with the related “Jaunting Car for Six.” “Drink of Brandy” is a similarly named, although unrelated slip jig.

***

Anne Lederman, in her entry on “Fiddling” in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (1992), identifies “Drops of Brandy” as one of two important tunes in the ‘fur-trade’ repertoire of the 18th and 19th centuries in Canada (along with “La grande gigue simple” and cognates). It was the vehicle for the Scottish line dance (also called Drops of Brandy), and Lederman suggests the tune was derived from a Scottish 6/4 hornpipe (or ‘Old Hornpipe’ time). The tune also went by the titles “Le Brandy,” “The Hook Dance” and “La danse du crochet” as well as various titles in native languages, writes Lederman. See also the version in Ann Winnington’s music manuscript book (no. 19), c. 1810, wherein the frontispiece indicates she resided in New York.


The Wind that Shakes the Barley


Kuntz as follows:

WIND THAT SHAKES/SHOOK THE BARLEY [1], THE ("An Ghaoth a Bhogann," "An Ghaoth/Gaot a Chroitheann/Corruideann an Eorna" or "An Gaot A Biodgeas An T-Orna"). AKA and see "Duncan Davidson," “(An) Gaoth A Chroitheanna an Eorna,” "I Sat (with)in the Valley Green," "The Kerry Lasses [3],” "Rolling Down the Hill [2]." Irish, Scottish, Shetland, American, New England; Reel. D Major (most versions): G Major (Hardings): D Mixolydian (Carlin). Standard tuning. AB (Allan's, Breathnach, Cole, Harker/Rafferty, Honeyman, Mallinson, O'Neill/1850, Stanford/Petrie, Surenne, Sweet, Tubridy): AAB (Athole): AA'B (O'Neill/Krassen, 1915): AAB (Brody, Carlin, Flaherty, Hunter, S. Johnson, Kerr, Neil, Skye, Sumner): ABB (Phillips): AABB (Hardings, Miller & Perron). The Irish musicologist Father Henebry considered this tune originally Scottish (as did Breathnach), but Bayard (1981) finds almost no Scottish traditional forms; he found numerous versions in Irish and Irish‑American currency. Emmerson (1971), however, states the tune is "substantially a set of the 'Fairy Dance,'" which is definately Scottish and whose full title is "Largo's Fairy Dance," composed by Nathaniel Gow.

***

“The Wind that Shakes the Barley” was cited as having commonly been played for Orange County, New York, country dances in the 1930's (Lettie Osborn, New York Folklore Quarterly)./ "The (Provance) version...contains a feature common enough in old‑country reels, but seldom encountered in American variants: namely, the 'circular' construction, which provides for the tune's going on indefinitely without coming to a complete cadence. F.P. Provance stated that he learned this set 'among the Dutch' in eastern Fayette and western Somerset Counties‑‑an interesting evidence of how the German settlers have adopted the tradition of the Irish whom they encountered on their arrival in Pennyslvania" (Bayard, 1944). It was recorded on 78 RPM disc by Beaver Island, Michigan, fiddler Patrick Bonner, who had several Irish-style tunes in his repertoire. Beaver Island was settled by a number of immigrants from Arranmore island, off the coast of Donegal, and the Donegal fiddling tradition can be heard in Bonner’s playing (he was the youngest son of immigrants from Arranmore).

***

The title appears in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian song and dance tunes ("The Northern Minstrel's Budget"), which he published c. 1800.

Here's from YouTube ... teachmeafiddletune February 04, 2009 ... Jamie Laval celtic fiddle workshop 1-10-09. "Wind that shakes the barley"



(see following post as well)


Good Mornin', Uncle Johnny, I've Fetched Your Wagon Home

Nothing.

Toor-a-Loor

What looks like a St. Patrick's day sing-along at a senior highrise singing "Irish Lullaby," the hit by Bing Crosby from the 1940s ...



It could be an early version of the same Tin Pan Alley song that Masters and Dreiser heard ... the Brobdingnagian Bards website says the words were by J.R. Shannon in the 1890s. Info on the bards:

The Brobdingnagian Bards (pronounced brob-din-nahg-EE-en) are The Original Celtic Renaissance music duo from Austin, Texas. Their unique brand of folk music on the autoharp, recorder, and mandolin has made them one of the most-popular Celtic music groups online where they give away thousands of free Celtic MP3 downloads daily.

Chaw Roast Beef

Probably this - notice it's a cakewalk, thus ultimately from the minstrel stage

Kuntz has this:

CHAW (THAT) ROAST BEEF. American, Cakewalk or "Walk Around." C Major. Standard tuning. ABC, Break. Cole (1000 Fiddle Tunes), 1940; pg. 26. Ryan’s Mammoth Collection, 1883; pg. 172.

And that's all I know about it.

The Missouri Harmony

Thomas Moore's "Legacy" - there's an archived copy of my Picayune article on the blog

Turkey in the Straw / Zip Coon

plenty on this

Miss McCall's Reel

Miss McLeod's Reel?

Harrigan and Hart: "The Babies on Our Block" / and notes on the children's songs "Little Sally Walker" and "Greeny Gravel" it quotes

"Babies on our Block" - by Edward "Ned" Harrigan the usual indispensible Mudcat Cafe thread ... Sheet music in the Lester S. Levy Collection at Johns Hopkins

From the discussion on Musicals 101.com ...

Harrigan and Braham's songs were in the popular style of their day, with lots of sentiment and street-smart humor. The lyrics were redolent with slang, ethnic accents and imperfect grammar, speech forms which had not been set to music before. New Yorkers adored these tunes, and every neighborhood in Manhattan rang with renditions of "Paddy Duffy's Cart" or "The Babies on Our Block" –

If you want for information
Or in need of merriment,
Come over with me socially
To Murphy's tenement.
He owns a row of houses
In the first ward, near the dock,
Where Ireland's represented
By the babies on our block.
There's the Phalens and the Whalens
From the sweet Dunochadee,
They are sitting on the railings
With their children on their knee,
All gossiping and talking
With their neighbors in a flock,
Singing "Little Sally Waters" *
With the babies on our block.

"Oh, little Sally Waters,
Sitting in the sun,
A-crying and weeping for a young man;
Oh rise, Sally, rise,
Wipe your eye out with your frock";

That's sung by the babies
A-living on our block.

- Lyric transcribed from sheet music

Also this on the Musicals101 website, summing up Harrigan's later career: "Harrigan continued to produce and star in musicals until 1893. George M. Cohan's jaunty 'H-A-double R-I-G-A-N spells Harrigan' was an affectionate tribute to this early giant of the American musical stage." I distinctly remember my grandfather singing "H-A-double-R-I-G-A-N" when I was a kid.

Lyrics at http://www.musicals101.com/lyharrigan.htm ... the music isn't exactly leaping off the World Wide Web at me, but the Library of Congress has "The Babies on Our Block Schottisch" (1880) by Dave Braham on its website Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music. A piano version in C. Also the original sheet music for voice and piano in the Johns Hopkins collection (?) ...( in A).

From Richard Sudhalter, liner notes to "DON’T GIVE THE NAME A BAD PLACE: Types and Stereotypes in American Musical Theater 1870-1900" [ New World Records 80265] PDF file online

Though Harrigan poked gentle fun at most groups, he clearly held a special affection for the Irish. When The Mulligan Guard Ball opened at the Theater Comique on January 13, 1879, one of its most popular songs was "The Babies on Our Block" (Track 1), a nostalgic look at the songs and games of Irish children on the Lower East Side. It contains references to the songs "Little Sally Waters" and "Green Gravel," brought to the United States with the immigrants from Ireland.

______________________

* "Little Sally Waters (Walker)" is an old, old children's song, apparently. And it has gone deep in African American culture, and from there to high school (or junior high school) cheerleading to judge by the array of clips on YouTube. Mudcat Cafe has the usual very knowledgeable thread especially on its African American variants. Including this by Azizi Powell, who maintains a website called Cocojams.com on children's games He taught it to children in an after-school program in Pittsburgh. He sang some of Leadbelly's version and:

Well anyhow, I'll tell you what else I told those children. I went waaay back and told them that ring games were used in slavery to teach SURVIVAL skills. Since you never knew when you'd be picked to go inside the circle, you had always to be ready. And then you had to move QUICK in the center of the ring and REAL FAST think up a different dance or motion from any other that had been done before. All this was happenin while the beat kept goin on and the other children kept singin on. But this fast thinkin is not just needed during slavery times. It's still needed now 'cause Black people still have to think quick and move fast when the spirit says move. You know what I'm talkin' bout?

But, wait a minute. Didn't I give those kids some more history!
I bet you didn't even know this. Little Sally Walkers' really WHITE. No, wait a minute. I'm not kiddin. Her real name was Sally Waters and she really came from Europe. How she got started was like this: way back when, a woman who was gettin married had to step over a saucer of water on her way to the wedding ceremony. I swear I'm not making this up. That's how those Little Sally sittin in a saucer words came about. It was a water purification thing. Ain't that somethin? We jumped over brooms, and they stepped over saucers. Anyway, who cares if Sally first came from White people - we made her Black with all those shake to the East let your back bone slip hip shakin motions. Not to mention that Black people are all mixed up with Black, White, Indian, Hispanic, and Asian blood…Anyhow, ole Sally Walker's all right by me. Wherever she came from, she's one of us now. And that's all I'm gonna say on that subject.

More on "Little Sally Waters" and "Green Gravel" (quoted in 2nd verse) in Alabama Folklife Association notes by John Bealle on Ala. children's songs collected in 1948 ... "Sally Walker" is No. 19 of ___ songs.

"Little Sally Walker" is a traditional marriage play extensively collected among British children. It is "Sally Water" in Gomme (2:149-179) and the Opies (#34, 1985:167-71). Gomme collected forty-eight versions of this game. In it, Sally will "choose to the east, choose to the west," and the game ends in marriage (p166). "In the Strixwould version [the oldest collected, in 1828], the child stands in the center holding in her hands something resembling a saucer; she then pretends to "knock it in a mortar," and gives the saucer to the one whom she chooses." At the beginning, Sally sometimes cries and wipes her eyes with a handkerchief (Gomme 2:167; Opie and Opie 1985:168). * * * The game is widely collected in both urban and rural settings in the U.S. and in the Caribbean. Jones and Hawes remark that the American "Little Sally Walker" became "a brief drama about the joys of release from shame" (1972:107). Concluding stanzas (e.g., "Shake it to the East") seem to be African American additions.

And this on "Green Gravel" (No.

Green Gravel is a widely dispersed but less popular game that usually appears as only a single four- or six-line verse. Its earliest collection was 1835 in Manchester, England (Opie and Opie 1985:240). There are obvious elements of dramatic structure, but only faint suggestions of meaning. As in Martha Drisdale's version, the chief dramatic element is the turning back, one-by-one, of the players.

Although this motif is common in European games, there is little indication what makes it so captivating for players. Thus much of the commentary by folklorists on this game has involved examining text fragments to determine their origin and meaning. As can be seen here, there is much disagreement and much speculation on this. * * * Vance Randolph posits a different explanation, suggesting Irish sources to account for the reference to freemasonry: ["]"Green Gravel" is an old Irish song, and I have been told that the first stanza is connected with the Irish Catholics' hatred of the Masonic fraternity. The Ozark natives know nothing of this, however, and do not connect "free meshin" with "freemason" at all. ["]

The John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection at Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas has Almeda Riddle singing it and explaining the accompanying children's dance. And Digital Tradition has words and music.

* GIG 0910 * Vachel Lindsay -- fiddle tunes heard at sawmill camp near Jacksonville, Ill.

Thursday, May 30, 1912. From Tramping Across America (our ed., 1999): 15-16.

[in old boxcar set up on wagon wheels and shunted back and forth by a sawmill owner west of Jacksonville ... an "old gentleman [whom] I spied through the window stemming gooseberries and singing 'John Brown's Body'." ... It was a family operation, he and his sons were clearing land "of all but its walnut trees"]. Lindsay's account:

... My old host looked like his general, McClellan. He was eloquent on the sins of preachers, dry voters and pension reformers. He was full of reminiscences of the string band at Sherman's headquarters, in which he learned to perfect himself on his perfect fiddle. He said, "I can't play slow music. I've got to play dance tunes or die." He did not die. His son took a banjo from an old trunk and the two of them gave us every worth while tune on earth: Money Musk, Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia, The Year of Jubilee, Sailor's Hornpipe, Baby on the Block," Lady on the Lake, and The Irish Washerwoman, while I stemmed gooseberries, which they protested I did not need to do. Then I read my own unworthy verses to the romantic and violin-stirred company. And there was room for all of us to sleep in that one repentant and converted box-car" (14).

YouTube versions are available of all but one of the tunes:

Money Musk

Nils Fredland calls Money Musk at the Swallowtail 30th anniversary dance weekend [see post below, earlier today, for more]

"Hell's Broke Loose in Georgia"

Elizabeth Fitch and Rachel Eddy (fiddles), Kristian Herner (banjo), Kevin Fitch (banjo uke), and Ashley Carder (guitar) play Hell Broke Loose in Georgia at an old time jam at Ashley's camp at Clifftop 2009.





"Year of Jubilo"

Annie & Mac Old Time Music Moment ...

Sailors Hornpipe

[Copied and expanded on blog post Aug. 12}

... flatpicked on two guitars



Music avaialbe from O'Neill's on the freesheetmusic.net website - two versions No. 1577 and No. 1578 are both in D.

Kuntz has this in

SAILOR'S HORNPIPE [1]. AKA and see "College Hornpipe," “Duke William’s Hornpipe,” "Jack's the Lad [1]," "Lancashire Hornpipe [1]." English (originally), American; Reel, Hornpipe, or Breakdown. England, Northumberland. USA; New York, southwestern Pa., West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas. G Major (Most versions): D Major (Sweet): B Flat Major (Hardings, Seattle/Vickers). Standard tuning. AABB. Originally titled the "College Hornpipe" this melody became known as the "Sailor's Hornpipe" through its association with the performance of the hornpipe dance, typically performed on the stage in nautical costume (see notes for "College Hornpipe"). At the turn of the 18th century a sailor was a favorite character of the musical stage and the nautical theme became so associated with the dance that many hornpipes were generically labeled a 'sailor's hornpipe'. The dance itself features a distinctive 'side-cutting' step. The style retained its popularity throughout the century, and none‑less than J. Scott Skinner, the famous Scottish violinist who was also a dancing master, taught the dance at Elgin and other places to his pupils. George Emerson, in his article on the Hornpipe (Folk Music Journal, vol. 2, No. 1, 1970) finds an early reference:

***
”at Drury lane, May 1740, Yates ..is .. billed to perform a 'hornpipe in the character of Jacky Tar. There is no mention then or later of anyone performing 'the' or 'a' sailor's hornpipe. It is always a 'hornpipe in the character of a sailor'..”

***

As the "College Hornpipe" the tune was in print in 1797 or 1798 by J. Dale of London, and although the melody predates Dale's publication, the English antiquarian Chappell's editor dates it no earlier than the second half of the 18th century. Emerson suggests the comic ballet The Wapping Landlady (1767) was the source of the Sailor Hornpipe that was famously danced by the American dancer Durang for some twenty years at the end of the 18th century. The ballet featured the trials of Jack Tar ashore, and was choreographed by Arnold Fisher (of “Fisher’s Hornpipe” fame). See also note for “College Hornpipe” for more.

***

"Sailor's Hornpipe" was imported to North America where it entered traditional repertoire and became fairly widely known, still with its nautical connotations--so strong was the association, in fact, that it was selected as the theme song of a popular mid-20th century animated cartoon character, Popeye the Sailorman. Bronner (1987) reports the earliest known printing in the United States was in a publication by B. Carr entitled Evening Entertainments in the year 1796 (under the "College Hornpipe" title). Although the name "Sailor's Hornpipe" has been something of a floating title in the United States, it is probably the 'College' tune under this title which was cited as having commonly been played for country dances in Orange County, New York, in the 1930's (Lettie Osborn, New York Folklore Quarterly). Similarly in American tradition, it was played at a fiddle contest in Verbena, Alabama, in 1921 (as noted in the Union Banner of October 27, 1921), and also in another 1920's contest in Georgia by one R.L. Stephens of Camp Hill, Alabama (according to the Columbus (Ga.) Register of December 10‑12, 1926) {Cauthen, 1990}. The title also appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph

Baby on the Block

can't find it in YouTube or Google {but see post on Ned Harrigan above - and Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (280-81, 281 n. 17) }

Lady of the Lake

Festival Jammin at the '07 Minnesota Bluegrass and Old-time Music Association's Spring (June) "Kickoff." The players are Geoff Shannon on guitar, Karen Mueller on autoharp and mandolin, Debbie Sorensen-Boeh on Fiddle, Craig Evans on frailin banjo and Terry Sullivan on bass. Woo-hoo! "




Irish Washerwoman

Ian Walsh teaches the classic Irish Jig the Irish Washerwoman. In G. For fiddle players.

"Money Musk" - old contradance tune, mentioned by Lindsay and Masters

For Vachel Lindsay Home gig ...

Usually played in A major but also very often in G, according to Andrew Kuntz' Fiddler's Companion. But The Session has it in A major, and O'Neill's collection of Irish tunes does too. Interesting comments (as always), including this:

My dad, who was Glaswegian, used to thump this one out on the piano when I was a wee thing. He always played it with a lift and snap.

My father in law who plays English style, played it very differently, as I recall it was smoother.

Some very interesting comments by Alan Jabbour in Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection that I need to go back to: "Henry Reed recorded "Money Musk" four times; it was a project of sorts for him to get it assembled in all its possible parts. The tune--or at least its first two strains--is a Scottish reel from the end of the eighteenth century. [details omitted here] Henry Reed's version is a rarity in the Upper South, and it is all the more extraordinary for adding extra strains that turn the piece into a complex and challenging set piece. His first two strains are always the usual strains of "Money Musk," but following Upper South predilections he begins with the highest strain, and his second strain (the usual first strain) is distinctive in rising to the octave rather than descending to the lower tonic. His third and fourth strains (in this performance) are unique to his performance. ..." [This is really worth coming back to!] Sheet music at http://www.freesheetmusic.net/oneills15/TheMoneyMusk.pdf ... and http://www.8notes.com/scores/8881.asp ...

ABC notation website has it in G at http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=www.village-music-project.org.uk/abc/mittell/0018.

And here's the audio version to learn the song from: A very nice contradance version w/ clarinet and brass and piano joining the string band - Nils Fredland calls Money Musk at the Swallowtail 30th anniversary dance weekend. Backed by members of Swallowtail, Wild Asparagus and Elixir contradance bands in New England




Adds the YouTube blurb: "Money Musk is an older contra dance that was very popular in the time of Dudley Laufman, in the 60's and 70's. Nils is calling in the style of Dudley in this video." [He kind of sings, or intones, the calls.]

Better visual quality at http://vimeo.com/2310136.

Elixir has a CD out. Info on Elixir website plus address for ordering the CD by mail ... "Elixir blends driving fiddle and guitar with the rich texture and rhythmic excitement of a full horn section, deftly weaving brassy riffs and daring solos in and out of traditional Irish, French Canadian and New England tunes. Elixir plays for dances, festivals, camps, weddings and other events, with a repertoire that includes contra, English, swing, waltz, couples dance, and concert music." Personnel:

Nils Fredland, calling / trombone
Ethan Hazzard-Watkins, fiddle
Jesse Hazzard-Watkins, trumpet
Anna Patton, clarinet
Owen Morrison, guitar / feet

Another version, and more contradance lore. Fiddle and piano. Footage is from a dance party in Canterbury, NH on March 7, 2010, organized by Dudley and Jacqueline Laufman as part of International Money Musk Month. ...




Adds the YouTube description, by a participant in the dance: "(They are the first couple on the left at the start of the video; in the second clip, Dudley is visible in a lilac-colored shirt and Jacqueline in blue.) In all, we danced Money Musk-- Dudley would say "The Money Musk"-- three separate times in the course of the afternoon, along with half a dozen other older dances; these clips are from two of those times. The third time (not shown) we did it in four-couple longways sets, with the active couple dancing twice and then moving to the bottom of the set, for a total of eight times through the figures."

Yet another version on YouTube: "Money Musk" being danced in Norwich, Vermont, on March 14, 2009, as part of "Cracking Chestnuts," an entire evening's program devoted to older contra dances" ... part of International Money Musk Moment (see below) ...



Adds YouTube: "On that same night, dancers in numerous locations around the US and abroad were celebrating the International Money Musk Moment, with many of us doing that dance at about the same time.

"The tune for Money Musk originated in Scotland in 1776 and the first dance instructions appeared in 1785. By 1792, the tune and dance had made it to North America, and both spread rapidly. (Many of today's dancers first encountered the phrase Money Musk when they were children, reading Little House in the Big Woods; it was a tune that Laura's Pa played on his fiddle.)"


Fiddler's Companion has a detailed history of the tune, which it attributes to 18th-century Scots fiddler Daniel Dow ... says it is named for a Scottish estate and adds "...‘Moneymusk’ is the ‘Englished’ version of the Gaelic words Muine Muisc" which meant some kind of noxious weed).

“Money Musk” was a popular melody as well as a country dance in America by the 1790’s. American published versions of the music appear beginning in 1796 by B. Carr in Evening Amusements (Philadelphia), and both tune and dance were widely published after that, indicating enormous popularity in America in the last decade of the 18th century into the next. Manuscript versions are also numerous: one appears in Ann Winnington’s music manuscript book (No. 29), c. 1810—the frontispiece in the MS. indicates Winnington resided in New York (although she may have removed at some point to England). Elisabeth Crawford (Massachusetts) penned the dance figures in her 1794 commonplace book that contained the rules of grammar alongside 12 other country dance figures. Southington, Connecticut, musician Joel Allen copied “Money Musk” into his music copybook of around 1800, as did Thomas Cushing around 1805 and Silas Dickinson (Amherst, Massachusetts) around 1800. Onondaga, New York, fluter Daniel Henry Huntington copied it into his manuscript “Preceptor for the Flute” in 1817, as did Newburyport, Massachusetts, musician Samuel Morse in 1811. William Patten (Philadelphia, Pa.) noted it in his copybook from around 1800, as did Cherry Valley, New York, fiddler George White, around 1790. In fact, the country dance "Money Musk” has remained a New England staple for two centuries, although one phrase of the original music has been dropped, while the dance measures stayed the same (thus "cramming 32 measures of dance in to 24 measures of music" note Tony Parkes/Steve Woodruff). In some New England dance circles this dance was traditionally danced immediately after the break, where, for just one example, presumably this was so when it was danced in August, 1914, at the 150th anniversary celebration of the founding of the town of Lancaster, N.H. (it was listed on a playbill preserved in the town history). Peter Yarensky remembers that it used to be the first dance after the break for years at New Hampshire dances, and that “some people would line up for Money Musk before the break even began…” By the 1970’s the tune dance was considered a “chestnut” and it is rarely performed today in New England. ...

* * *

In America, in contrast to New England and the eastern seaboard, the tune is very rare in the Southern Appalachians (Jabbour, Krassen/1973), though not unknown. It was recorded as one of the tunes played by fiddler Ben Smith, a Georgian in the Twelfth Alabama Infantry in the Civil War (as listed by Robert Emory Park in Sketch of the Twelfth Alabama Infantry, 1906) {Cauthen, 1990}. Another Civil War reference is to be found in Bell Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb, where it is listed among the favorite fiddle tunes of Confederate musicians. ... In the Midwest “Moneymusk” was much more common and the title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. Missouri fiddlers still play the tune (it was known as a difficult piece and a “big tune” in Mo. fiddle contests up until the 1970's, according to Howard Marshall, though its popularity has waned in recent years), and “Money Musk” is one of ‘100 essential Missouri tunes’ listed by Missouri fiddler Charlie Walden. John Hartford (2001) recorded a three-part version in the key of ‘A’ he learned from Missouri fiddler Roy Wooliver (“the little cross-eyed snaggle-toothed drifter who drifted in an out of almost everything we played, who was a major influence on Gene Goforth when Gene was young, who in turn was a major influence on everybody else who heard him”), that Hartford and Goforth both recorded as “Wooliver’s Money Musk.” Interestingly, Marshall notes “Moneymusk” is known as an “Irish” tune, a thought perhaps derived from its transmission through Scots-Irish immigrants to the mid-South American highlands, and thence to the Mid-West. Early-recorded American versions include that by Jasper Bisbee (for Edison), who was born in 1843, Col. John Pattee (for Columbia), born in 1844, Henry Ford’s Orchestra, and North Carolina fiddler Dad Williams.

Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet

http://www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se/

Home page links to a membership page. There's also this page at http://www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se/page2.html with a history in Swedish:

Förbundet startade upp 1986 i Västra Tunhem där den startade med en Bygg- och spelkurs. Konsert hölls på hembygdsgården där en gäst från Island, Anna Thorhallsdottir spelade på Langspil, från Norge kom gästerna Leif och Gunhild Løchen som spelade på Langeleik och Roveruds salmodikon. Flera svenskar medverkade också med spel. En teatergrupp framförde "Orgelträtan i Orsa" och Teol. Dr. Leif eeg Olofsson höll föredrag. En utställning hade arrangerats med Rodney Sjöbergs psalmodikon och till och med Sveriges television var där vilket gav några minuter i "rutan".

Followed by a detailed timeline down to the present.

May newsletter in PDF format - link doesn't work, but I Googled into it looking for the Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet ...

[PDF] Tidskrift för NPsF – Nordiska Psalmodikonförbundet ... - [ Translate this page ]
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
26 jun 2010 ... Psalmodikon är en ensträngad stråkcittra med långsmal ljudlåda. Instrumentet lanserat i. Danmark på 1820-talet. Därefter spreds det i Norden ...

www.npsalmodikonforbundet.se/psalmodika/psalmodika-2010-1.pdf

misc. folklore, historiography references

American concept of tradition: Folklore in the discourse of traditional values, The
Western Folklore, Spring 2000 by Bronner, Simon J
[BNET]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3732/is_200004/ai_n8889550/

* * *

THE SCHOLARLY PROBLEM OF TRADITION

The central problem of tradition is explaining the ways that people rely on one another, with reference to precedent, for their wisdom, their expression, their identity. The problem may not be immediately evident from the mechanical sounding definition of tradition in most dictionaries as the "handing down" of lore from generation to generation, especially by oral means. In common usage, tradition can refer to an item dependent on this process, such as a story or custom, or to a precedent given the force of repeated practice, or to knowledge whose official source cannot be verified but is held widely, or to a concept-"a mode of thought or behavior"characteristic of people generally.2 As one goes down the list, more authority is ascribed to tradition. The suggestion of reverence due tradition means that people "follow" it, willingly or not, and may define themselves through its presence. Tradition in its most authoritarian sense is a "natural" way of doing things, which goes unchallenged because it is a basis of social life.

An emotional or even spiritual connotation to tradition exists that may belie objective chronologies or social inventories. To claim tradition, after all, is to bring into play the force, and guilt, of countless generations of ancestors, and perhaps the gaze of present-day neighbors. In political usage, it allows for a natural state; it refers to the givens of public practice, and suggests, problematically, that the longstanding character of a practice is justification for its continuation. For religion, to follow tradition may be construed as keeping the faith; to break it a risk of apostasy. Hence, a vibrant legacy of writing on tradition exists from the view of how religion draws its meaning from continuities of shared ritual and belief and how individual expressions of art and literature respond to socially inherited aesthetics, symbols, and themes. That is not to say that attempts to clinically objectify tradition do not exist, particularly in folkloristics which above all other disciplines has claimed it for its sense of being. Tradition can be calculatedly viewed as a biological specimen and given the look of a genealogical chart. It may be stolidly recorded as a series of motions and minutely analyzed frame by frame. Traditions can be alternatively "collected" as empirical evidence of everyday practice or in the singular described as some conceptual, almost mystical whole, often outside the awareness of individuals. In both directions, scientific and humanistic, the problem of tradition questions the sources from which people draw the basis of actions and attitudes.

* * *

{Also wrote Old-Time Music Makers of New York State (York State Book) by Simon J. Bronner (Hardcover - Dec. 1987) - available through Amazon.com for $7.45 and online in Google books}

---------

AHA Presidential Addresses
Everyman His Own Historian
By Carl Becker,
President of the American Historical Association, 1931

Annual address of the president of the American Historical Association, delivered at Minneapolis, December 29, 1931. From the American Historical Review, vol. 37, no. 2, p. 221–36

http://www.historians.org/info/aha_history/clbecker.htm

* * *

... I have tried to reduce history to its lowest terms, first by defining it as the memory of things said and done, second by showing concretely how the memory of things said and done is essential to the performance of the simplest acts of daily life. ...

* * *

Stewball/Skewball/Skewbald including lyrics and music for Memphis Slim's version in D (for dulcimer?)

An old ballad about a famous horse race in 18th-century Ireland that made it (big!) into the African American tradition ...

Background on Wikipedia and Old Town School of Folk Music websites ... and a thorough discussion of Skewbald the horse and several sets of the ballad lyrics - both British and American - on the Thoroughbred Heritage website.

Memphis Slim & Willie Dixon -




Leadbelly - in a call-and-response style




Lehto and Wright, a Jethro Tull-ish sounding folk rock band of Minneapolis, sing the British version




Lyrics:

Memphis Slim's and Willie Dixon's version - lyrics and music (in D!) available in Digital Tradition collection

Also: baby-boomer folk revival versions by

• Woody Guthrie
  
• Peter, Paul and Mary (probably the canonical version that everybody remembers)
  
• Greenbrier Boys
  
• Joan Baez

link to psalmodikon thread on everythingdulcimer.com

http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17937

including discussion of Swedish colony on the Delaware River by "razyn" including this dated Thu Apr 09, 2009 about Caspersson and "some hypothetical double-bouted hummel or Moraharpa of the 17th century New Sweden colony.:

...records of that colony, in English, Swedish, Dutch, Latin, German, or whatever. Those documents (and they are abundant) record the use, in New Sweden on the Delaware, of drums, "pipes" (keyless flutes, not bagpipes), at least one trumpet, and by 1702 a small church organ. There were several hymn writers among the ministers who served the colonists (and several generations of their descendants); I have translated and published some of their hymns. I've read papers about this in various academic settings, including a Moravian one in Bethlehem, PA. (Where, as you may recall from Banjimer's thread in 2007, there is documentation of the use of the zitter in several settings.) There is zero evidence of this instrument among the Swedish (and Finnish) colonists -- though we know about the games they played, food they ate, songs they sang, and a world of other minutiae, down to how much they paid for their Icelandic wool socks.

But he also says:

I prefer to believe what the evidence suggests; and that is that it's the German form of the instrument that took root, spread, and evolved (along several different paths, but they were all evolutionary) in the US. I agree with him more (now) than I did in Oct. 2007, about the specific example of the Tennessee Music Box (as being indebted in several ways to the psalmodikon). And I've said so, in some detail, on this forum ...

Links to a detailed discussion of a Minnesota cavalry unit posted to Middle Tennessee in 1862 and 1863 ...

Appalachian Heritage - literary magazine - writer's guidelines and dulcimer poems

Published by Berea College. Subtitle: A Literary Quarterly of the Appalachian South. Submission guidelines at http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/guidelines.html ...

Appalachian Heritage is abjectly dependent upon unsolicited literary manuscripts and visual art, and we are enormously grateful to those who send us the fruits of their literary and artistic labors.

Our publication is a quarterly literary magazine of the Southern Appalachians. As such, we limit ourselves to material about our region or universal material by writers with strong connections to our region. Work may be historical or contemporary in nature.

Sure, we are Appalachian Heritage and we do appreciate the past, but we are a forward-looking contemporary literary quarterly, and, frankly, we receive too many nostalgic submissions.

"Mountain Modes: Seven Dulcimer Poems" by Jeff Mann - in Appalachian Heritage [Berea, Ky.], Summer 2006. In the same issue, this material about Mann:

• "And They Thought He was Quare" - poetry by Parks Lanier
  
• "Mountain Mann" - biographical sketch by Cynthia Burack

That's got to be the same Parks Lanier I knew in grad school at Tennessee. Last I knew he got a job out of grad school somewhere up in southwest Virginia.

Song on Clare.fm

Really nice bouncy little thing in 6/8 time, but by whom? at 1:11:35 to 1:14:39 on "West Winds" broadcast Thursday, 29th July - archived at http://clare.fm/music/ClareFM%20trad%20archive ...

'Hallelujah' - 2 Sacred Harp singings and a bluegrass gospel quartet

"Hallelujah" (#146), sung by the 1982 Holly Springs Sacred Harp Convention; led by Lucy Marie Heidorn. Shot by Alan Lomax and crew using four quad-split cameras, Holly Springs, Georgia, June 1982.




Singers from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas shared in the blessings of the third annual Central Louisiana Sacred Harp Singing on Sept. 5, 2009. The singing in Ringgold, La., is held on the Saturday before the first Sunday in September. Singers use both the "Cooper" and "1991 [Denson]" Sacred Harp songbooks.



Cross Ties Band performing "Hallelujah" from the Sacred Harp songbook. Johnny Wright-treble vocal and pennywhistle; Randy Ellis-tenor vocal; Randy Garrett-alto and bass vocal and bowed bass fiddle; Bret Mulcay-bass vocal and guitar. Recorded at Burning Bush Baptist Church, Ringgold, Ga., 7-19-09.

'Hallelujah' / video on Sacred Harp in Hoboken, Ga.

... leads with William Walker's Hallelujah in background ... by WaterTowerFilms |... "An Emmy Award-winning look at a small Southeastern town and the music that has served as its soundtrack for 150 years."

Notes on strumming - jig, 6/8 time

Taken at workshops led by Stephen Seifert and Lois Hornbostel at Indiana Dulcimer Festival in Woodburn, Ind., July 17-18 ... and uploaded to the blog because I lose notebooks all the time but so far (knock on wood!) haven't managed to lose a computer even in the clutter on my desk. So I know I'll have the notes to refer to when I need 'em.

I don't know what "RF" stands for. Right _____? Maybe the "f" ought to be a "t." I make up my own abbreviations, and it doesn't always work.

Stephen (in another workshop, on chording): "I think if a musician doesn't play scales from the heart, they're practically useless ..." - SS fingerpicks scales [demonstrates, with feeling] - "To me it's real music."

Compare this with what an actor told the tourists in a Dublin pub crawl, as reported in a recent feature story headlined "Between the Jigs and Reels" in The Irish Times:

... the Ha’penny Bridge Inn assumes the air of a cosy speakeasy (albeit one bathed in evening sunlight). Here Trish [one of the two actors narrating the show] advises us to distinguish a reel from a jig by testing the rhythm to see if it mirrors the three-syllable “butterfly” (a jig in 6/8 time) or the four-syllable “caterpillar” (a reel in 4/4 time). A veteran of Lord of the Dance , Trish is a fiddler with a colourful history and deliciously gossipy tales of life on the road with the Flatley entourage.

"Miss McDermott" - harp, guitar, guitar-lute - 2 from Germany, 1 from France

yooliah1981 ... also known as Princess Royal. Another tune by Turlough O'Carolan.
Arr. Dominig Bouchaud

Harmonisation&arr. Pascal Bournet, éditions musicales Transatlantiques.

Princess Royal Turlough O`Carolan - Gitarrenlaute

'Sweet Potato' song - some links and leads

Nancy Raven, a children's singer-songwriter (?) in California, has lyrics on a 1987 CD titled The House We Live In, Vol. I ... attributes the song to the West Indies ...

Soon's we all cook sweet potatoes,
Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes,
Soon's we all cook sweet potatoes,
Eat 'em right up.

Soon's supper's et, momma hollers,
Momma hollers, momma hollers,
Soon's suppers et, momma hollers,
"Time to go to bed!"

Several verses more ...

Amazon.com has a 30-second clip of "Soon As We All Cook Sweet Potatoes" from the album Pete Seeger At The Village Gate With Memphis Slim And Willie Dixon ... sounds right, same chorus judging by the clip

"Song: A Guide To Art Song Style And Literature" [Paperback], by Carol Kimball

"Song: A Guide To Art Song Style And Literature" [Paperback], by Carol Kimball

Amazon.com

2-part series on Emma Bell Miles in Smoky Mountain News

http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/06_02/06_12_02/back_then.html
Emma Bell Miles, author of The Spirit of the Mountains (1905) and Our Southern Birds (1919), was one of the most competent non-fiction writers ever produced in the Southern Appalachians. Miles was also a better than average short story writer and poet. Her excellent drawings and paintings were used to illustrate her own books and graced the pages of numerous national publications. Her knowledge of the plant and animal life of her portion of the southern highlands was exceptional. She was a feminist in a world that hardly comprehended the concept. And she lived, at times, one of the most heartbreaking lives any writer has conducted — so much so that her early death at 39 came almost as a relief. Still, she was a writer, and her writing lives on.


http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/06_02/06_19_02/back_then.html
"Capturing the beauty of common things" ... The Spirit of the Mountains, one of the most significant books ever written about and from within the southern mountains.


by George Ellison of Bryson City, N.C.

Around the world w/ "Galway Piper" ["Rakes of Mallow"] - and to England with Parson Brown's sheep

Two versions with notes [verbatim] from YouTube

Halle, Germany. Der Song Galway Piper von Seldom Sober Company am 31. 10. 2009 [Halloween] in Halle am Bahnhof! Super Band! Super Song! check it out: http://www.seldomsober.de/



Taipai, Taiwan. Taiwanese oboist Wanchen Hsieh (謝宛臻) plays Galway Piper with 徐錫隆老師,王般若老師,陳瑞賢老師,萬靜伶老師, live recording, in Taipei recital hall, Oct. 2007



Also:

http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/galpipr.html http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/galpipr.html it "is a well-known Irish drinking tune because of another version of the lyrics, The Rakes of Mallow.

The Session http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/1699 cites The Galway Piper/The Sligo Polka: Matt Molloy

Fiddler's Companion refers to http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/RAK_RAN.htm#RAKES_OF_MALOW http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers/RAK_RAN.htm#RAKES_OF_MALOW "Rakes of Malow"

Easy piano version in D at http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_printit_free_printable_sheet_music/the-galway-piper.htm http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_printit_free_printable_sheet_music/the-galway-piper.htm

Harmonica tab at http://www.volcano.net/~jackmearl/songs/gsongs/galway_piper.html http://www.volcano.net/~jackmearl/songs/gsongs/galway_piper.html


Mudcat Cafe http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7592#2626908 http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=7592#2626908
Lyr Req: Rakes of Mallow (other lyrics to tune?)


http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=78296#1407795 http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=78296#1407795 Subject line: Lyr Req: how I cheated old parson brown out of a [dress and half a crown] ...

PARSON BROWN'S SHEEP
William Pratt, Printer, 82, Digbeth, Birmingham [c. 1850]

SPOKEN: They were very hard times for poor folks! Faider had lost his work cause he was getting old and couldn't do much; so I went to Parson Brown's and asked him for some broken wittles; but he wouldn't gi' me ony, but sot the dog at me, and sent me beeak broken hearted. When I came beeak, who should there be [but] faider wi' one o' Parson Brown's fat wether sheep. There, said the old man, that's the first time I ever robbed in my life; but they won't let me work, and I can't starve. Egad! I was nation pleased to see the old sheep; I ran and kissed mother, father, and the old sheep and all, and ran up and down, singing—

CHORUS: Faider stole the parson's sheep
And we shall have both pudding and meat,
And a merry Christmas we shall keep,
But I mayn't say aught about it.

--

As I was in the field one day,
I saw our parson very gay,
Romping Molly on the hay,
And turn her upside down, sir.
And for fear it shouldn't be known,
A suit of clothes and half-a-crown,
Were all given me by Mr. Brown,
For I to come and tell about it.

SPOKEN: He! He! He! I thought parson would have gone ramping mad. He stamped and swore it was the biggest lie that ever was told; but the folks wouldn't believe him. They all run out of church and cried shame of parson. He sent a big book at me, but it hit an old lady on the head. Down she went and parson plump on top of her. I ran off, singing—

CHORUS: I have done old Parson Brown
Of a suit of clothes and half-a-crown,
For telling all the folk around
What he had done to Molly.

In Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm ...

Misc. links - Irish dance tunes

http://www.diochra.com/jumpstart/faqclrg.php#1-3 Beginner’s FAQ, An Coimisiún in America - An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) Defines light jig, single jig, treble jig, reel, slip jig, hornpipe, treble jig, etc., with rules for CLRG competitions, dance schools.

http://www.diochra.com/music/set-dance-names.php - Irish Solo Set Dances—Behind the Names - contains this gem:

Better known in the American South and among modern American fiddlers as "Mississippi Sawyer," the melody was called "The Downfall of Paris" in Europe and this title was at one time retained in parts of Tennessee and the Ozarks. It was played early in the 19th century when the allies entered Paris after the battle of Waterloo, but "on that occasion (the British commander) Wellington sharply put a stop to it, and the offending Royal Regiment played instead 'Croppies Lie Down.' Apart from being played by military bands on every conceivable occasion, its 'one tormenting strum, strum, strum' was the delight of amateur pianists throughout Britain" (Winstock, 1970; pg. 105).

One way to tell the difference between a jig and a reel

In an Irish Times review Friday, July 16, of the Traditional Irish Music Pub Crawl in Dublin by Siobhán Long:

Onwards we amble to the Ha’penny Bridge Inn, the first of two family owned pubs which offer punters a decent taste of native Dublin drinking houses, though neither have a particular reputation for traditional music. The upstairs room in the Ha’penny Bridge Inn assumes the air of a cosy speakeasy (albeit one bathed in evening sunlight). Here Trish [one of the two actors narrating the show] advises us to distinguish a reel from a jig by testing the rhythm to see if it mirrors the three-syllable “butterfly” (a jig in 6/8 time) or the four-syllable “caterpillar” (a reel in 4/4 time). A veteran of Lord of the Dance , Trish is a fiddler with a colourful history and deliciously gossipy tales of life on the road with the Flatley entourage.

Headline: "Between the jigs and reels." Looks like the copydesk liked it, too.