Tag Archives: Edinburgh

Pull the Knife and Stick it in Again

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An usual title for this Irish jig that completes our pair of spookily-titled tunes (see The Haunted House). Pull the Knife and Stick it in Again is in E minor or E Dorian, depending on your take on it, which contrasts nicely with a G major tune.

It was Matt Molloy who first put it into E minor from A minor and he gives the story that there once was a witch who used to ambush riders by dropping on them from the treetops. The way to break her spell was to stab her and leave the knife in, and as long as one ignored her pleas to ‘pull it out and stick it in again’, one was safe. It was follow to comply with her request, for once the knife was removed the spell resumed. According to the Fiddler’s Companion, the title apparently refers to a County Clare saying that relates to the Hag of Balla, which appears to be near Castlebar in Mayo as far as I can tell. It seems that the tune may also be related to a reel in A minor called Castle Kelly.

The tune goes below the bottom D of the whistles and flutes and there are two strategies that can be adopted when approaching this. One is substitution of the phrase for a different one that both fits the instrument and makes sense within the tune; the other is to more simply play the note an octave above the written one. This is the common approach with this tune.

Resources for the tune are now up. Our version is a little unusual and differs slightly from others in that it shifts into D in phrases, creating some strong contrasts within the melody itself. It is worth checking out the version on Fiddler’s Companion (above) for comparison.

Photo: Our version of the tune written out in the traditional music notation system that forms the basis for ABC notation.(c) Gordon Turnbull

The Haunted House: a flutey, whistley jig

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Inspired by the Brownies who were having a Halloween party at our venue last week, I changed my plans at the last minute and made The Haunted House the tune that we focused on, a jig written by the late County Galway flute player Vincent Broderick.

As might be expected, his tunes are very accessible to whistle and flute alike and have become popular in Irish sessions. His tunes seem to fit the traditional idiom very well without trying to jazz things up or change things about, so that fit into the repertoire quite seamlessly. One distinctive trait of his tunes is the repetition of key phrases that then help to emphasise the rhythm in a way that feels quite subtle. My recording and setting are on the resources page.

The jig comes from The Turoe Stone, one of two books his compositions that he produced and there is also a CD available. Here’s a list of the various editions that are available on Amazon.

He received TG4’s Composer of the year award in 2003:

 

In a minor key: Molly Bán

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The third tune in our set of Irish reels has a less certain history than the other two. Molly Bán (or Molly Bawn) has been widely recorded but doesn’t seem to feature in collections earlier than the 1880s.

However, it shares a title (meaning Fair Molly or Fair Mary) with a ballad (in which a hunter mistakes his lover for a swan and accidentally shoots her) that was widely sung in the 19th Century in Ireland, England, Scotland, and Canada. Some history here, including reference to the publishing of the melody in the 18th Century before the ballad was written an published by Jamieson in 1806. There is a suggestion that it was overlooked by the main ballad collectors, although it doesn’t seem very clear to me why that was.

Jennifer J O’Connor has also explored The Irish Origins and Variations of the Ballad “Molly Brown” for the Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1986). There was a book by the same name written in the 19th Cantury by Irish novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford and apparently the origin of the phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

Regarding the reel, I haven’t seen a reference connecting it to the ballad melody. Maybe it would be worth exploring further. More on the reel at the Fiddlers Companion and over at TuneArchive. Irishtune.info has a list of recordings with some short samples too.

The tune has been recorded in various keys and I was surprised to find a version I had submitted to a discussion group in the 90s showed up in a search. I had forgotten about it, but “Young” John Naughton’s is a fine Clare version of the tune with a tonal centre on A. Ours is in a modal E, with a minor feel to it and although we aren’t doing this for a week or so, a recording and music is now up, with some suggested harmonies.

There’s a particularly fine recording on Youtube by the great Paddy Carty (The Flow himself) with Conor Tully and Frank Hogan.

Finally, I came across these striking illustrations of the ballad by Owen Gent.

 

The Glentown Reel/ Lord MacDonald’s

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I am fascinated by Scottish tunes that cross over into Ireland and this week’s tune is no exception. The Glentown Reel has 2 parts and many names in Ireland, but it was originally a 4 part Scottish tune entitled Lord MacDonald’s Reel.

In G, it suits flutes and whistles well and the missing two parts are very similar but played lower than the range of our instruments but within the compass of the fiddle. There are various recordings of it on YouTube. Here’s a version from Unst in the Shetland Isles found on the Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o’ Riches website.

Some background on the tune and resources can be found on The Flow Music Workshops website and The Flow website, where I posted about them a few years ago. I will eventually move the resources over to this site too.

Update 27 September: New recordings and the notation have now been added to the Resources page for this year.

 

Leaving Lismore: a harmonious retreat march

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This week’s tune is a retreat march, possibly written by Mrs Martin Hardie. I can find very little about it, although a few versions are listed on The Session website. Retreat marches are pipe tunes played at the end of the day rather than while disengaging from battle.

We looked at one of two versions, arranged in D for fiddles by Christine Martin, from one of her many tune books of traditional music; another is in G and arranged for whistles, possibly by Norman Chalmers. concertina, whistle and bodhràn player with Jock Tamson’s Bairns.

Links to the resources can be found on this new session’s Resources page.

Photo of Lismore in the Sound of Mull by Sylvia Wrigley, some rights reserved.