October 2024 Tunes
Barbara McOwen shares the history behind short (16-bar) and long (32-bar) reels. Click here to see the tunes.
Reels
The three old-style (16-bar) traditional reels are Return from India in A major, and two A mixolydian pipe reels, Daldowny’s and Biodag air MacThomais (Thomson’s Dirk).
Return from India is in Jerry Holland’s Collection, Book 1, where the footnote sources it in Kerr’s Merry Melodies, circa 1776. The Cape Breton Symphony and Natalie MacMaster have it in their repertoire. The SRS 5.7 setting has the broken thirds of the JH version.
Daldowny’s has appeared twice already, as SRS 23.20 which is a setting by Aonghas Grant from the William Ross 1883 pipe tune collection, (the present setting is based on that). The SRS 27.01 setting, with bowing suggestions, is from Peter Macfarlane’s workshop, and has repeats on both parts (AABB) to give 32 bars for dancing.
Biodag air MacThomais also known as MacThomas has a Dirk is a very old Gaelic tune that appears in many music collections. Both pipe reels are also in MacDonald (The Skye Collection), 1887.
Both the new-style (32-bar) reels are from Shetland.
Listen to Catriona Macdonald playing it here
Hurlock’s Reel is a hornpipey/marchy A major reel composed by Tom Anderson in 1938. Harry Hurlock played drums for Davie Robertson’s dance band, in which Tom was the fiddler. It is a popular Shetland dance band and session tune. I have it in the RSC graded exam book 4 for accordion
Auld (Old) Willie Hunter was composed by Ronnie Cooper for the father of Willie Hunter Jr. who composed the slow air Leaving Lerwick Harbour (SRS 34.02) and the reel The Cape Breton Symphony’s Welcome to Shetland (SRS 11.16). Young Willie was a member of the dance band The Hamefarers along with Ronnie.
Old Willie Hunter was a founding member of the Shetland Folk Society band Da Forty Fiddlers.
March and Strathspeys
The introductory tunes for the reel set are a Cape Breton slow march by Mike MacDougal Mary Ann MacDougal’s composed for his mother. (Jerry Holland has it in his Second Collection).
John MacAlpin, this strathspey is the ‘original’ tune for a well known dance. The song “Heigh ho, the rattlin’ bog” is sung to this melody. John MacAlpin’s ancestry came from Kenneth MacAlpin who was the first king of Scotland (843-858), uniting the Scots from the West with the Picts from the north.
The John McAlpin strathspey was devised by Hugh Foss, a brilliant cryptanalyst who worked at Bletchley Park on breaking the German Enigma code. In 1944 he worked in the United States to decipher Japanese naval messages.
Foss wrote this about the dance: The ideas in this dance came from fencing.
Bars 1–4 represent a one-two, where a fencer feints on one side of his opponent’s blade and disengages to make the real attack on the other side.
Bars 5–8 represent one-two-deceive (get a fencer to explain this).
When one fencer retires his opponent usually advances. This inspired bars 17–24.
Sometimes fencers rush up so close to each other that they have to be separated by the referee. This is known as a corps-à-corps. Hence bars 25–32.
Niel Gow’s Strathspey, originally composed in 3 flats (E flat major) by Scottish dancing master and musician Duncan Macintyre (c. 1767-1807), in his 1794 collection dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell. MacIntyre spent some years in India (probably as a Master of Ceremonies to the Governor-General's Court); most other collections have it in A major.
Hmmm.. maybe MacIntyre wrote ‘Return from India’. Not likely, but a thought, though.
Anyway, enjoy the tunes, and remember to smile!!
