My question is as the title shows. I have found several tunes by that name whether they be Hornpipes, barndances or whatever. This is true of other tune names so there must be some sort of explanation why there are duplicate tunes by the same name
Gan Ainm means “no name” in Irish.
Sorry to ruin everybody’s fun who are busy typing witty, misleading replies. Jeremy, could you please delete my comment?
Even more frightening, there are quite a few bands with this name as well.
The sensorily-challenged Gan (short for Ganymede, and totally blind, deaf, smell and touch-deficient) Ainm was a renowned uilleann trombonist from Ballfeckit in County Tipperone. He penned many a tune, ‘hornpipes, barndances or whatever’, including many in the last-named category, forgetting to add titles and then even give them numbers (viz M. Wynne or P. Fahy).
Seriously, ‘gan ainm’ means ‘without a name’, i.e. ‘title unknown’.
GAN AINM TO IT is an anagram of IMAGINATION
In Welsh, GAN means WITH, in Irish it means WITHOUT. In Hebrew, it means GARDEN. In Geordie, it means GO.
Literally, “anam” translates to “soul” .. so, without a soul (ie, without a name). Interesting how the two are so closely linked in Irish culture….
To MacCruiskeen Where the hell is County Tipperone?
upmine3, Tipperone is halfway between County Wateraghanavan and County Galegal.
Many have felt so alone,
Attempting to rhyme Tipperone,
Beguiled by a phoney
Who claimed Pepperone
When the answer was just Toblerone.
There once was a player of bodhran,
Who was given two sticks by his son,
The one made of yew,
He named ‘Tipper-Two’,
And the other, he named ‘Tipper-One’.
There was a young lass from Tipperone,
Who wanted to go out on her own,
On the road to Ballfeckit,
She stripped down bare nekkid,
Without ever hanging up her mobile phone.
PatrickJWK, you’re obviously a relative newbie to this board otherwise you’d know that there are no women (nor indeed dogs, men nor cattle) under the age of 68 in Tipperone. This was one of Dev’s last rulings when, under the influence of a surfeit of Benylin in 1957, he decreed that Tipperone should remain for time immemorial as a sanctuary for the old, the weary, the down on their luck and the banjo players until Fionn Mac Cumhaill returned to fill in all the holes he’d left behind in the Irish landscape. We still await that fateful day.
I forgot her name, in Tipperary.
If she found out, it would be scary.
But what did she want from me?
All I heard was contrary.
From Mary Mary, quite contrary
I am amazed that this thread received so many responses and will settle for the meaning of Gan Ainm, however now for the more difficult question. How does one distinguish these same name tunes and how would one list them in a library of tunes?
To MacCruiskeen, I had a friend during my school days who had the name Tony Papparoni and that was his real name. A great guy to have as friend but he did take some ribbing about the name, without offense. I, like all Campbells, had the nickname “Soup” all through my younger days so empathized with him.
You want the honest answer about how to categorize it in a library? You don’t unfortunately with this music you can’t worry about that too much. Just learn the tunes and play them, then you’ll recognize it when someone else plays it, and the name ceases to matter. Not to sound crusty, but the names are really not that important. Paddy Fahy tunes for example…
just invent a name for them, then YOU will know them by name = problem solved
By the way, are you the famous Bill Campbell?
I think you’ll find, Geoff, that Ganymede normally preferred his middle name …
There once was a tune called Gan Ainm
Which was penned by a bloke known as Eamonn
Though rightly called Gan
He had a wicked old cran
Which he learnt from some fella in Spainm
He practised his crans on trombone
In which art he stood all alone
He’d burble and squawk
From Rathmines to Dundalk
But he lived in fair old Tipperone
Gan aimh is what Geordies do after a session. Tsk.
By the way, are you the famous Bill Campbell?
Only in my wife’ eyes!
i saw a B&B named Gan Ainm or some phonetic equivalent in the West of Scotland last week.
Or perhaps I should say, a B&B not named ..
meempt
Unfortunately, I just began to connect to this sessions about a year ago and with the 1000’s of tunes I found it is just a mammoth chore to learn them all. The truth of the matter is that I have not yet learned one, to play by memory or in fact to play correctly. If would that task will happen sometime within the next 5 years, ow that I have reached the magnificent young age of 75, I do hope that I will be around when my 80th comes to play my first memorized tune for my dear family. After all I hadn’t played this kind of fiddle for over 60 years.
Now that I have that off my chest may I say I do enjoy printing out tunes that fill with joy and that my wife and I can then play on the keyboard and fiddle and refer back to them whenever we wish to do so, but when several tunes have the same name it is difficult to choose the right one.
As an aside, to those young un’s out there “keep on fiddling” and to the older geezers like myself, take it as a pastime. It makes life worth carrying on.
I had a friend named Bill Campbell.
He used to rob, steal, and gamble - and on the side he begged, so he mopped up.
I told old Bill he shouldn’t do it, and old Bill said that he knew it, so he started begging with a bucket instead of a cup.
He’s in the jailhouse now.
Heya Bill! Well met! What a great story you got, you and the missus enjoy, that’s fantastic!
Now, back to you regularly scheduled silliness…
"Low lie the fields of Tipperone,
No one under 68 calls it home,
Since Dev’s great decree,
All the youth decided to flee,
And it’s finally feckin’ quiet in Tipperone…"
I went out last Tuesday met a gal named Susie
Told her I was the swellest guy around.
We started to spend my money
Then she started to call me honey
We took in every cabaret in town.
We’re in the jailhouse now,
We’re in the jailhouse now,
I told the judge right to his face
We didn’t like to see this place,
We’re in the jailhouse now…
Bill, There is a lot of pleasure to be found in gathering around the music stand and sharing music with the family. When my wife and I were just learning to play tunes we spent many an hour doing just that. There is a lot of trashing of sheet music on this site, but music is music, and there are many ways to enjoy it! Glad to hear that you and the wife found one of them!
I would never have known that the basic Limerick verse form would fit to the tune of ‘The Fields …’
… and all these years listening avidly to ‘One song to the tune of another’ …
Sounds like the song Steve Earl listened to when writing ‘Galway Girl.’