The Jig Of The Dead (jig) on The Session

The Jig of the Dead

Learned from Harry Bradley’s flute playing. He writes: ‘our friend Seamus Tansey informs us that the second jig was employed for an unusual funeral rite performed in the countryside around his native Gurteen. According to Seamus, during the waking of the deceased, it was customary for a couple of hardy dancers to lift the body and dance it around the room one last time before it was removed to its final resting place. This is the piece of music that was habitually performed as a theme tune to that end. Oddly enough it is also played as a march in the Antrim fife and drum tradition. Its title in that tradition, as if to emphasise a contrast, is "Young Men in Their Bloom".’

Anyway, this jig goes nicely together with "Scotsman Over the Border," and not to mention "I Buried My Wife and Danced on Top of Her."

Young Men in Their Bloom

https://thesession.org/tunes/3549

The two tunes share basically the same first part, but they are different enough to be posted as different tunes with different second parts.

And yes, they are from different traditions.

hi slainte! thanks for transcription.i found this jig more or less same as jig recorded on skylark ‘skylark’ album, they called him sean maguire’s jig.some of title for this jig is also john kimell’s jig.you could check in database for other transcriotion, where is only second part slighty different than jig of the dead jig.
marin

Thanks!

Thanks so much slainte. I meant to learn this one but never got around to it and forgot about it until I saw you transcribed it. Awesome!

Thanks Marin. Yes, this is just a version of the tune already posted as Haley’s: https://thesession.org/tunes/925 Associated with Sean Maguire and John J. Kimmell, this tune must be an old tune. If Jeremy decides to delete this transcription as a duplicated post, I’ll post it in the comments of "Haley’s".

celtic marine, this is more or less my interpretation of the tune, so I hope you won’t stick to it!