Cruibins For Breakfast reel

Title was originally in Irish “Bricfeasta na Crúibín”, Crúibín’s are pig’s trotters, and used to be served as a delicacy at races, fleadh’s or any other social gathering. The date of this reel gives 1813, though the composer’s name is completely unintelligible at it certainly wasn’t composed by Sonny McElligott as it’s dated before his time.
Pig’s trotters were often the main course of Lunch or Dinner, besides being a snack. Unfortunately due to European Laws and Regulations, have made them almost extinct from the market place or shops, besides they are not the same as when the pig was home bred and cured.

Where’d ya find this one?
“Crubeens” were mentioned in Joyce’s “Ulysses” so Im curious to know.

My family have collected manuscripts for over two & half centuries, and as I am seventy years of age, I have no-one to leave these manuscripts too, so I’m trying to pass these tunes on before they end up in the trash can.
I think a lot of these manuscripts have never before been published, or if they have they might have different names.
Most my ancestors were musicians, either Piper’s, Fiddler’s, Accordion Concertina, & Flute players. I have the well known Walker (Piper) Jackson, Patrick Donovan, Patrick O’Donovan, and Sonny McElligott, in my ancestry all of whom were Piper’s and Fiddle players.

“a big crubeen for thruppence, to be pickin’ while you’re able” at the Galway Races, too.

Cuanshore, what you are doing is magnificent; it’s a real shame there’s no-one to help you since it’s clearly a huge task, even though you’re doing so well. But even if you manage to transcribe and post all your tunes, it would still be awful if the manuscripts themselves were lost. Where do you live? I’m sure there must be an archive (and archivists) somewhere near enough, who would advise you even if they couldn’t care for your books themselves. Is there a university library which could establish The Cuanshore Collection? I think it must be worth investigating - I hope you haven’t already done so and drawn a blank!

Thanks for your comment Slightly Mad Scientist, the nearest place to me, would be Belfast, but as I am housebound, I have no way of getting there. I would not like to post them either as most of them are so old and fragile and they might get further ruined in transit, not only that the nearest Post Office is a three mile walk, which I am unable to do.
It might take me some time to get these tunes down, but it gives me an interest in keeping my mind active, and hope my trouble is worth the while.
Thanks again for all your comments.

Oh no, don’t post them! Far too much risk. Of course what you’re doing is worthwhile. I do think, though, that it would also be worthwhile to find them a home after you’ve finished with them. I do hope you won’t feel that I’m putting pressure on you; I just love old books and papers and you’ve expressed sorrow that they might be lost, so I’d like to help to avoid that if I can.

I remembered that there used to be a post-graduate ethnomusicology course at Queen’s University so I looked at their website. I discovered that there is also an Irish Traditional Music module in the undergraduate music course, run by Dr Martin Dowling, whose main research interest is the history of Irish traditional music in the 19th century - he sounds as if he might be able to help you. These are his contact details if you feel like talking to him:


Martin Dowling
The School of Music and Sonic Arts
Queen’s University of Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
E-mail: m.dowling@qub.ac.uk
Tel: 44 2890 971152

If you think I can do anything else to help, please let me know.

Sounds to me very much like The Glencolmcille (aka The American, The Fantastic):
https://thesession.org/tunes/420
but I like this title better than any of the others!