The Little Burnt Potato jig

A cheerful jig from the New England Fiddler’s Repertoire. Haven’t come across it elsewhere.

This is another one I learnt at school but in G rather than D - I haven’t heard/seen/played it in 10 years. It looks to be from Nova Scotia, composed by Collin J. Boyd. For more details, see http://cjtm.icaap.org/content/15/v15art7.html

I wouldn’t regard this as a jig but as two-step.
Its popular with the border players.
Noel Jackson
Angels of the North

crickey the version i play is quite drastically different, play it for english ceilidh dances

I have a question about this tune. I have a copy from the Fiddler’s Fakebook and I looked it up here and there is a
note in both that I think is wrong.

If you look at the first 6 notes in the first bar, and the first 6 notes in the first endings of A and B, they are almost identical. In the
2 endings, they make second G# into a G natural but they don’t do this in the first bar. Is this right?

Janice

Pretty normal in trad tunes, especially Irish. (A very experienced player even once told me that in Irish traditional music, the old style was to play it going up as a sharp and going down as a natural, or maybe it was the other way round, can’t remember at this point.) Don’t know or play this tune, but it sounds right to my ear.

Janice, the difference is in what note the g resolves to. In the first two bars, it resolves back to “a” and so it stays sharp (echoing the sound you get in A major). In the ending phrase, it resolves down to “f” and so shades back into D major–which favors g natural.

This sort of thing is quite common in tunes across many trad or folk genres.

In G for Dow, with a few other differences and even a ‘skip’… 😉

K: G Major
B=c^c |
dcd edc | dBG D2 G | B2 d =c2 B | A E2- EFG |
A2 B A2 G | FDF d3 |1 dcd ed=c | B3- :|
2 dcd edF | G3- Gd=c ||
B2 D BDD | B3- B2 A | GAB dcB | =c3- cAB |
=ced cBA | GFE D2 ^c |1 d^cd ed=c | B3- Bd=c :|
2 d^cd ed=F | G3 ||

Canadian Journal for Traditional Music:
http://cjtm.icaap.org/
http://cjtm.icaap.org/content/15/v15art7.html
“This tune was composed by Colin Boyd and used by Don Messer. It is an old-time tune in that it was composed in Canada, but a commercial old-time tune in that it was marketed through the media. Boyd was Irish and a number of Irish characteristics are evident.”

Randy Miller & Jack Perron, 1983:

https://www.fiddlecasebooks.com/
https://www.fiddlecasebooks.com/store/c2/Books.html

& there’s even a new reivsed 20th Anniversary editions ~ 2003

Damn, that was before I ‘keyed’ it and I was using = & ^ and hadn’t cleaned it up before submission, apologies, I’m doing three things simultaneously here at the minute, including cooking… Here it is corrected and cleared of the unnecessary extras and hopefully alright this time:

K: G Major
Bc^c |
d^cd edc | dBG D2 G | B2 d c2 B | A E2- EFG |
A2 B A2 G | FDF d3 |1 d^cd ed=c | B3- :|
2 d^cd edF | G3- Gdc ||
B2 D BDD | B3- B2 A | GAB dcB | c3- cAB |
ced cBA | GFE D2 ^c |1 d^cd ed=c | B3- Bdc :|
2 d^cd edF | G3 ||

I understand Noelbats feeling about this one, it feels like a quickstep to me too, however, in North America it is usually found in jig sets and used for contra and square dancing…

X: 2
T: Little Burnt Potato
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
R: jig
K: GMaj
|: Bc^c |\
d^cd edc | dBG D2 G | B2 d c2 B | A E2- EFG |
A2 B A2 G | FDF d3 |[1 d^cd ed=c | B3- :|[2 d^cd edF | G3- Gdc ||
B2 D BDD | B3- B2 A | GAB dcB | c3- cAB |
ced cBA | GFE D2 ^c |[1 d^cd ed=c | B3- Bdc :|[2 d^cd edF | G3 |]

Submitted on May 12th 2012 by ceili.
~ /tunes/11924

X: 3
T: Frank’s Two Step
S: CD - “Kilfenora Ceili Band: Century”
M: 6/8
L: 1/8
R: jig
K: Gmaj
|: B2 c |\
d^cd edc | dBG D3 | BAB c2 B | E3 E3 |
A2 G A2 G | FGA d3 | ded cBA |[1 B3 :|[2 G3 G2 D ||
|: B2 D B2 D | B3 B2 A | GBd dcB | c3 c3 |
c2 d cBA | GFE D3 |[1 d^cd ed=c | B3 B3 :|[2 ded cBA | G3 |]

The setting I’ve added is as-near-as-I-can-hear as recorded by Don Messer, see
http://youtu.be/1z86fwPpD-M

play video

with the usual caveats that he doesn’t play it exactly the same way each time.
The tie at the end of the 1st-time bars in line 2 refers back to the start of the tune, not to the 2nd-time bars.
Not my usual cup of tea, but I was looking for some pipe-friendly two-steps for ceilidhs, and this recording has a lovely swing and a loose feel.

Interesting link posted by ceolachan above, but seems inaccurate - the composer (or “improver” if you like) Colin Joseph Boyd was not Irish, but from Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and was renowned as a Scottish-style fiddler. On the web site http://www.backtothesugarcamp.com there is a story about the legendary Cape Breton fiddler Dan R MacDonald giving Boyd an old Scottish tune which Boyd then “adapted and changed and named “The Little Burnt Potato”…” MacDonald also composed a tune for Boyd, simply named “Mr Colin J Boyd” published in The Cape Breton Collection of Scottish Melodies (1940)

The Don Messer link has now gone but here’s another: https://youtu.be/mXVRDzl0rXQ

play video