The Old French reel

From The New England Fiddler’s Repertoire.

Isn’t this originally a Quebecois reel?
Noel Jackson
Angels of the North

I got this tune from Cleveland’s Westside Contra Dance Club tunebook years ago. There seems to be some overlap between Quebec and New England. Hence the name “Old French” for a Quebecois reel appropriated by Yankee fiddlers. I doubt the French would have called it that.

by Randy Miller & Jack Perron
2nd Edition, 2003, by Randy Miller & Robert Bley-Vroman

~ 96 pages, 168 classic traditional contra dance melodies…

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

~ & YES! ~ There is a lot or traffic and influences between New England and the Canadian Maritmes, people, music and dance…not forgetting the fisheries and smuggling…

“Maritimes”, where’d that ‘i’ disappear to? 😉

As is often the case in North America, sometimes the swing gets ironed out of a tune to fit it into the realm of the reel, but the practice of playing hornpipes flat and unswung is not solely the practice of American players. As is usually true, this tune is nice either way:

| (3ABc | d2 c>d B>dA>F | D>FA>d (3fgf e>d | c>de>f g>ec>e | d>fe>d (3BcB ~

For some reason, I could not get this to come up under a search for “old french”, “Old French”, or even “the Old French”. It happened yesterday too, but I figured I must have just misspelled it. I had to resort to just “French”, and then it came up. Seems something may be glitched?

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Thank you.
celticladda/Randy Miller/Fiddlecase Books

New Hampshire’s population is 30% French Canadian because many immigrants came from Quebec Province to work in mills and logging industry. They brought their music with them.
Sylvia Miskoe, Concord NH USA

Some info from https://tunearch.org/wiki/Annotation:Old_French :

The melody was a popular vehicle for contra dancing in the 1970’s, when it seemed to surface simultaneously in the New England repertoire and on the West Coast. Popular belief has it that the “Old French” title derived from a remark by an old Vermont fiddler who, when asked its title, said it was “just an old French tune”. The reel was known in Canada prior to the “folk revival” that fed American contra dancing, and was in Maritime fiddler Don Messer’s “Down-East” repertoire (as “Rambler’s Hornpipe,” probably the source for many American “revival” musicians). The original provenance is in Québécois repertoire, where it was recorded in 1929 under the title “Reel de St-Tite” on a recording by Sotère Mongrain and Ida Mongrain (violin with piano accompaniment). Ottawa Valley fiddlers know it as “Rambler’s Hornpipe” or “Little Old Man,” while Cape Breton fiddlers call it “The Old French Reel”.

Incidentally, how do people usually finish this tune? When I first heard it, I thought it would go best to finish by reprising the first half (in D), resolving back to its original key - rather than the second half (in A mix?) But perhaps the latter makes for a more interesting finish? Just curious! How do YOU play it?

Definitely a hornpipe to my ears, but nice either way.