Please Give A Penny To The Poor Old Man polka

This is the final part of what was usually a 5 part series of tunes played for this group dance, some in 2/4, some in 6/8; examples from folk tradition of the 6/8 have been posted here before. This setting comes from the fiddling of Johnny Doherty, as recorded on his Comhaltas LP; some of his other recordings have Lancers tunes in 6/8 as well, and more may be found at the Comhaltas archives. In bars 2 and 4 John actually played very brief double stops, harmonizing B against G and D against F, for the sake of clarity I haven’t included these notes.

X:2 is from Köhler’s Violin Repository of Dance Music: http://imslp.org/wiki/K%C3%B6hler’s_Violin_Repository_of_Dance_Music_(Anonymous) The ABCs are somewhere on the net, forget where but you can download the collection at once if so desired. This print setting is close to how Sligo fiddler Michael Gorman played it, as heard on the Jolly Tinker recording, differing from Doherty’s here and there.

See Wallop Away the Wattle O! https://thesession.org/tunes/8109 for the same tune notated as a polka.

Frankie Gavin recorded this as one of McLaughlin’s Flings (with Staten Island). Peadar O’Laughlin and Maeve Donnelly recorded it as Leather Away the Wattle O! coupled with John Gorman’s Barn Dance. Neither of these recordings sound like polkas IMHO.

Could there be a confusion of titles here? ‘Leather away the wattle-o’ (https://thesession.org/tunes/2286) as played at our local sessions seems like a straightforward polka, but ‘Wallop away … ’ is a different tune and doesn’t. Perhaps there is a crucial distinction between leathering your wattle and walloping it?