Portobello hornpipe

No connection at all with a tune of the same or similar name already posted to session.org.

A popular tune at the Golden Guinea pub session, Bristol (UK).

Really I’m just removing the painfully obvious rythm marks that are just how you play a hornpipe

Same tune but with slightly different phrasing and some chord suggestions, as played by The Rude Mechanicals (Sussex, U.K.)

skylos said “…I’m just removing the painfully obvious rythm marks…”

Not all hornpipes are played the same way. In ‘Honeyman’s Strathspey, Reel and Hornpipe Tutor’ (Edinburgh 1898) he stated that there are three different styles of hornpipes: Newcastle Style, Sand Dance Style and Sailor’s Style. The latter, he said, was “almost identical with that of bowing reels”.

If you listen to some of Bobby Casey’s hornpipes, they don’t seem “dotted” at all. Martin Byrnes, Sean McGuire, Mick Moloney, Denis Doodey, Johnny McGreevy, Seamus Creagh, Micho Russell, Matt Molloy, Josephine Keegan, etc, etc, have all played hornpipes with regular rhythms.

Ironically, John Doherty’s setting of “The High Level Hornpipe” - a Newcastle-style hornpipe if ever there was one - has no dotted notes at all!

Fair, Nigel you are technically correct. I’m not sure if you’re implying that this in some way excuses clogging up the readable notation by scribing in every single swing rhythm though. The difference between any of the hornpipe styles is subtle enough that it would be better added as a stylistic note or left to those who are listening to recordings, while leaving the dots clean to read the tune without dotted/clipped repeated rhythm notations on every eighth note sequence.

“… excuses clogging up the readable notation by scribing in every single swing rhythm …”

I would suggest that most readers would not view notating an irregular rhythm as “clogging up” a transcription. It’s usually done to preserve accuracy, and if someone has gone to the trouble of doing it, they had a reason for doing it. Your opinion that the rhthym of hornpipes is “painfully obvious” and that “it would be better” to “leave the dots clean” and that rhythm should be “added as a stylistic note” might not be shared by everyone.

Hi Nigel,

Have you any thoughts or insight as to the origin of this tune and how it came about its name?

I’m guessing that it probably has nothing to do with Portobello in Edinburgh but, more likely, a naval connection dating back to the war against Spain in the early eighteenth century?

Commonly played in these parts (California) as the accompaniment to a Border Morris dance called “Ragged Crow.” As with many (most?) Morris tunes, the beat is simple and consistent, so as not to unduly confuse the dancers. Looks like this:

X: 1
T: Portobello
R: hornpipe
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: Gmaj
|: (3DEF | G2 G2 G2 de | dcBA GA BG | A2 A2 A2 GA | BABG E2 (3DEF |
G2 G2 G2 de | dcBA GABc | dBGB cAFG | A2G2G2 :|
|: Bc | d2 d2 d2 ef | gfed e4 | edcB cBAG | FGAF D2 B2 |
c2 ec B2 dB | AGAB cB A2 | dBGB cAFG | A2G2G2 :|