A Dhomhnuill! A Dhomhnuill! reel

Adapted for fiddle and learnt from the flute playing of Will Woodson from ‘The Sunny Hills’ record. Nice shift to the relative minor in the B part like a lot of those Scots reels that roll and go.

From the Athole Collection.

A cool take on the tune from The Cape Breton Scottish Collection from the playing of Johnny Wilmot (home tape, 1968) and Donald MacLellan’s, Dusky Meadow (2003). Mr. Wilmot has an interesting personal history with the music as well:

‘My Friend Johnny’ is an article from the 1993 Silver Apple News ….below is an excerpt:

Musically, Johnny was fluently bilingual. He was one of the few musicians I ever met who had thoroughly digested both Cape Breton Irish and Cape Breton Scottish styles. While his own compositions often straddled this Irish-Scottish fence, his settings of traditional tunes kept the two separate, always displaying personal style without sacrificing the beauty and integrity of the ‘original’ melodies.

Johnny was exposed to live Irish and Scottish styles of music from the time he was an infant. Starting in the late ‘twenties he began listening to the Irish 78s of Coleman, Morrison etc. and and later to the Cape Breton 78s of the Inverness Serenaders. He played most of the ‘mainstream repertoire’ including the majority of tunes recorded and played by other Cape Breton fiddlers between 1930-65. Many of these tunes were found in easily available books such as Cole’s One Thousand Fiddle Tunes, J. Scott Skinner’s, The Scottish Violinist, The Scotch Guard and The Skye, O’Neill’s and Kerr’s Collections.

Oh, I found the above info here:

http://www.cranfordpub.com/artists/Wilmot_Johnny.htm

In A Major.

Dhomhnuill, a Dhomhnuill,
Thug am molt am monadh air!
Dhomhnuill, a Dhomhnuill,
Theich e leis an ropan.

Hinn hainn hurra bhi!
Isebeil is Ealasaid,
Hinn hainn hurra bhi!
Ni’Chaluim id Dhomhnuill.

(Donald, O Donald,
The wether is away to the moor;
Donald, O Donald,
With the tether he is gone!

Hin hain hurra vee!
Isabella and Elisabeth,
Hin hain hurra vee!
Calum’s girl and Donald!)

- Francis Tolmie, Songs of Occupation from the Western Isles, 1911

From Francis Tolmie, 105 Songs of Occupation from the Western Isles of Scotland, 1911 (facsimile 1997).