The Old Pigeon On The Gate reel

Again, a tune which seems to be favoured by wind- instrument players. My source was Finbar Furey, and it was also on a record featuring Tommy Keane, who played it on whistle. In both of these recordings, it was given the above title. More recent recordings, by Conal O’Grada ("Top Of Coom" LP), and "Arcady" ("After The Ball") have listed it as "Cathal McConnel’s", but the tune , I feel is much older than him!
Interestingly, before posting it, I checked to see if it was already in the tune-list, and looked at "The Pigeon On The Gate" in Em. There are very strong similarities in the tune structure, so that this appears to be a major key version of the better- known reel.
As with my previous posting, the "Beehive", this is a basic version of the tune, and there are many variations possible.

If this is the tune I’m thinking it is the Fs in the third bar are natural, or did you mean them to be F#s?

All Fs are # as I play it.

paddy keenan plays this tune with niall vallely on concertina on his cd na keen affair
he just calls it the pigeon on the gate and the case liner notes say that this is yet another version of the pigeon popularised by conal o’grada
he plays it with F# and to me the second part resembles quite closely the second part of the dogs amongst the bushes as played by planxty and i think from memory willy clancy on one of his records

sorry i meant to say paddy keenan plays the f’s natural in the third bar thats what the whole post was about but i forgot
nice tune though no one really plays it do they??

This is very similar to Kitty Gone A Milking: https://thesession.org/tunes/1647

The version I learnt in my area is very different to Kenny’s and goes like this:

X: 1
T: Old Pigeon On The Gate, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
Bc|dG~G2 dG~G2|(3Bcd eB dBAB|cF~F2 cF~F2|(3Bcd eB dBAB|
dG~G2 dG~G2|(3Bcd eB dBAG|FGAd ~f3e|dcAF G2:|
|:Bc|dggf ~g3f|dg~g2 bgaf| dffe ~f3e|defg agfe|
dggf ~g3f|dg~g2 bgaf|d^cde ~f3e|dcAF G2:|

X: 1
T: Old Pigeon On The Gate, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
|:Bc| dG G2 dgeg | d2 de dcAB | cF F2 cFdF | (3Bcd de dcBc |
dG G2 dgeg | d2 de dcAG | FGAB cdeg | fdcA G2 Bc :|
|: dg g2 ag g2 | dg g2 bgaf | dcde f3e | defg agfd |
dg g2 ag g2 | dg g2 b3g | dcde fgfd | cAFA G4 :|

http://youtu.be/Z-fHWIPpdac

play video

Sorry, my technological ineptitude can’t figure out how to add a recording to the list of albums featuring this tune. There’s a powerful version of this tune played by Brendan Mulvihill (double-tracked!) on Zan McLeod’s "Highland Soul" album.

Go to Recordings, find the link for adding a new recording, and follow the directions to add the album and its entire track listings. Be careful to avoid typos. If the tune title on the album track listing matches the title of this tune (and there are no other tunes in the database here with the same title that take priority), it should link automatically.

First go at posting in ABC for a while… I’d kind of forgotten how it all works…

The setting I’ve added is one I picked up from the playing of Noel Hill. On "Irish Concertina", he lists the tune as ‘The Pigeon on the Gate’ (henceforth PotG) but… it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the Eminor version of PotG as I know it, or as I’ve ever heard it played. I’ve since heard him refer to this setting of it as the Old PotG, so that’s where I’m adding it. I love this version for the implied syncopation - the way the second phrase creeps in early and then sorts itself out at the end.

I do see a LOT of versions in various modes of G over on the main PotG page, and they don’t match with this setting, which is pure Gminor… to my mind, the versions in G are not so similar to the Eminor version that I think they belong together. I suspect that the G(various) settings should be on this page, and the Eminor ones on the straightforward PotG page, but that might take a bit of doing…

I really love this reel. The version I learned is kinda different from the ones listed here bit retains the same feel and overall structure.

I like playing this after Humours of Tulla in G, anyone know a good tune to follow?

Learned this setting in a workshop with John Skelton