O’Connor Donn’s reel

A lovely reel which could be described as “semi-traditional”. It’s story is as follows. Cathal McConnell heard a wax cylinder recording from around the early 1900s of a piper named Martin Reilly playing a reel called “O’Connor Donn’s”. The quality of the recording was so poor that some sections of the tune were missing, so Cathal “ filled in the gaps”. He recorded it with “Boys Of The Lough” on the “Piper’s Broken Finger” LP. Since then it has also been recorded by “Muintir Lewis” - (“The Weeds In The Garden” LP), and more recently by Martin Hayes, who has changed it slightly. This is as close to Cathal’s version as I could get.

Great tune, and thanks Kenny for reminding me of it. I’ve got it on yet another album called Traditional music of Ireland, don’t ask me who, but some skins playing concertina, flute, mandolin and fiddle, lovely version. Shame Hayes had to get his hands on it… he used to be such a nice player, as well.
It’s best played very plain and direct, as it’s got enough of it’s own character it doesn’t need over-ornamentation.

Source: Cian - “Three Shouts from a Hill”
Transcription: g.m.p.

More or less the same as a reel I learned from Gary Hastings in the late 70s which Gary called “O’Connor Donn’s”. I think Gary’s source was Cathal McConnell.

The same tune is also posted here: https://thesession.org/tunes/1660

There’s a nice version of it here too https://thesession.org/tunes/2541.

Martin Hayes is *still* a great fiddler. His playing of this tune is lovely. His variations are perfectly appropriate. If you don’t think he’s still a “nice player” you haven’t listened to enough ITM. He is solidly within the tradition. You may not like his playing and you can certainly say so. But that’s just a statement about your own feeling. You offered an evaluation of his playing, to your own discredit.

Agree with “cocus” here. I love Martin Hayes’ playing of this tune.

Nice tune indeed.

Here’s what appears to be a different setting of this same tune. I got it off Kilkenny box player, Joe Dowling in a set of tunes, I think he calls ‘Jody’s’. Says they’d be played as slow reels. Joe has his music from all sorts of places including his father who was a well known box player back 70 years ago.

X: 1
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
|:B2AG FGAG|B2AG BAAG|FADA FAfe|dcBA B2GA|B2AG FGAG|B2AG BAAG|FADA FAfe|dcBA G4:|
|g2fa d2fa|d2fa d3g|faaf d3d|egga g3a|fada fada|faag fddg|faab c’bag|fgaf g4|
fgaf d2fa|d2fa d3g|faaf d3d|egga g3a|fada fada|faag fddg|faab c’bag|fgaf g4|

When I write it down more carefully, this is closer:
X: 1
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: reel
K: Gmaj
|:B2AG FGAG|B2AG BAAG|FADA FAfe|dcBA B2GA|B2AG FGAG|B2AG BAAG|FADA FAfe|dcBA G4:|
|f2af d2fa|d2fa d3d|faaf d3d|egga g3g|fada fada|faag fddg|faab c’bag|fgaf g4|
faaf d2fa|d2fa d3d|faaf d3d|egga g3g|fada fada|faag fddg|faab c’bag|fgaf g4|

This is taken from Pat Mitchell and Jackie Small’s transcription of Martin Reilly’s playing, which was on page 2 of An Píobaire Volume 2, Issue 6: http://source.pipers.ie/Media.aspx?mediaId=14852&categoryId=505 I haven’t bothered to notate any of the articulation here, just the bare notes, go to the transcription itself to get a sense of what the core of the tune actually was - and good luck, Reilly was just a brilliant piper and his variations on this tune were nothing short of amazing.

Peter Laban remarked about how he could scarcely believe that Mitchell and Small could fish out the actual tune from this very messy dub, and neither could I for years, as I attempted to reconstruct what Reilly played myself, with little luck. You can hear Pat and Jackie’s reconstruction on the NPU Source website - and also a lecture by Pat on this one recording! http://source.pipers.ie/Search/SearchResult.aspx?searchTerm=NotesandNarratives&startRowIndex=0&pageSize=12&mediaId=24081

My take on this lovely reel.

I’ll take back what I said above re Martin Hayes. He’s a great player and his version of this reel is excellent. I have to say some of his work on The Lonesome Touch isn’t exactly to my taste, but that’s just me. Apologies to anyone annoyed or offended by my previous comments.

Unfortunately Rietman’s links no longer work, but I’d say we now have 2 tunes by this name!