The Resting Chair barndance

It think its full name is "The (or Da) Auld Resting Chair" and it is an air.

Yes it’s an air, which isn’t an option when submitting tunes. What’s the closest thing to an air? I didn’t know what to put :-|

The hee hee wasn’t directed at you Conway. I’ve come up against the same problem - I submitted a piece by Carolan and had to call it a waltz (barf).

No offense taken & I really am grateful to be corrected! I didn’t know what it was until I looked at a different file.

Lovely tune. Thanks Brother Steve.

Thanks Conway!

Isn’t this a shetland tune - by Tom Anderson. It certainly has a similar feel to Da Slockit Light.
Noel Jackson
Angels of the North

Tom Anderson is the composer of this tune.
Good Luck.
Mike Allen.

I have Tom Anderson’s CD The Silver Bow with me today, and according to his liner notes he wrote this tune upon finding, in the ruins of his grandfather’s cottage, the remains of the "resting chair" his grandfather used to sit on while teaching Tom to play the fiddle. Rather a touching story.

Fiddler and former band mate of the ubiquitous Mick Maloney, Eugene O’Donnell plays a splendid variant of this tune on his solo album from the late 70s or early 80s. If I’m not "misremembering", the album was called, aptly enough, Eugene O’Donnell. Great stuff, altogether.

This tune also appears on “Lios A’Cheoil, Traditional Irish Music” by Tom and Kerry Barrett with Paul de Grae. Their liner notes indicate that it was composed by Tom Anderson and is a tribute to his grandfather as well. A brilliant Air!

Peace,
Ed

The University of Stirling, 1979
ISBN: 0-901636-25-8

#33: "Da Auld Resting Chair"

Does anyone know or have a second part or counter melody for this lovely tune ?

By a remarkable coincidence, I was given a copy of both parts last week (looking at transcribing it for guitar).

I took it out to look at it this evening and looked it up on thesessions, and noticed your post. So, your luck’s in!

Here’s the second fiddle part (my first attempt at transcribing into ABC).

Best regards,
Dave

X: 1
T: Resting Chair, The (second fiddle)
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: air
K: Gmaj
z2| (g3 a) (f3 g) |(d2 B2) (B2 G2) |c4 d4 |^c4 d4 |
(g3 a) (f3 g) |(d2 B2) (B2 G2) |(cd)(ec) d2 c2 | B6 :||
d2 | (ed)(cB) B4 |c4 B4 |A4 (G2 B2) |^c4 d4 |(ed)(cB) B4|
c4 B4 |A2 (Bc) B2 c2 |B6 d2| (ed)(cB) B4| c4 B4 |
A4 (G2B2) |^c4 d4 |(g3a) (f3 g) | (d2B2) (B2 G2) |(cd)(ec) (d2c2)|B6 ||

Thanks a million, Dave, for transcribing the second part and sharing it. Sounds nice. Do you know the author ?

René

A friend of mine plays this tune and calls it "The Old Racking Chair." He has always told me it was a James Scott Skinner tune. Any idea how he could have been confused? Does Skinner have any connection with the tune in the slightest?

This song appears on Buttons and Bows first album with the title "The Old Resting Chair" - at least in the version that I have.

"Any idea how he could have been confused?" - 52Paddy

Drink, pickling himself or the person who gave him the wrong name and the wrong composer… Also composer of others, like "Da Slockit Light":

https://thesession.org/tunes/1863

The WORST thing that can and has been done to these fine tunes, by people who have obviously not bothered to hear the composer’s own ways with them, is to drag them out as a melodramatic dirge, some folks misguided concept of what an ‘air’ is, Hollywood fashion and slurpy… They definitely lose something when butchered that way.

ISBN: 0-901636-25-8

First published in 1979 by the Department of Continuing Education, The University of Sterling

Page 44, tune #33 ~ "Da Auld Resting Chair"

"Dis is a slow air o’ me ain at I composed in 1968 whin I fan at Hamnavoe, whaur me grand feider bedd, da brucks o’ da auld resting chair dat he sat upo whin he wis learnin me ta play da fiddle." ~ Tom Anderson

University of Stirling, Ceolachan - it’s not a banking school!

Credit where credit is due, Weejie. He spelled it correctly in 2005!

At least on this thread he did.😲