The Ballymore Lasses jig

A double jig composed by piper, Kevin Rowesome. Kevin has named some of his compositions after places in County Wexford, given the ancestral connection of the musical Rowesomes with the county. Ballymore is between Mayglass and Killinick in the south eastern corner of Wexford. I think that George Ross’s forebearers farmed near Ballymore /Killinick with George’s father, John Ross, moving in to Wexford town, where George was born and raised in King Street.

It’s been pointed out to me that the Ballymore that the tune title relates to is most likely Ballymore near Camolin. This is about 7km from where the Rowsome family’s original home place was at Ballintore. Ballymore House is a period building and visitor attraction.

Hi John…

Are you convinced about the key signature? To my way of thinking, I reckon this is a D Major tune, with accidental c naturals in bars 3 and 11 of the second part rather than a G major tunes with accidental c sharps throughout apart from those particular bars…

I’ve uploaded this as it’s notated on Kevin’s website, ( he has a page that links to notated versions of some of his compositions that are on Youtube pages as I recall). You most certainly could notate it in D major with C natural incidentals, would probably read a bit better that way. When eventually I go to edit The Wexford Tune Collection for publication, many of the tunes will require a standardisation of notation style presentation etc…a lot done, more to do!!

Thanks for that, John. It’s kind of neither here nor there in some senses. Notes are notes after all and as long as we can get the gist of the tune, what odds. (Speaks I as someone who knows nada about tchords and that sort of thing - so as long as I’ve got the right notes, I’m happy.) I’ve sent you a DM regarding your tunes generally. What an amazing project. You’ve unearthed some absolute gems and I look forward to buying the collection when it eventually emerges. The efforts of stalwarts like yourself in honouring local tunes is the heart and soul of this music…

Just got round to substituting D major version which Kevin had kindly provided me with a few days ago. Thanks Aidan.

No worries, John … as I said the notes were right, it was just the key signature. And as a melody player, the notes are the only thing that really matter to me and - I suspect - there majority of people who inhabit this website.

By the way, I’m really enjoying the tunes that you’ve been posting as part of your Wexford Tunes project. Very commendable project and illustrates just what a wealth of local tunes there are in your part of the world. I imagine it’s hard work; although presumably very satisfying and rewarding…

If I’m being truthful, I’m enjoying them all but stumble over a few of them when I attempt to play them; some are a bit above my pay grade (play grade? 😉 ).

Aidan

It’s been an amazing undertaking. The realization that there were in fact scores of tunes out there, composed by local players who in the main, didn’t ‘play them out’ very often or indeed not at all,( invariably because of modesty or not wanting to ‘push’ their own tunes). In some cases the tunes were heard for a while, then forgotten about, perhaps even by the composer themselves. I had to remind one person of the tune they had composed about 30 years ago and completely forgotten. Putting them in to notation at least preserves them and hopefully over time some of them will assimilate in to the local repertoire or maybe even beyond.

Well, John… I’ve picked up a few of your Wexford tunes that I will publish in my website and tune learning channel on YouTube where I set tunes out in sheet music and mandolin tablature and play my version of the tune alongside. Who knows … someone may pick up one some of the tunes, introduce them to their local sessions and, in time, they could get a new lease of life. The whole “trad process” thing is, after all, a joyful mystery. Some tunes which you and I might agree on as being absolutely superb might get nothing more than a “meh” from other musicians. Tunes which they rave about might leave one or both of us cold. **Everyone** might agree that a tune is awful, grating… and yet for fear of offending the person who they *think* introduced the tune to the session, they play on regardless, all the while muttering under their breath that the tune in question is sucking the very life out of them. And then, sometimes, at a session someone pulls out a tune which hasn’t been played there before and two or three of the players’ eyes light up because they, too, have been spending some time with that particular tune and have been waiting, as they may have thought vainly, for the time when it might make an appearance. And that tune becomes a staple of that particular session…

I get the thing about players not wanting to “push” their own tunes. I’ve written a few tunes of my own but only ever play one - a reel called One Tree Hill - in a session. (And then, only because - in my opinion - it flows very nicely into The Lilies Of The Field and it’s become something of signature set for me…)

Elsewhere another friend plays one of his own compositions at sessions and it’s been picked up and is spreading slowly through neighbouring sessions… Another friend brought out an album of his own compositions a few years ago and though they are grand tunes, he very rarely plays any of them in a session setting (and then only if someone asks him to play this or that tune which they’ve heard from his album). However he was quite surprised (and understandably delighted) when he visited a new session which had started up some way away from his normal stomping ground to hear them play a set of his tunes.

Anyway, here’s to local tunes and “made” tunes. Long may your project continue. Long may local repertoires continue to develop, even in this day and age. And long may composers, modestly and without fanfare, for the good of their soul, draw tunes from the ether and shape the silence into melodies that quicken the pulse.

Hi Aidan, that’s a lovely post, thank you. I hope that something from within the collection grabs people’s attention somewhere and perhaps gets a bit of traction. I suppose realistically among ‘new’ trad tunes, a handful become ‘competition tunes’ which don’t really get played outside of the fleadhanna and a few, if they get included on a successful album, then gain popularity. With the huge number of new compositions that are emerging everywhere it’s probably far more difficult for a ‘new’ tune to become ‘standard’ in the way that ‘new’ tune did in the 1960’s and 70’s.