The Blackhaired Lass reel

After recommending this to Caroline as a minor key reel good for sessions, I realized it wasn’t in the tune section on this site yet. So here it is, in a fairly simple setting. You can put triplets on most of the quarter notes throughout the tune to spice it up a little. See O’Neill’s for the same minor setting with too much ornamentation.

I’ve also heard this tune played with c sharps throughout, with no other changes, to place it squarely in D major—like learning two tunes in one. This is how it’s shown in Breathnach’s volume 1, and The Northern Fiddler hasit transcribed from Johnny Doherty in a decidedly Donegal setting, also in D major.

sorry for my english. Iknow to play a slip jig whit the same name, but the tune is totally different. I submitted this tune here but is a slip jig.

just listening to some tape of seamus ennis and i realised that after some spiel about a little girl and a leprechaun or an odd little man he plays this tune once through on whistle calling it the smokey house and warning people not to play it in presence of the aforementioned little girl or she’ll run a mile
anyone else call it the smokey house i wonder

That little story can also be found in Carson’s "Last Night’s Fun". Stories are fun. When I get the book back I can post the whole thing. Unless you (ed) want to write it down from the tape. 🙂

This is the tune on Altans’ CD Blackwater, instead of the one that you’d hop too through the recordings bit.

FYI.

Eeeeee, that story was confusing, I just listened to it! But that’s cool! I love stories wheeeee!!!

I prefer this in Amix.

Quite nice! Nice on the whistle, probabley on the fiddle too! Cool! From NiamhB

I agree that the O’Niell’s version is too heavy on ornamentation. Maybe grace notes and what not are easier to play on the fiddle, which the book was written for, than on the mandolin, especially when, like me, you don’t really know how to play. Great tune, thanks for this version.

Played by Altan, starting about 4.10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOJvwtq6G_k

play video

"I prefer this in Amix." -Me too!
A great tune, to be piped hot in the usual mixolydian mode!

Second tune http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRXe_HFvQ0g

play video

The number of tunes, titles and settings in the question intrigued me, so
I tried both text search (the blackhaired lass) and music search (with the five settings) in the Melodycatcher
Results surprised me. But I lack the knowledge to judge how relevant they are:

The text search resulted in 13 results

For music search I used enough notes to get only similar results per search;
Setting1 and 3 showed 3 similar melodies (there is at least one note different between setttin 1 and 3 after the notes I used for this search)
Setting 2 delivered two similar melodies, setting 4 also two and section 5 one melody all similar per search but quite different.between all searches

For me it seems complex to judge about different melodies and versions while I did not even use other titles for text search… But it might be interesting for someone with more knowledge to repeat this type of search to see if further details are of help..

In addition to including this tune as The Black Haired Lass (reel #73) in her tunebook A Drop in the Ocean, Josephine Keegan also prints a very similar setting under the title The Kilcogy Reel (reel #55). The more names the merrier, eh?

The first version here in A dorian is my favorite. But of versions in A mixolydian this one mostly from Tradschool.com is the setting I prefer.

As I play it on the fiddle for years. I got this version from a tape recorded in a concert of the Lorient Festival end to the 70’s or beginning of the 80’s by a friend, who didn’t remembered the name of the band, except that they were young musicians from northern Ireland. For the story, as they explained in the recording, one of the flute player and another musician were not at their best on stage with a big cold, probably a result of the crazy days … and nights … of the festival … but the music was still quite good ! I hadn’t the name of the tune of which it was the only version that I knew for long, except that on the tape we could, uneasily, guess something as "The Darkest Lass" for it, what was its name for long, before Tunepal’s arrival on computers 😀
I played also this tune with the more "modern" setting of Katrien Delavier which I post here too (X:8)

Sorry … I would have post this version (X:7) in Fair Haired Lass, https://thesession.org/tunes/1231 where I copy it.
(the two tunes were open and I didn’t care I was in the wrong window …
and more, the title was wrong too (result of an unwanted copy/paste) !!!
… that’s what arrives when when doing several things in the same time.

X:8 is my attempt at transcribing this tune from Micho Russell’s playing on ‘The Russell Family of Doolin, County Clare’ LP (Topic 12TS251. 1975). On that recording it follows ‘The Fair-Haired Boy’, appropriately enough, a few settings of which are posted on this site under the title ‘Micho Russell’ Reel’. (The chords here are mine - please take or leave as you will).