The Flowing Tide (hornpipe) on The Session

Also known as Anne Sheehy’s, Birmingham, The Birmingham, Bunch Of Ferns, Burke’s Hornpipe., Higgins Best, Seventh Regiment, The Picnic Reel, The Seventh Regiment, The Shyan.

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Four settings

Nine comments

The Flowing Tide

Also known round these parts as the Floating Turd, perhaps a comment on the Severn Estury. Despite this it’s a lovely tune, the Kilbride Brothers do a nice slow version; we do an equally competent version preceded by the Home Ruler.

Flowing Tide

The version now played is a key-of-G setting of the original one in A major, which requires a shift to a higher postion on the fiddle and is not easily played by BC button accordionists, flute players or concertina players.

The most elaborate printed version is “The Seventh Regiment” in Ryan’s Mammoth Collection, which attributes it to the 19th-century fiddler Conn Higgins. O‘Neill borrowed it and changed the name to “Higgins’ Best.” The Seventh Regiment was a National Guard regiment based in New York and supported by the city’s wealthier uptown element (as opposed to the downtown, working-class Irish 69th Regiment).

T:The Seventh Regiment - - - tapping sources

Set

This is good in a set with the Flowers of Edinburgh

I think this makes a better reel than hornpipe - you don’t need to make many adjustments for it to work. I like my hornpipes to sound like hornpipes, I’m afraid.

“The Flowing Tide”

~ | (3efg dg B>dg>e | d>BA>B G3 :|

Still fucntioning in an exhausted state, bars 7 & 8, I missed the > ~ 😏

this Hornpipe almost deserves to be a reel

Re: The Flowing Tide / 7th Regiment / Higgins’ Best

Attributed to Conn. Higgins in Ryan’s MC (#363), where it appears as the 7th Regiment Reel. The alternative Higgins’ Best is thus plausible.
(It is also included, #338, as The Picnic, which is here https://thesession.org/tunes/2683)

The Flowing Tide hornpipe