The Blockers reel

Ohhh, I love this tune. It’s not the easiest thing to pull off on a fiddle, but Frankie Gavin makes it sing and swing on DeDannan’s "Mist Covered Mountain cd. The A Part is pretty straightforward once your ear learns to like those c and f naturals. The B Part, however, throws that jumpy string crossing at us in the first measure (you can play the notes as in measure 5 if measure 1 is just too tricky). And then the fingering gets a little tight going from measure 3 to 4 (and again from measure 6 to 7). I’ve tried jumping from the E to A, with my index finger, or holding the E and A, at the same time, and the latter seems to work a little better for me.

So, this Sean Ryan fellow was quite a fiddler from County Tipperary, a key figure of the IRTRAD revival during the 1950s and 1960s. The Companion to Irish Traditional Music says he wrote more than 250 tunes, including Glen of Aherlow, now a popular session tune. Maybe we could just submit Sean Ryan tunes for a week…. ;-)

Will

Hey Will, I love this tune, I don’t know why Frankie put it in D, but it’s great in the original key.

Sean Ryan named it "The Blockers".

and here it is:-

X:1
T:"The Blockers"
C:
L:1/8
Q:380
K:Gmix
M:4/4
z6 A2 |: Bc dc BG (3GAG | =FD CD FG Ac | dg (3gfg fg ag | fd c^A =A=F (3FEF | Bc dc BG (3GAG | \
=FD CD FG Ac | dg (3gfg fg ag |1 fd cA G2 A2 :|2 fd cA GA Bd |: g2 dg Bg dB | cB cd cA FA | \
DG (3GFG FG Ac | Bc de fd ef | g2 dg Bg dB | cB cd cA F2 | DG (3GFG FG Ac |1 BG AF GA Bd :|2 BG AF G2 A2 | \
BG AF G4 | \

Came across this setting which a friend sent me as a "Gan Ainm" which he wanted a name for. Its original source was one of those mirror sites (http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/mirror/kirby98.fsnet.co.uk/__/__From_De_Dannan_1.abc), which thankfully exist to save otherwise lost material.

Does anyone know what ‘blockers’ refers to? Is this a sportsball reference?

Picked the setting in "The Hidden Ireland: First Selection of Irish Traditional Compositions of Sean Ryan", 1985
compiled by Brian Ryan.

I suppose this is the original version, but I just noticed the indicated key was D major which of course doesn’t make much sense, I changed it to GM.