The Britches reel

This is a Martin Hayes spin on a great old tune, from his self titled cd. It goes slow and lightly, wistful, if you follow Martin’s lead.

I left out the grace notes he scatters around the tune. In the first two measures of Part C, try playing |gabg a (3bag ba|. Then in the D part, Martin flicks his middle finger down to break up all those edBd’s so it looks more like |(3ege dBd…|

Give a listen to the cd for the full effect, complete with tasteful piano accompaniment.
Will

It’s fascinating the way so many tunes are inter-related. If you take the first two parts of this tune, tweak the rhythm a little and transpose it up to A, you get the polka, ‘The Brtiches Full of Stitches’.

Looking at it another way, the whole tune is a variant of the reel, ‘The Noon Lasses’, which according to Cathal McConnell, is a variant of ‘Lord McDonanld’s’.

Had I not come across this tune - perhaps it was partly the title that prompted me - I would never have made the connection between the said polka and ‘The Noon Lasses’, let alone ‘Lord McDonald’s’.

https://thesession.org/tunes/1075/

This one’s too much like the Noon Lassies for me to commit to memory.

When I heard Martin Hayes play this, I just immediately took it as him applying his famous lonesome touch to the polka “The Britches Full of Stitches”. It’s interesting to me that this is considered a distinct tune. I guess he did move it to another key.

I also subscribe to this being just an interpretation of the classic polka. The polka is in fact played in G by many (as in several tunes, it is typically A for fiddlers and G for flutes, so playing in G is unusual for a fiddler, if not done to cooperate with a flute).

Matt Molloy has a powerful ‘no frills’ version. Was it recorded under a different name? It’s not listed here.

https://thesession.org/recordings/3460

The second setting above is remarkable in that it was published by James Oswald in 1745.

Yes, that’s the one. Thanks Kenny.