The Flowers Of The Red Mill reel

For backing I group this tune in my head with tunes like Midsummer’s Night - Ador tunes that aren’t straight-forward to put chords to. You can take it right out of its mode and do weird things with it. I like to throw F nats in at bar 6 like this: |=FG~G2 EGDa| or |=FGEG DGGg|

Here’s the version that appears on Slide’s “Flying Pig”. It has a B-part that sounds a bit like “Miss McGuinness” https://thesession.org/tunes/1397 --

K:Gdor
gfdc AFFE|F2cF dFcf|gfdc AFFG|(3ABc dc AG~G2|
gfdc AFFE|~F3c dFcf|gfdc AFFG|Afdc AG~G2||
g2ga ~f3c|dfcf dfc2|~g3a ~f3c|dfcA AG~G2|
~g3a ~f3c|dfcf defg|gagf fdcd|fdcA AG~G2||

Transposed into Ador --

K:Ador
aged BGGF|G2dG eGdg|aged BGGA|(3Bcd ed BA~A2|
aged BGGF|~G3d eGdg|aged BGGA|Bged BA~A2||
a2ab ~g3d|egdg egd2|~a3b ~g3d|egdB BA~A2|
~a3b ~g3d|egdg efga|abag gede|gedB BA~A2||

I was about to post this reel under a different title. As far as I know, this tune appears in two recordings: Paul McGrattan and Paul O’Shaughnessy’s “Within a Mile of Dublin”; and Catherine and John McEvoy’s “Kilmore Fancy.” Two Pauls play it as a Sligo version of “The Wild Irishman,” while McEvoys call it “The Flowers of the Red Mill (aka The Flowers of the Red Hill).” Really confusing! Please add some more info of this tune if you know it.

I forgot to add this tune is followed by “The Pretty Girls of Mayo” on the both recordings mentioned above, which seems not merely an accident.

Here is another transcription of the tune based the flute & fiddle duet playing of McGrattan & O’Shaughnessy and that of McEvoys. The second part is more or less my interpretation though.

K: Ador
aged BAGA|(3BAG dG eGdG|aged BAGA|B2dB BAA2:|
~a3f g2ag|eaaf gedg|~a3f g2ag|egdB BAA2|
~a3f g2ag|eaaf gedg|bgaf gedB|egdB BAA2||

Micho Russel`s (The Flowers Of The Red Mill reel) is given here as the first tune in the Let Down the Blade set from Playing with Fire by Dervish. This is obviously a mistake, `cause this is a set of slides, two of which I easily found in the web but the first is a problem. Can someone help?

It’s pretty easy. You go to “search” and then type “Micho” into the box. This gives you a bunch of tunes, all called Micho Russell’s. You scan down until you come to one that says “slide” and then you click on it, and lo and behold, you get this tune: https://thesession.org/tunes/958.

Thank you very much. It`s really easy 🙂.

Another one of Mick Hoy’s tunes absorbed from the playing of either Rev. Gary Hastings or Fr. Seamus Quinn. This version doesn’t differ much from Fr. Seamus’ recording of the tune on “Hidden Fermanagh Vol. 2” where it is paired with “The Boys of 25”, which also came from Mick and can be found in the tune archives here. Seems to be a relative of “The Flowers of the Red Mill” which fluter John McKenna recorded way back when.

Aren’t they just different versions of the same tune? https://thesession.org/tunes/2867.

You can watch Catherine and John McEvoy play this reel together: http://www.custysmusic.com/mall/CustysTraditionalMusicShop/catherine_and_john_mcevoy.htm It’s the second tune of the set.

Paddy O’Brien also recorded a great version of the tune as Anderson’s on “Traditional Irish Music,” which was his collaboration album with James Kelly and Daithi Sproule.

A case of not hearing the tune for transcribing the notes, I suppose. The two tunes are closer than I first thought, though not close to my playing of “The Flowers” which was a bit of a reconstruction of the tune remembered imperfectly from fluter Desi Wilkinson on the radio.

Murhpy’s Hound: https://thesession.org/tunes/4318

Slainte mentioned one recording that calls this The Wild Irishman. That’s what Micheal O Raghallaigh called it when he played it at a workshop I attended.

This reel has been recorded by at least 4 flute players in the last few years: Peter Horan, Catherine McEvoy with John McEvoy on the fiddle, John Blake with Lamond Gillespie on the fiddle, and James Carty. Well, James Carty actually plays it with John and John P. Carty both on the flute!

I read somewhere that John McKenna first recorded it in the 1920s.

This is certainly the tune that shows up as The Wild Irishman’ in Bulmer & Sharpley’s “Music of Ireland” books (book 3, #36).

Listen to Patsy Hanley play the tune: http://www.itma.ie/digitallibrary/sound/flowers-of-redhill-hanley

Played by Phil Cunningham as “The Wild Irishman” followed by “The Golden Keyboard”:
http://grooveshark.com/s/09+The+Wild+Irishman+Golden/3QsFL8?src=5

Flowers of the red mill / Pretty girls of Mayo, reels
Paul O’Shaughnessy, fiddle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbN-nbDxe7g

play video

is from Paul’s playing in the clip above.

This is called Micho Russell’s on “Flying Pig” by Slide. Irishtune.info has it listed as Flowers of Red Hill, which is also a tune in Ador (similar to this one, but different enough):
https://thesession.org/tunes/442

Suspect they were thinking of this one: https://thesession.org/tunes/2867

Oops! Thanks for the heads up. I’ll ask Jeremy to merge the entries.