The Derry hornpipe

I was surprised to see that this wasn’t in thesession database. There are - as ever - oodles of versions of The Derry Hornpipe knocking about. The Tipperary Hornpipe’s A part is very close to the Derry’s A-part and I gather there’s a hornpipe called The Elks‘ Festival which is pretty damn close to the last two parts of the tune. There are three-part versions around and I think Cathal McConnell’s version on “Long Expectant …” is a six-parter. This is pretty close to the O’Neill’s version.

i learned this a good few years ago at the instigation of some players at a session…and nobody else did!
i still quite like the tune though!

Tip Max off … it’s one of those tunes he likes to trot out early in the night when things are just settling. He gives it a good lash!

It is a great tune. Challanging and melodic. But I wouldn’t cxall it The LD HP. I think that people from Derry might not care for the added baggage implied by calling it The LD HP rather than just The Derry HP.

I think s/he means that it’s also called the LondonDerry hornpipe upon occasion, Mark. ;)

I had some lovely tunes in Derry.

Long, rambling tune full of nothing much. That last part’s the best bit.

It’s a bit long

I used to play this one but with differences, along with some other long and rambling numbers ~ and then folks like ‘Dow’ started with the negatives and the “ho hums” and the whispering ~ and so, to placate the complainers, the naysayers and grumps, I set such fancies aside… 😎

😛 Nyah, nyah, nyah!!!

Tom Ennis and James Morrison recorded this hornpipe in 1923:
http://www.archive.org/details/TomEnnisAndJamesMorrisonLondonderryHornpipe

Ok, so the first two sections look like the Ladies’ Hornpipe. And the last two seem to be the Elk’s Festival. So if the middle two are something else again, then this is a set that got standardised at some point.

Ladies’ Hornpipe: https://thesession.org/tunes/5625
The Elk’s Festival: https://thesession.org/tunes/8244

A friendly warning re. cocus’s note from 2005, but I really wouldn’t go calling this tune the “Derry Hornpipe” in the wrong part of (London)derry! It’s no place for naivete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndTr6YFiyqw

play video

Wasn’t this tune used as the theme music on an American television game show of the seventies???? I think I’ve heard it there before. Anyone else know about this?

Taught to me by Brian McNamara at Willie Clancy 2016. This is just the basic version we learned in class, I’m sure there are a lot of variations that can be put in.

Oliviers Demers’s 1000 Airs du Québec et de l’Amérique Francophone (A latter days O’Neill’s for Quebec!) has just come out in print (2020)
The Londonderry Hornpipe can be found in it, p.167, under the monicker “Quadrille de l’oncle Ti-Bé (#2)”
This melody is also played as a reel, as parts 4 & 5 of the Dionne Reel (Les Cinq Jumelles Dionne, p.46 in the book)
https://thesession.org/tunes/1364
Demers got the name for this hornpipe from Yvon Mimeault’s uncle Antoine Mimeault. (many so called reels, gigues or quadrilles originated as hornpipes in Quebec, btw)
NB: some melodic patterns are common to many French Canadian tunes. The second part of the L’Derry hornpipe (in D) for example is played (in A) the Hangman’s reel, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf4ao1BWhDo

play video

This is the two part version of the tune, unnamed, from the Power manuscript from Kilmore in County Wexford. The tune was closely associated with the travelling piper John Cash, (‘Cash the Piper’) who was born in Kilmore in 1832 and it was often refereed to as Cash’s hornpipe. It’s interesting that in that 1966 RTE clip the traveller musicians the Dunnes are playing it with two parts also. The Dunnes also had strong connections with Wexford.