The Wonder hornpipe

First heard many years ago on a record by The Dubliners played by their fiddler John Sheehan.
I thought it was Irish until I found it in a book called “The Lads Like Beer” (Graham Dixon, Random Pub. ISBN 0-951 1572-05) dealing with the music of Newcastle fiddle player James Hill (around 1850) who is attributed with the composition of this one.
The G# doesn

James Hill was the author of many favorite Hornpipes including Newcastle, The Banks, The Rights of Man and about a good ten other hornpipes that I esacpe me right now. He often wrote in Bb which make his hornpipes a little harder to play. I always thought of his hornpipes as showpiece tunes, nice as a solo but due to funky keys & huge ranges not so great for a session.

Manuscript setting
K: Bb
|:(3FGA|BfdB AecA|BcdB F2BA|GBcd edcB|Acfe (3agf (3edc|
BfdB AecA|BcdB F2BA|Ggfe|dcBA|c2B2 B2:|
|:(2dcB|Acf=e fdcB|Acf=e fagf|=efga bgeg|f=efg f2f_e|
dedc Bdg2|cdcB Acf2|gbag fedc|B2d2 B2:|

Oops, beginning 2nd part should be a triplet (3, and also I think bar 4 sounds better as |Acf=e gf (3_edc|

If you’re playing this in G, there’s an opportunity to drop in a nice G# in bar 3 of the A-part as well as bar 5 of the B-part that Jorg mentioned, so for bar 3 you get |E^GAB cBA=G|. In the key of Bb, this comes out as |G=Bcd edc_B|.

The great Galway flute player Tom Morrison recorded this on a 78, he called it the London Clog. His first part is a tad different - GABG FGAF GABG D2GF and so on. Surprised to find it was a Hill tune, and not to be confused with his “South Shore” hornpipe, which in Ireland is called the Scholar.

Great to read this all information about one of my favourite hornpipes. I always find it’s sad that the composer of some of these great tunes seldom gets a mention.

Hi Brad - I enjoy your contributions to this site, so I hope you don’t mind if I offer an alternative opinion. James Hill did not compose the “Banks Hornpipe” (nor was it Scott Skinner, but Parazotti), and it’s only conjecture that Hill wrote “Rights of Man”. So many other great tunes are his, though, including

Beeswing https://thesession.org/tunes/945
Bottle Bank https://thesession.org/tunes/7429
Earl Grey https://thesession.org/tunes/4678
The Hawk https://thesession.org/tunes/3146
The High Level https://thesession.org/tunes/2261
The Locomotive https://thesession.org/tunes/5382

to name but a few.

In “Hibernian rhapsody” by De Dannan there is a couple of hornpipes under the title “George Ross’ hornpipes”. The 2nd is equal to The Wonder hornpipe.

From “Hibernian rhapsody” by De Danann you find a couple of hornpipes:

George Ross’ hornpipes 1 & 2
1. “The New Century” https://thesession.org/tunes/2001
2. “The Wonder ”

# Posted on November 15th 2007 by OsvaldoLaviosa

Here’s how I play it in C. Learned this version from Michael Black of The black Brothers. It’s beautiful down low.
X: 1
T: Wonder Hornpipe, The
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
R: hornpipe
K: Cmaj
|🙂G,A,B,| CGEC B,GDB, | C2EC G,CCB, | A,2DE FEDC |B,G^FG AGFD|
CGEC B,GDB, | C2EC G,CCB, | A,2DE FDB,C|DCCB, C2 :|
|:DC |B,GG^F G=FDC | B,GG^F GBAG | ^FGAB cA^FG | AGG^F GAG=F |
EFED ^CE A2 | DEDC B,DG^G |AcBA GFDB, | CEDB, C2 :||

I have merely pasted the abc code for the (original) B Flat version. As posted by Dr Dow

My non-trad arrangement:
https://soundcloud.com/yhaal-house/the-wonderful-hornpipe-trad