The Dorrington Lads slip jig

The “Dorrington” in the title refers to the village of Doddington, 3 miles northeast of Wooler in Northumberland. The old way of pronouncing it was with a guttural “ghh” sound - a bit like the Parisian “r”.

The slip jig version of this tune I submitted is a dance setting, but it is often played as a variations set for the smallpipes. One of the better versions comes from Robert Bewick (1788-1849). This has 4 parts, but the 2nd and 4th parts are identical, and the 3rd part hardly deviates at all from the 1st part. This is probably why the last two parts were omitted for use in the minstrelsy in the late 19th century. The pipes variations are probably best transcribed in 9/4, and the abc for the 1st 2 parts of that setting is below:

M:9/4
|:e2|d2G2B2 d2BcdB g2d2B2|d2G2B2 d2BcdB c2A2e2|
d2G2B2 d2BcdB g2d2B2|c4A2 A2cded c2A2:|
|:e2|d4g2 f2a2g2 f2d2g2|f2a2g2 f2d2f2 e2cdec|
d4g2 f2a2g2 f2d2f2|c4A2 A2cded c2A2:|

The minstrelsy version was edited, and all the high “A’s” were substituted for “E’s” so that the tune would be playable on a more limited pipes chanter. The 2nd half of the B-part was also embellished. An abc transcription of the minstrelsy setting is below, with my own pitch corrections to bar 4 of the A-part and bar 4 of the B-part:

M:9/4
|:e2|d2G2B2 d2BcdB g2d2B2|d2G2B2 d2BcdB c2A2e2|
d2G2B2 d2BcdB g2d2B2|c4A2 A2cded c2A2:|
e2|d4g2 f2e2g2 f2d2g2|f2e2g2 f2d2f2 e2cdec|
d4g2 f2e2g2 f2d2f2|c4A2 A2cded c2A2e2|
d2B2g2 f2d2g2 fedfge|d2B2g2 f2d2f2 e2cdec|
d2B2g2 f2d2g2 fedfge|cBABcB A2cded c2A2||

Accordingto legend,the tune that James Allen the Elder (father of the legendary piper Jamie Allen)played on his death bed. This is ultrahardcore Northumbrian - open chanter stuff from the 18th century or earlier.
There is a macabre version of this in the Dixon Ms. Dow’s version is really very accessible - a sort of bowdlerized version that isn’t too arcane. Even dedicatedNorthumbrian players find some of the earlier versions of Dorrington Lads hard listening.

T: Byker Hill
M: 9/8
L: 1/8
R: slip jig
K: Dmaj
|: AD FA F/G/A/F/ dAF | AD FA F/G/A/F/ GEB |
AD FA F/G/A/F/ dAF | GE E>E F/G/A/F/ G3 :|

# Posted on Sunday, June 18th 2005 by dafydd

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And of course, the Ranters recorded an easy version.

X:1
T:Byker Hill and Walker Shore
K:G
M:4/4
L:1/4
|: B B B>A | B d e d | A A A G/A/ | B d d2 |
e e e>d | e f g a | g e d B/A/ | G E E2 :|

# Posted on Wednesday, June 22nd 2005 by geoffwright

That 2nd one doesn’t look like an easy version to me - it’s a different tune isn’t it?

Yes, it is a different tune and timing. Geoff’s contribution is the air a lot of people have used and known for ages for the song, rather than the ‘new wave’ borrowing… It serves as a comparison and a point of reference. I’ve just moved them over before that entry goes “POOF!”…

No it should be okay where it is - remember *you* didn’t post it ‘c’! 🙂

Nope, sorry. It’s part of my screwed up brains cells, needing things under one roof to make sense out of them, instead of multiple screens as I’d started with. I’ve had a kick playing through it and the other relations here and messing with my mind and the meter. I’m not sure which came first, probably Noel this week, or at least he set it off. These have been fun in all those various forms including mixed meters. I’m just feeling a little unbalanced after that, in other words ~ not walking a straight line…

Several things started me off checking for such things, aside from being ill and unbalanced this week anyway There were the several recent listings in 7/8, Noel, and then stumbling across a ‘Discussion’ on the category of ‘Barndances’ which sent me looking for Jeremy’s movement of ‘forms’. He’d said in that thread that he would be moving all the mixed meter tunes to ‘slip jigs’, or at least 7/8 tunes. That seems to be ‘in process’ and is why the recent 7/8 entry I made went under ‘Slip Jigs’ instead of ‘Barndances’. For now I’m still finding things Balkan, real and imagined, in several different places including under ‘Barndances’, ‘Reels’, etc… Some are ‘straight’ in a manner of speaking.

This time, Noel included in the lighting of the fuse, an additional spark was “Mominsko Horo” and a half baked memory of a ‘straight’ version I’d heard of it ~ ‘straight’ meaning a consistent time signature, but ‘mixed meter’. So I’ve been visiting and playing through the mixed meter tune forms on site here, and elsewhere. That’s when I re-stumbled across the short “Byker Hill” entry Dafydd had made and the matter of ‘duplication’, though just half the melody, and timed differently ~ then a long spell with everything here in the one place making a hams of it all.

Maybe I’m getting paranoid about the wand waving and the “POOF!” It is still good, for me anyway, to see the relationships under this one roof…a ‘family gathering’…

This is in ‘Northumbrian Minstrelsy: a collection of bag-pipe tunes chiefly of the olden time, adapted to the Northumbrian Smallpipes’ published by the Society of Antiquaries of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1882. The timing in the book is 6/8, but it’s more like a triple-waltz if there is such a thing. The footnote says: it is also known as Willy Allan’s Favourite, and on his deathbed he is reputed to have said ‘Hand me the pipes, an’ I’ll gie ye Dorrington Lads yet,’ and died attempting the tune. This was about 1760. Katherine Tickell plays it on
one of her recordings of the Northumbrian Pipes.
e2|: d2G2B2 | d2BcdB | g2d2B2 | d2G2B2 | d2BcdB | c2A2e2 |
d2G2B2 | d2BcdB | g2d2B2 | c4A2 | A2BcdB | c2A2e2 :|
|:d4g2 | f2e2g2 | f2d2g2 | f2e2g2 | f2d2f2 | e2cdec |
d4g2 | f2e2g2 | f2d2f2 | c4A2 | A2BcdB | c2A2e2:|

This is a very weird version of Dorrington Lads, which seems to be in the Locrian mode of G. The original manuscript (see below) has a hand written note that the first part sounds better with a B flat and an F natural. Of course it does!

Waterson/Carthy has recorded this version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCoDdfQP6kU

play video

More information on the source of this version here:
http://northshieldsnsp.co.uk/a-minstrels-gallery/the-reid-family-repertoire/

Correction: the version described in the previous post is in Lydian mode, not Locrian mode. Locrian is based on the fourth of the scale; the Lydian is based on the seventh. So if you flat all of the Bs and Fs (Bb/F natural) you get a tune in Bb major.

I have finally started giving this tune some of the attention it warrants, though probably not the ability. In doing so I have naturally come and perused the information to be gleaned here. The “very weird version” of ndlxs is actually pretty much identical to the version I am currently studying, for the first 14 parts at least. A version from The William Dixon Manuscript which is generally recognised, by those who study these things, as the earliest bagpipe notation in existence. As such the pipe version, an 8/9 note, tune, noted to stave in 1733, that Waterson and Carthy are giving sound to above is actually likely to be representative of the original version of the tune. Keyed pipes were not normal in that period, they were more likely mixolydian hence no Bd and Fnat. The tune is considered a masterpiece of the Northumbrian/ Border piping tradition and enjoys a long history recognised thus. Like many of the tunes of this time and place the melody was the starting point for the musician and variations were played according to talent and circumstance.