The Crucaharan Cross polka

This was one of the first Irish tunes I learnt. It’s a duple time march, so it should be transcribed in 2/4 or 2/2 really, but I find that marches are too easy to confuse with polkas when they are written in 2/4, so I’ve made do with 4/4.

See? The Irish have dag too like the English, they just won’t admit it.

This makes a lot more sense written out in 2/4 time so I’ve changed the time signature accordingly.

Okay J. It looks much more acceptable. I hope you won’t change my English daggy marches to 2/4 - they won’t look morrisy enough 🙂

Yeah Dow, but we used to play this number for the polka sets…

It was a slightly different setting if I remember right, just slightly. I’ll see if I can find it…

My mother (Rose O’Connor) playes this and says she got it from the playing of Michael Coleman

K: Gmaj
B/A/|Gd Bd|G>F Ge|dB B/A/G/A/|BA AB/A/|
Gd Bd|G>F Ge|dB AB/A/|G3:|
|:d|e>d e/f/g|G>F Ge|dB B/A/G/A/|1 BA Ad|
ee/d/ e/f/g|G>F Ge|dB AB/A/|G3:|
2 BA AB/A/|Gd Bd|G>F Ge|dB AB/A/|G3||

As promised - I’ve also found it played in the keys of A and D…

How do you pronounce crucaharan? I’ve been playing this tune for decades and never knew how to pronounce it.

I transcribed this polka from the Barcelona Session Tune Book, where it is called “O the britches full of stitches”, but it is obviously not the same tune as the one that normally goes by that name. I tried the advanced search here and got no results, and also Reverend’s tune search, where the closest match (60%) was Cuil Aodha (sp?), which sounds sort of similar but also seems to be a different tune. Anyone know this by another name?

Key signature: G Major
Submitted on September 13th 2004 by Dow.
https://thesession.org/tunes/3533

Key signature: A Major
Submitted on September 10th 2009 by reedy grins.
~ /tunes/9885

X: 3
T: Gan Ainm
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
R: polka
K: Amaj
|: c/B/ |\
Ac Bc | A>B Af | ec c/B/A/B/ | cB Bc/B/ |
Ac Bc | A2 Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2 A :|
|: e |\
~f2 fa | A2 Af | ec c/B/A/B/ | cB Be |
f2 fa | A2 Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2 A :|

X: 4
T: Crucaharan Cross
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
R: polka
K: Amaj
|: c/B/ |\
Ae ce | A>G Af | ec c/B/A/B/ | cB Bc/B/ |
Ae ce | A2 Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2- A :|
|: e |\
f>^e fa | A2 Af | ec c/B/A/B/ | cB Be |
f2 fa | A2- Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2- A :|

X: 2
T: Crucaharan Cross
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
R: polka
K: Gmaj
|: B/A/ |\
Gd Bd | G>F Ge | dB B/A/G/A/ | BA AB/A/ |
Gd Bd | G>F Ge | dB AB/A/ | G3 :|
|: d |\
e>d e/f/g | G>F Ge | dB B/A/G/A/ |
[1 BA Ad | ee/d/ e/f/g | G>F Ge | dB AB/A/ | G3 :|
[2 BA AB/A/ | Gd Bd|G>F Ge|dB AB/A/ | G3 |]

X: 5
T: Crucaharan Cross
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
R: polka
K: Amaj
|: c/B/ |\
Ae ce | A>G Af | ec c/B/A/B/ | cB Bc/B/ |
Ae ce | A2 Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2- A :|
|: e |\
f>^e f/g/a | A>G Af | ec cA/B/ |
[1 cB Be | ff/e/ f/g/a | A2- Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2- A :|
[2 cB Bc/B/ | Ae ce | A>G Af | ec Bc/B/ | A2- A |]

The comment about learning it from Michael Coleman is interesting. I checked a number of sites that list the tunes in his recordings (including one at amazon.com 😉, and found no matches for anything starting with “Cru” in any of them. So does anyone know of a Michael Coleman recording of this tune, perhaps under an unrelated name?