Pat Mahon’s jig

This jig is from Late in the Night with Christy Barry and Conor McCarthy. The liner notes don’t say anything about this jig, or who Pat Mahon is, or if the name is a play on words (pug mahon), but it’s a fun tune regardless. The B part’s a bit predictable, but the A part kicks, and there’s plenty of room for triplets, rolls, and melodic twists.

P.S. Since there are no c notes, the dots can land in either Em or E dor.

With the d sharp in the final bar, I would lead towards a … melodic (or is it harmonic?) …. minor

Yeah, that thought crossed my mind, but it’s an accidental, eh? Conor McCarthy does a lot of "chromatic" stuff. I’ll post some other tunes off this cd and you’ll see what I mean (though I’m waiting, hoping for permission from Conor and Christy for the original compositions).

There was a fluter called Pat Mahon (or was it MacMahon?) around Sligo a few years back. I last saw and heard him at the All Ireland Fleadh in Sligo Town in the early 90s.

A different version of the tune: https://thesession.org/tunes/1017

Good tune spotting, Hiroyuki!

Or kudos to Kieran for good tune spotting. 🙂

Actually I haven’t learned this tune yet.

I notice Catherine McEvoy plays the phrase endings without the #d, as ‘Bee’ etc., maintaining a modal ambiguity

Blimey! I didn’t realise this was here. I learnt this tune ages ago from Pat himself. I only found it because I Googled Pat’s name to see if I could find out what’s happening with him at the moment. He’s an old pal of mine. Here’s the tune I play. I got it off Pat, and I’ve never heard anybody else play it, but, with Pat, it could have been very different on a different day. I assume it’s the same tune, though i never had a name for it:

X:1
T:Pat Mahon’s
S:BH memory of tune learnt from Pat in late 1970s - transcr BH 22/01/2012
M:6/8
R:Jig
K:Edor
B | ~e3 edB | ~g3 aga | bge dBA | Bee dBA |
Bee edB | ~g3 aga | bge dBA | Bed e2 :|: g/f/ |
egb egb | egb bge | dfa dfa | dfa agf |
~g3 aga | bge deg | ~a3 ged | Bed e2 :|

From Amarillis’ album "Waltzing in the Trees":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joiauhSEdG0

play video

Some resemblance to The Sailor’s Wife.