The Drocketty March jig

This 6/8 March I found on the Bakerswell CD of 1988.

In the sleeve notes, Sean Potts tells us that this tune is named after a dance with which it is associated.

The Drocketty March is from Drogheda, Co. Louth.

Arthur Warren Darley may be the composer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Warren_Darley

Compositions:
“The Boys of Wexford” by Darley & McCall
“Boolavogue” by Darley & McCall
“Kelly the Boy from Killanne” by Darley & McCall
“Drocketty’s March” by Darley & McCall
“Lady and the Farmer” by Darley & McCall
“Bruckless Shore” his name for the “Swedish Jig”/“Arthur Darley’s Jig”
“Cloch na Ceithre Mhile (The Four Mile Stone)” by Arthur Darley

Bakerswell plays The Drocketty March with the first part repeated, as written. But they play the B and C parts one time through, no repeats.

The Drocketty March is an old mummer’s tune from County Wexford. It was collected by PJ McCall and Arthur Darley as part of the early Feis Ceoil movement and published in the Feis Ceoil collection of Irish airs. If you visit the Na piobairi uilleann website, you can find the collected version of the tune in their online music collection. Since Arthur Darley was a trained violinist, he probably looked after the notation of the collected pieces of music of which a significant number were gathered in south Wexford. The playing of the tune by Sean Potts snr. would reflect the fact that Sean would have sought out music from that area, since his father, ‘old’ John Potts, the uilleann piper was originally from the same area of Wexford that most of the Feis Ceoil ‘Wexford’ tunes were collected from. The jig ‘Port sean Sheain’ is named after him.
The current Sean Potts maintains his links with his ancestral area and in fact was the presenter of a ‘Geantrai’ programme some years ago from Carrig-on-Bannow for that reason.

Not totally positive if this is the proper place for this tune but its the closest I’ve found. Learned this tune off the Joe McHugh and Barry Carroll album The Long Finger. Joe plays it through a few times mostly solo with sparse accompaniment before ending on a long F# where they transition into Cock and the Hen (which they call The Drogheda Slip Jig). As far as I can tell, the third line of X:1 above lines up decently with the first line of this, but if the rest of this setting lines up with X:1 at all, it’s currently evading me. I think its a really sombre and beautiful interpretation regardless.

I contacted Joe McHugh inquiring about his setting of this tune and in addition to being quite friendly he also informed me that he learned the tune “The Droghedy March” from a mandolin player named Ian Stevenson some time in the late 70’s and said it was linked to the mumming tradition as well.

He also said that Ian was a composer of tunes. I speculate that X:2 was perhaps Ian’s own interpretation of the tune?

The tune you have posted above has nothing whatsoever to do with “The Drocketty March” posted by Ptarmigan, and should be removed. It sounds like a tune recorded by Gerry O’Connor and “La Lugh”, which I’m sure they recorded preceding a slow reel composed by Iain Stevenson called “The Destitution Reel”, so there is a link there.

There are two related tunes from the historical archives called ‘The Drocketty’. Sometimes it’s been titled ‘The Drocketty March’, or ‘The Drocketty jig’ or ‘The Mummer’s March’. X1 above is more or less the version of the tune in The Feis Ceoil Collection of Irish airs, published in 1914. The second version with the parts in different order and the ‘minor’ tonality was published by Francis O Neill in ‘Irish Minstrels and musicians’. The source for that second version was also from County Wexford - the fiddler Patrick Walsh of Scarawalsh, N.W. of Enniscorthy who was a regular correspondent and provider of tunes to Captain Francis O Neill. The ‘Drogheda’ connection I’m pretty sure is simply a mishearing or ‘correction’ of ‘Drocketty’. The origin or explanation of the name is discussed in Francis O Neill’s book, although it seems a bit doubtful to me. In any case, both versions were played as music for the jig figure of a Mummer’s sword dance, still performed today by Mummer’s ‘sets’ in Wexford, although the use of ‘The Drocketty’ tune for that figure died out over the years, being replaced by other Irish double jigs.

This is the version from ‘Irish Minstrels and musicians’ and closely resembles X:2